Winter Sidebar...

[Illyria]

i havent read the whole thread so not sure if it came up but i have an active christmas pet and collected all but did NOT get the sidebar maybe its like the halloween one? for one minute?

[SierraRaven]

Well it's not having something named 'Christmas' in your inventory. I went this morning with a Merry Christmas Card, but no avatar.

We're not trying for an avatar, we're trying for a sidebar that happens on .. was it the last day of the advent calendar or christmas? I think it was the latter... dunno.

My mistake -- I meant to say that I didn't receive the sidebar by having something named 'Christmas' in my inventory. The Winter Sidebar is available to everyone on Christmas day if I recall correctly. But people are able to unlock it all throughout Advent. We just don't know. I strongly suspect it's a random event.

[silver_sword]

they have clarified in the editorial that the sidebar is NOT random

[Daze]

Well it's not having something named 'Christmas' in your inventory. I went this morning with a Merry Christmas Card, but no avatar.

We're not trying for an avatar, we're trying for a sidebar that happens on .. was it the last day of the advent calendar or christmas? I think it was the latter... dunno.

My mistake -- I meant to say that I didn't receive the sidebar by having something named 'Christmas' in my inventory. The Winter Sidebar is available to everyone on Christmas day if I recall correctly. But people are able to unlock it all throughout Advent. We just don't know. I strongly suspect it's a random event.

The sidebar is not a Random Event. This is from the Editorial (Issue 228):

I know December is long gone but, how come on Decemember 31, 2005 only some people got the winter sidebar from the Advent Calendar? I thought everyone was supposed to get the same prizes from the Advent Calendar. :\ ~ starfire1991

Actually, random prizes are ocassionally given out via the Advent Calendar. This is done just to spice things up a bit and give a few lucky people an extra prize we wouldn't be able to give out otherwise.

That being said, this was not the case here. Just like most of the other sidebars, there were certain requirements that had to be met in order to obtain the Winter Sidebar. If you met these requirements, you got it on the final day of the Advent Calendar. We can't tell you what those requirements were, of course, but it was certainly not a random giveaway. We'll give you a little hint however... the same requirements will need to be met next year, and the sidebar will again be given out on the final day of the Advent Calendar. You've got 10 months to figure it out!

It is this bit I find interesting:

We'll give you a little hint however... the same requirements will need to be met next year, and the sidebar will again be given out on the final day of the Advent Calendar. You've got 10 months to figure it out!

To me this says that the requirements have to be met during December before you get the sidebar on the 31st.

This means that it isn't what you do on the 31st but what you do before it.

[Mongrel]

It could mean during December, or it could mean you've accomplished something specific at any point in time before you collect at the Advent Calendar on December 31st. It sounds rather ambiguous to me.

[Gumdrops]

That wasn't even really a hint imo.

I lurve that sidebar and I really want to unlock it this year. I wish somebody had some kind of clue about the requirements.

[Sandmaster]

That wasn't even really a hint imo.

I lurve that sidebar and I really want to unlock it this year. I wish somebody had some kind of clue about the requirements.

Hint or not at least they tell u it's not a random event. With everyone trying to figure it out this year maybe someone will solve it and you'll be able to get it. Worst case scenario it'll be figured out for next year's advent calendar.

[ggagahc]

That wasn't even really a hint imo.

I lurve that sidebar and I really want to unlock it this year. I wish somebody had some kind of clue about the requirements.

Hint or not at least they tell u it's not a random event. With everyone trying to figure it out this year maybe someone will solve it and you'll be able to get it. Worst case scenario it'll be figured out for next year's advent calendar.

WELL, it's been a long time since then and now...and still no one has any idea how to get this elusive Winter Sidebar. I'd say we're in a predicament here. =D

[Sylence]

it's going to be crazy the last day, first person who gets it will list everything they did or had and then the next will and so on so then we'll have a one in a trillion chance of figuring it out.

[mercurius]

My mom got the sidebar and all she can tell me is she put all of her advent items in the safety deposit box and she had bought a couple extra to sell in her shop. She loves restocking advent items. Other than that, I can tell you she plays a lot of games. Maybe it's playing a certain game at christmas?

[miz sparrow]

The Premium one can only be obtained if you pay for Premium and manage to refer not one or two, but five people and convince them to pay once you do.

Well, if you want to use the regular-Neopets-style sidebar/fancy space faerie thing down the left side, then that's true, but in Premium you can use the Premium-style sidebar (across the top) in your own color scheme and I have been rolling merrily along with a BLUE premium sidebar ever since I got Premium. I lurve it.

Anyhow, I am baffled at how MAD people are that the sidebars are hard to get. And frankly, I'm a little offended at the tone a lot of folks are taking, saying it is "ridiculous" how hard it is to get them, or using other scornful language.

Are you the same group of people that are MAD that battle dung costs multimillion neopoints and that you can only get Fyora dolls in the hidden tower? Some things are more special because they are rare, expensive, or just simply take a lot of work to get.

Besides that, TNT didn't have to make fancy sidebars at all -- but they did. I wish people would appreciate the fact that you CAN get them, rather than griping about the effort it takes to do so, or about random ones.

