UPDATE: We have now been contacted, and it looks like we may soon be unbanned! Thanks to the support staff! We appreciate it! (Neopia.com.br has also gotten a reply!)
For the last couple of months (since some time around the AC this year) Neopets has been on and off IP banning various officially certified fansites. Included in this bunch have been the Lost and Pound, PetTP, Dress To Impress, and the Brazilian/Portuguese Neopia.com.br
DTI’s issues appear to have been resolved, at least for the meantime, but the rest of us are still affected, and see no end in sight!
We don’t know whether they are intentionally blocking us, or blocking us because they’ve mistaken us for cheating programs, which none of us are! Either way they have not replied to tickets, emails, or FB messages from any of us fansite owners. As a certified fansite owner, we have no way to contact anyone who actually works behind the scenes and may be able to quickly fix settings.
Since the end of July, it would appear that both PetTP and the Lost and Pound have been permanently IP banned, as it seems not a single attempt to contact the servers has worked throughout the last couple of weeks.
On PetTP this means that no one can even add a new pet, and all confirmed listings are broken, as all these features require PetTP contact and confirm information on the pets’ lookups!
On the Lost and Pound this just means that our grunt work is even more grunt filled than ever, but thankfully we can still continue to run the site, unlike PetTP.
After many months of dealing with this mess, we feel it’s time to come public with the information, and hope that you guys can help spread the word. Perhaps the word will finally get back to the people at Jumpstart HQ, and we can be whitelisted. (If anyone from Jumpstart/Neopets gets this and wants to contact us, lost at quiggle.org and neopia at outlook.com!!!)
TNT GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!!! I’m so sorry this is happening, Lost & Pound. 🙁
We at TNT have heard the concerns some have communicated regarding our banning of IPs. Let us assure you that this is being done on a case by case basis and only to help deliver the most optimized site experience to our fans and users. That being said, let’s break this down and clear up some of the confusion:
Why is TNT blocking IPs?
-We are blocking certain IPs to help alleviate the site lag and boost user experience. In other words, to make the site faster for everyone!
Has TNT blocked the IPs of some fansites?
– Yes, and not on purpose! This is something we are happy to work out with our certified fansites. If you are an admin of a certified fansite and this has happened to you, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@neopets.com! We will be happy to work with you to get to the bottom of this.
How can I make sure my fansite stays unblocked?
– Don’t cheat! Some activity may look suspicious and could possibly be flagged. And it is possible that some activity could be too much for our servers to handle. But please know that we will be working with our site administrators to make sure we can continue to support you, the Neopets Community, as best we can!
Glad to hear this! It would be really nice if we got replies, and action was taken when we tried to contact you directly! 🙂 We only posted this as a last resort, seeing as how we’ve all be trying other methods for a while now with no results.
I can quite confidently say PetTP and the Lost and Pound do not cheat, seeing as how neither is logged in to neopets EVER, they’re just checking pet lookups for information to fill into the database (such as pet colours, stats, owner, and whether it’s in the pound or not, depending on which site!) I am fairly confident none the other fansites involved cheat either, though I could not confirm that.
Oh hooray! Is this the first official communication between TNT and a certified fan site? I’m really excited about this precedent 😉
The next step that would make me *super* happy would be if we could get to know some of the technical folks on staff. When we need help from y’all, it’s pretty much always for the tech team, and pretty much always time-sensitive—a more direct line would save the support team some stress, enable a more back-and-forth conversation (which is usually crucial for debugging ;o), and help us get things fixed within days instead of weeks. (Plus, I just want to make some more friends! There are surprisingly few folks available to talk Neopets tech xP)
Anyway. It’s been an honor to serve the Neopets community alongside y’all, and I’m excited to see that we’re becoming even closer <3 If you're interested in establishing a more direct line, hit me up at webmaster@openneo.net at will 😀
So, this was two and a half months ago.
Any end in sight for PetTP and Lost & Pound?
I adoped a Meerca from Lost & Pound months ago and finally zapped it a color, so I was going to list it on PetTP but can’t. :/
I like adopting, zapping, and rehoming pets.
Appallingly no. I have not received a reply to any of my attempts to get in touch since August.
They don’t care apparently. They’re just trying to suck as much money out of the site before they close it down.