Things allowed in guilds...?

[pinkslorg]

I'm kinda out of the loop when it comes to guilds, and for lack of finding a better forum for this, I'm going to post this here. What all is allowed in a guild? I know that contests and giveaways aren't allowed, but what is? And the ever-popular question: About all the guilds I've seen have giveaways, etc, so why haven't they been frozen or the word 'contest' or 'giveaway' blocked in guilds like other words are blocked on the Neoboards? (one would think this would be a good counter-measure against contests, etc) I was puzzled over this, so any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I guess no one knows anything. This is the only board where no one posted.

[Axe]

Yeah, I agree, originally they were never allowed, but people did it anyway. Now TNT is locking down on them. I know that giveaways, contests, and raffles aren't allowed. But competitions are, according to the Neopets Magazine, as long as you don't give away a prize.

[Adam loves Hilary Duff]

Yeah, I agree, originally they were never allowed, but people did it anyway. Now TNT is locking down on them. I know that giveaways, contests, and raffles aren't allowed. But competitions are, according to the Neopets Magazine, as long as you don't give away a prize.

You can give an item but do not promise it in the competition.
Are newbie packs allowed?

[everconfused]

As far as I know no contests or giveaways - including newbie packs, birthday packs, etc. - that's what our guild leader was told in repeated questions to Support.

The whole competition thing - as long as you don't say anyone will get anything, but if you want to after it's over send someone something kinda gets me. Why? Because Support told our guild leader that those weren't allowed. Now they are? Very confusing.

Alot of guilds have been deleted recently ... kind of a "raid" on guilds having contests, probably especially the donate so much and get (item name) here if you've donated the most. 9 times out of 10 those are scams. I saw someone earlier tonight on the help board who'd gotten a warning for having a guild donation shop - they hadn't changed their shop description though they had already deleted their own guild.

Tread lightly is all I can say.

[Full Metal Alchemist]

Pretty soon we won't be able to even donate stuff to the money tree.

[Unsweetened]

Pretty soon we won't be able to even donate stuff to the money tree.

Lol....I can't even imagine how bad things would be if it got that far...

[pinkslorg]

Ok, thanks, ya'll. I really appreciate it!

[xjox]

Actually I can see a neopets where players are forbidden from communicating with each other in 'any' way......sounds crazy now but that is where they are heading, you have to watch what you say via message boards and neomail. Whatever you do don't give items to anyone cos you'll get frozen for having multiple accounts. Don't join guilds cos they're bound to get frozen for some reason or other and then you will be put under the spotlight cos you posted a message about your best friends, uncles, 2nd cousin removed who apparently doesnt like neopets. Definately don't put any expensive items on display in your shop or trades cos you will get reported for 'being a meanie' for not giving it to that 3 week old account who asked you oh so nicely for it.

ooops boy am i in a bad mood today!:)

[Urthdigger]

Actually I can see a neopets where players are forbidden from communicating with each other in 'any' way......sounds crazy now but that is where they are heading, you have to watch what you say via message boards and neomail. Whatever you do don't give items to anyone cos you'll get frozen for having multiple accounts. Don't join guilds cos they're bound to get frozen for some reason or other and then you will be put under the spotlight cos you posted a message about your best friends, uncles, 2nd cousin removed who apparently doesnt like neopets. Definately don't put any expensive items on display in your shop or trades cos you will get reported for 'being a meanie' for not giving it to that 3 week old account who asked you oh so nicely for it.

ooops boy am i in a bad mood today!:)

Do not use neomail, you will tick someone off, get reported, and you will get frozen.

Do not use the chat boards, see above.

Do not use the Battledome, see above.

Do not play games, you will get good, achieve a decent score, and will be frozen for cheating.

Do not buy from shops. You will be reported for having an autobuyer, and frozen.

Do not explore the site. You will get a random event, they will think you are cheating, and you will be frozen.

Do not do nothing, they will freeze you for no reason.

Thank you and have a nice day on Neopets.

(Note: The above messages are to be taken with a grain of salt)

[Erin]

(Note: The above messages are to be taken with a grain of salt)

Then please take my reply with a grain of salt as well.

You know, I've been playing Neopets pretty regularly for over 3 years now, without any sort of "unfair" freezing incident. I have several friends who can claim the same thing (those who HAVE been frozen admit their wrongdoings and have been playing according to the written rules ever since, without incident). I just have a hard time taking all these "I just got frozen for no reason at all!" claims seriously. =\ *shrug*

This is not to say I haven't had my share of trouble on Neo; I've lost quite a few valuable items and np to glitches, so I do know that TNT definitely has a few problems. But getting frozen for virtually no reason at all? Kinda hard for me to swallow...

[Mokona]

(Note: The above messages are to be taken with a grain of salt)

Then please take my reply with a grain of salt as well.