It's similar to you going to work and finding out that your boss will give out a $50 bill to everyone who shows up to work at midnight on the 4th of july and sings the national anthem. If you wanted that $50 bad enough, you'd show up. If you were going on vacation that day and couldn't be there, then you have to make an evaluation-- is your family vacation more important, or is that $50 more important? If you choose to go on vacation, then you have shown your priorities.

Or, if the boss said, if you do a specific mystery task related to a certain room in your office (assume he's not just making it up - he wrote it down and put in his vault in case you accuse him of not giving it to you), he'll give you a $50 bill at the end of that month. It might be walking in there and sorting the files in the inbox that day; it might be walking in with khakis on; it might be cleaning the white board; it might just be poking your head in the door. It might be an hour of work or crazy easy. How much of your time do you devote to figuring it out? What is a $50 bill worth to you? If you try 100 things varying from 1 second to 2 hours of work per thing, and at the end of the month you don't get it but someone who only tried 5 things does get it, and they forgot which things they did -- will you try again next month, or have you already spent more time on it than $50 is worth?

Do you complain about the way your boss has chosen to give away free $50 to people? They are giving away easy money, can't complain about that. You had an equal chance with anyone to get a $50 and decided it wasn't worth the effort, can't complain about that either. If you DO put in 300 hours of work trying things out, will you then complain that that much time and effort is worth more than $50? Apparently not, because you "paid" that much work knowing that all you were buying was a $50 bill... so to you, a $50 bill is worth that much. (goes along with the phrase that items are worth whatever you can get someone to pay for them)

In another vein, what about the battle dung? Is it worth it to you, playing every game 3 times a day, saving your neopoints for a year and not buying anything cool and letting your pets eat bagguses and omelettes, just to have that battle dung? To some, it is. To some, it's not.

So, is a sidebar worth getting up in the middle of the night (halloween)?
Is it worth trying bunches of things, year after year, knowing that you still might not get it right for the christmas sidebar?
What about a random one? How many years will you repeat that cost, paying in hours and mouse clicks, until you luck out and get the sidebar?

The sidebar is available, the rules are out there to follow or puzzle out. You make the choice whether it's that valuable to you. If you decide it isn't, then don't blame anyone but yourself!

[Wind]

It's not the fact that it's a hard requirement that annoys me. I was one of the crazy ones to wake up in the middle of the night to get the Halloween sidebar, or to spend 150k for a Mysterious Valentine, or to pay for avatar items, and I accept the fact that I'll never met some of the requirements for the avatars. But this one is different, since we might not get it even if we try.
It would almost be better if it was random, since I imagine that people are trying to do multiple things to figure out with the requirements, and we have only 1 day to get it. I'm not asking TNT to give away the solution, but wouldn't a simple hint do? From what we know it could be something as easy as visiting a single page during december to having less than 300 NPs out and feed an omelette to your pet while having exactly 12 neofriends.
Yes, we might have figured out in 12 years, or maybe by then most of us will have randomly got the sidebar and we won't care any more.
It's not a matter of cost or effort this time, it's a matter of luck, so you can't compare this sidebar to the others. It's more like the Cellblock avatar. Or the Altador water plant. And I still get mad at the thought that I don't know how I finished that part.

[Sandmaster]

WELL, it's been a long time since then and now...and still no one has any idea how to get this elusive Winter Sidebar. I'd say we're in a predicament here. =D

Not really a predicament... That editorial comment came out in February of this year. Yes it's been twelve months since the last advent calendar and everyone has had plenty of time to brainstorm. Even then we couldn't test out any theories until this month according to the response. If you follow Daze's logic we won't even know if what we tried is correct until the last day of this month. Talk about frustrating...

What would be really frustrating is if the sidebar is available this year and they released a new random prize. Say another avatar or something silly for your user lookup. Imagine how many people that would drive mad finding out that there was an additional prize on top of the sidebar they were seeking.

[Cranberry]

Heh. I'm not annoyed by things that are expensive or difficult to obtain, like excellent BD weapons or hard game avatars. I've worked very hard for my Hidden Tower weapons (battle dung sucks, btw ) and my avatars. I'm not even annoyed by avatars like Cellblock or Chef Bonju that no one has figured out, because at least we can (presumably) try any time we like to solve those.

I am, however, annoyed by "puzzles" where we only get one shot per year at figuring them out. The winter sidebar is obtainable on the last day of advent, and you get it when you collect your prize. We can puzzle over it for a full year, put in a lot of work researching what people who got it last year did, come up with a working theory... and we get one shot per year to test that out. That, yes, is completely ridiculous to me. It should at least be available any day of advent. I would be less annoyed if we had a full month per year to test it out.

Also, sidebars aren't like avatars. You can't show them off, and no one knows for sure which ones you have. Sure, you get a little tally in your userlookup of how many you have, but who really cares about that? Sidebars are for each person's individual enjoyment only, so I don't think they should be insanely hard to get. It's not like you're proving your worth in order to earn some status symbol like you are with a hard-to-get av, is what I'm saying. You're just making your own browsing experience more enjoyable.

Anyway. I don't like being lectured about whether or not I should be annoyed. It annoys me.

[Ange]

I'm just reminded of the old Bloom Country comic (sorry, I'm an 80s kid) about "offensensitivity," lol.

Anyways. Maybe to get the sidebar we need to be nicer to TNT or stop complaining Just kidding.