Monthly Q&A with TNT

April 24, 2024

The April 2024 AMA took place at 5pm NST on April 24, 2024.

The AMA was first announced on April 18, about six days in advance.

This AMA was dubbed "Upper Deck Edition" and featured Neopets CEO Dom Law as usual. It also included details about the upcoming Upper Deck Battledome Trading Card Game and Tales of Dacardia mobile game. It was moderated by Neopets YouTuber Kevin from KevinoGaming, who previously moderated the December, January, and February AMA's.

Questions could be submitted in advance through a StrawPoll shared on Neopets social media. You could vote to support as many questions as you like, and even have the ability to update your votes later!

How to Watch

The AMA was simulcasted on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X, Twitch, and Instagram. It remains available for viewing on all of these platforms except Twitch and Instagram:

Rewatch on YouTube »

Rewatch on Facebook »

Rewatch on Twitter/X »

Rare Item Code

TNT announced in advance that "ALL live viewers will receive a redemption code for an in-game Item", redeemable at Grundo Warehouse. Come back here after the stream to find out the code! The code was revealed as THENEOPETSTCG near the end of the livestream, redeemable at Grundo Warehouse until April 26th at 5pm NST.

Recap

Questions for Bobby from Upper Deck

Kevin started by bringing in Bobby Coovert, Product Manager and Game Designer of Neopets Battledome TCG (NBTCG) at Upper Deck.

Introduction?

• Upper Deck has been involved in the trading card industry for over 30 years.
• Bobby has been in the industry for about 15 years, and with Upper Deck for the last two years.

Tell us more about NBTCG?

• An exciting and unique element: dice! Not common for TCGs.
• Wanted to create an approachable TCG that satisfies serious tabletop gamers while still being easy to pick up.

Talk us through the card creation process?

• Start with a concept.
• Three directions: game design, art acquisition, and graphic design.
• Over 12 artists are working on the game, including Anthony Conley a.k.a. Tiger Catcher.
• "Every single person working on this game is a fan of Neopets."
• For game design, Bobby has a list of characters he wants to include. He will come up with ideas of what the characters should do in the game. Playtesting is done using the sample ideas.
• Bobby has played Neopets for over 20 years and is a huge fan of the lore.
• Graphic design comes last, then goes to physical production.

A picture of playtesting concept cards!

What's up with the dice?

• Custom-made resin dice will be included in each starter deck.

More info about the launch?

• Two starter decks: "Starry" featuring Starry Acara and "Fire" featuring Fire Uni.
• Defenders of Neopia booster boxes will have 24 packs, 8 cards per pack.

How many characters can we expect?

• "I went crazy." Over 250 unique cards, with over 400 when factoring in "different rarities."
• Will include some famous characters, and also some "new characters that nobody's seen yet"!
• Bobby then shared several example cards:

Tell us more about rarities?

• Every pack comes with 8 cards: 3 commons (usually standard Neopets), 2 rares (usually equipment, potions, food, as well as painted Neopets), 1 super rare or higher, and 1 codestone. (Bobby did not mention it, but the 8th card is a foil variant of one of the common/rare/codestone cards.)
• Codestones are used to "train" your Neopets, increasing their level, stats, or abilities.
• Super rares are rainbow foil versions of standard cards.
• Ultra rares are one per box have motion coat technology.
• Rainbow rares are one per box and combine both effects. Every base set and Defenders of Neopia Neopet will have one.
• Grundo Warehouse code cards are one per box.
• There will be some "secret" cards also.
• Two foils per pack guaranteed!

When can we expect the NBTCG?

• "I unfortunately can't say the exact release date."
• They have promised a release before Gen Con (August 2, 2024).
• "It will be very, very soon."

Questions for TNT Jewel and TNT Ghoti Wrangler

Kevin then brought out TNT Jewel and TNT Ghoti Wrangler to discuss the upcoming mobile app Tales of Dacardia.

Introductions?

• TNT Jewel (Narrative Designer): have been building and rebuilding the game currently known as Tales of Dacardia for a few years now. Writes dialogue, characters, quests, and more.
• TNT Ghoti Wrangler (Lead Artist): Concept art for the game, including buildings, NPCs, and Crabby-bots. Currently leads the art team to deliver features.

What to expect from the game?

• Restore an ancient, mostly forgotten Dacardia after a storm.
• Crabby-bots will help you to build homes for displaced Neopets, and build friendships with Neopets!
• Game will feature new and returning characters.

Tell us more about the art process?

• Starts with communicating with game designers, learning about the characters.
• Iterate on concept art, blending existing character references with new ideas.
• The art and lore teams for the main site are also available for advice.