You know, I've been playing Neopets pretty regularly for over 3 years now, without any sort of "unfair" freezing incident. I have several friends who can claim the same thing (those who HAVE been frozen admit their wrongdoings and have been playing according to the written rules ever since, without incident). I just have a hard time taking all these "I just got frozen for no reason at all!" claims seriously. =\ *shrug*

This is not to say I haven't had my share of trouble on Neo; I've lost quite a few valuable items and np to glitches, so I do know that TNT definitely has a few problems. But getting frozen for virtually no reason at all? Kinda hard for me to swallow...

Erin, you took the words right out of my mouth! I've been playing for 2 years and I personally have never been frozen or lost items from glitches.... (am I jinxing this? I hope not) So TNT does things with a reason... Most of the time I'd like to think so yeah. I 've been in 2 guilds (guildless right now) and both of them had giveaways.... Now I know it's illegal so shush!

[SierraRaven]

I hate to disagree, but there are a number of us who have been frozen in the past without doing anything wrong. I lost a 2-year-old account for "cheating at flash games" in March 2003. I never was able to get a personal reply from TNT's support staff as to the specifics. And to this day I have absolutely no clue as to why they thought I had cheated. I gave up trying to get an answer after a month or so, and then created a new account.

Even Adam/Borovan admits that this has happened in the past. According to http://www.pinkpt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7562&start=45:

I will make sure that your questions are answered however, and if people are getting frozen for the wrong reasons (which has happened in the past) I shall make sure that is taken care of.

I'm glad neither of you have had to go thru this frustrating experience, and hopefully you never will.

[maruka]

I have my doubts too, but that was before i was frozen. I was restocking alot during the holidays on a fast comp and connection and they suspected me for using autobuyer. I did not know what hit me then. Being the little hermit i was, i have no communications with anyone on the boards or chat forums. I have to browse alot of places to ask what autobuyer means. Takes me a month before i calmed down, gather evidence and organised.

Goes to show they make errors too.
"To err is human", there's nothing such as a perfect system.
To their credit, my account was restored after i sent an email. However, i stopped restocking that often after that episode.

Last edited by maruka on Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Lillie]

Alot of guilds have been deleted recently ... kind of a "raid" on guilds having contests

Could you provide any examples of deleted guilds? I've been going through the guild pages and still see many huge guilds running contests, raffles and so on. The noticeboard also advertises guilds that offer contests, MOTMs, etc, etc, etc. I'm actually pretty surprised that the noticeboard has those advertisements if TNT means to crack down on contests and such.

It's a real pity that the guilds that don't scam through contests, lotteries and giveaways are affected as well. It seems that the most successful guilds have to provide free items of some sort or another and this just isn't going to happen anymore if TNT works away at this. I have to admit that I really love taking part in contests - or I did when I played Neopets - even if I didn't win, or I enjoyed organising contests. To be fair, the Terms and Conditions do state that any form of contest or raffle with a prize is not allowed. Then again, many other points on the Terms and Conditions (for example, the offer of Neopoints, Neopets items or any other Neopets related thing for something off of Neopets, or dating on Neopets) are constantly being broken and not much is done about that.

Personally, I wish that they would concentrate their energies on cleaning up the chat rooms, or answering emails in regard to unfairly frozen accounts instead of freezing more accounts that are related to contests and such things. It's a pretty biased point of view, but from what I've seen, most guilds' contests actually appear to be legitimite (non-scammy). The point I really cannot understand is why free - free - giveaways are not allowed. A scam would require the innocent player to do something or give something, but a giveaway doesn't require the player to do anything. That's why I am blank on that point and don't see why they aren't allowed.

As far as I can gather, you can have games with no prizes on offer where people enter because they want to do something. You get to post messages and chat to each other on the message board, and anything else you can think of that doesn't require members giving or receiving anything in terms of Neopoints or Neoitems. This is left up to the creativity of the poor guild leader, but really, a guild is rarely ever fun unless there's a contest of sorts.

Last edited by Lillie on Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Twisted Sanity]

The point I really cannot understand is why free - free - giveaways are not allowed. A scam would require the innocent player to do something or give something, but a giveaway doesn't require the player to do anything. That's why I am blank on that point and don't see why they aren't allowed.

I think I can see the reason why they banned free giveaways. Remember that incident a couple of months ago when thousands of players lost their accounts to that 'forgot your password' glitch? A lot of the people that took advantage of this seemed to enjoy casuing the owner of the account misery, simply by giving their items to someone else, or to the money tree.

Sometimes when a person is scammed, the scammer might not want their items, pets or whatever. They might just be doing it for the thrills. And so, the scammer holds a 'giveaway', no strings attached, but using the scammed account.

That might be a reason why giveaways were banned. I can't think of any other reasons why at least.