What inspired the story?

• The concept of a town-building game with mystery elements was already selected; Jewel had to work from there.
• Had to explore what could be used from the main site's lore as well as what new lore to add.

What are the ties to existing Neopets lore?

• Jewel already had a pretty good knowledge of Neopets lore from her years as a player.
• There will be tie-in's between Tales of Dacardia and site events. Jewel mentioned Altador Cup specifically, noting that Dacardia will be participating this year!
• Jewel mentions that there's a character from Neopia Central, a character who studied in Altador, and that a "master builder" in Dacardia is related to a "recently unveiled master artist."

How does the game introduce lore to people not already familiar with Neopets lore?

• Worked to match the tone of Neopets and the classic site while still having Tales of Dacardia feel like "its own thing."

When will the game be available?

• Currently available in Hong Kong and Canada.
• Rest of the world in June. (They did not share a specific date within June.)

Questions for Dom

Kevin then brought out Neopets CEO Dom.

You had some things to share?

• Dom shared some updates from Q1 2024.
• TNT plans to continue to share these types of updates on a quarterly basis.
• Dom spoke through almost all of the details shown, but especially touted the 300k+ average monthly users and the doubled efficiency in resolving customer support tickets.
• Dom also highlighted the securement of a master toy licensing deal.

Feedback on previous AMAs.

• Dom acknowledges that many previous answers are vague, such as "we're working on it" without a specific date.
• He notes that the dev team works on a schedule of two-week sprints.
• Known bugs are on a to-do list and are worked through in each sprint. What gets worked on in each two-week sprint is not decided until the start of the sprint; with so many items on the backlog, it's hard to tell when any given item will be able to be addressed.
• Some larger to-do items will require multiple sprints to complete.

Kevin then transitioned to a series of questions directed to Dom. These questions were paraphrased from among the highest voted on a StrawPoll shared in advance of the livestreams.

When will the password reset emails work again? Every day, many people are unable to reset their passwords.

• TNT investigated in March and did find an error.
• Dom believes the issue is corrected and resolved.
• If you are still having issues receiving password reset emails, submit a ticket to support.

We haven't had an update or a single bug fix to the actual Battledome in over 10 years. Are you fixing the Battledome?

• "Yes, definitely."
• The Battledome will be part of the new plot, so want it to be good for that.
• Have already fixed some Battledome items.
• Feature fixes will be worked on alongside the plot. Dom mentioned freezing item glitches, UI bugs, and stealing bugs.

There's a bug with the Grundo Warehouse that makes entering virtual prize codes difficult and confusing. This bug has progressively gotten worse.

• "The bug is included in this [current] sprint."
• Expect to study it in this sprint, and fix it in the next sprint. They don't have a resolution yet.

Can rare item codes or retired items be re-released? It's so discouraging to play and collect when some items are not attainable.

• "We have been trying to do that." It has been controversial for different sets of players, and it's hard to make everyone happy.
• Re-releasing items is one of the levers TNT is using to fight inflation issues.
• Need to balance interests of "collectors," new users, and returning users.

Can you please add CAPTCHAs to Food Club?? How hard can it be?

• "It's not a technical reason why we can't add it." Rather, the issue is cost!
• CAPTCHA's were added to last year's Altador Cup and it cost TNT over $1k per week.
• Exploring cheaper alternatives to test during this year's Altador Cup, which can possibly be added to other areas of the site.

Do you intend to add more websites to the Recommended Sites list? There are fansites that also provide valuable information especially for non-English speakers.

• "Yes, definitely."
• Want to foster a "community-centric culture."
• Accepting applications for new certified fan sites.
• NeoPass also has TNT working more closely with some existing fan sites to bring the ecosystem even tighter.

We can't mention your social media channels [such as Twitter, Discord, etc.] on Neoboards. How is this possible?

• "This is super outdated."
• Based on logic from back in the day that only Neopets sites could be discussed.
• Neopets needs to be accountable for all content on the site, and can't control off-site content.
• Have been looking into industry benchmarks and best practices for how to do this safely (and legally!).
• Even if only a tiny percentage of the userbase are minors, they still need to be considered.

The community regularly encounters issues with support, the core of which seems to be a shortage of staff. Are there plans to increase the size of the support team, or improve the workflow so that the current can respond to tickets thoroughly and appropriately?

• Some improvements have already been made.
• The support team is "one of the top priorities" as its an important gateway for returning users, which TNT marketing is targeting.
• The customer service team has more than doubled to 8 people since last July.
• An experienced customer service manager joined last month and is reviewing processes.

This page was written by Kenny and last updated on February 20, 2025.