Neopets is launching a comeback that it says will start a “new era” for the virtual pet website. The site was launched in 1999 and became one of the most popular and beloved parts of the early internet. Players were able to look after cartoon pets as well as playing games and chatting with other users. Its popularity led it to boast some 25 million users in the 2000s, at a time before the launch of major social networks. Since then it has fallen dramatically, and many parts of the site have broken as technology has moved on. Now the game is under the management of a new leadership team that has promised to “breathe fresh life into Neopia”, the virtual world in which the game’s characters live. “For most of the last decade, the The Neopets Team [TNT] has been under the management of JumpStart Games, which, over time, has struggled to find success for Neopets,” the team wrote in a long blog post. “Beset by ageing site features, a waning user base, and a lack of resources, TNT had to work tirelessly just to barely keep the site afloat. “The resources available to us simply weren’t substantial enough to sustain the level of growth and development that the site needed to keep up with the times, resulting in bugs, unconverted pages, broken games, and a lack of new content. Despite these challenges, TNT pushed onward, guided by an unwavering belief that this iconic brand that has meant so much to so many truly deserved better.” The new version of the site will launch this week, the team said. It wil included updated games: many of the playable parts of the site broke with the demise of Adobe Flash, but the team has committed to updating them and bringing them back to be played. The team also said that they would be introducing new games, including a mobile game called World of Neopets. That is a “social life-simulation game”, the team said, and it will be distinct from the crypto, metaverse and NFT-focus that has come to the site in recent times. Through the 2000s, Neopets was one of the internet’s most popular websites, and in 2005 it was bought by Viacom for $160 million. But in the years that followed it was beset by problems, and was sold again to JumpStart Games in 2014. That era was marked by a range of problems, including technical issues and data breaches that led to people’s passwords being stolen. In recent years, many parts of the site have been left broken. JumpStart Games shut down at the end of June. But a new management team has struck a deal to buy the website and its contents and the new team will be led by Dominic Law, who played the games in the 2000s. Read More Powerful solar flare to disrupt communications, Russians warn ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web Watch: James Cleverly chairs UN meeting on artificial intelligence

Brock Purdy and Russell Wilson led their teams to field goals on their only drives of the game and the San Francisco 49ers beat the Denver Broncos 21-20 on a field goal by rookie Jake Moody on the final play

The NBA Finals are knotted at one game apiece, and while I do have prop plays for tonight’s action, I’m also making a pick on the moneyline.The Nuggets come into this game as slight road favorites, but could they be overvalued against a Miami team that is 6-2 at home in the playoffs?...

Legendary pop singer Cher hired four men to abduct her son, her daughter-in-law has claimed. Marieangela King, the British wife of Cher’s youngest son Elijah Blue Allman, said she and her husband were in a hotel room when the group of strangers burst in. She and Allman had filed for divorce, citing irrevocable differences. According to court documents, King, who is a singer known as Queenie, said they had spent 12 days alone at the hotel in New York, "working out [their] marriage," when the shocking incident occurred. King said in a court filing: “After spending these 12 days together in New York, on November 30, 2022, the night of our wedding anniversary, four people came to our hotel room and removed [my husband] from our room.” “I was told by one of the four men who took him that they were hired by [his] mother,” she continued. The couple were married in 2013 but separated in 2020 and filed for divorce in 2021. King added that, even now, she remains “currently unaware of my husband’s wellbeing or whereabouts. I am very concerned and worried about him”. She also noted: “I understand his family’s efforts to make sure he is well, and I want what is best for my husband.” Allman is Cher’s youngest son, whom she shares with musician Greg Allman. Allman has previously struggled with addiction but is understood to have been sober since 2008. King believes he had been receiving treatment at a healthcare facility but did not know which one or how to contact him. She claimed: “In my husband’s absence I was asked to leave our family home by [his] mother.” “I did so on the belief that my support payments would be timely, and I would be able to afford housing,” she said. indy100 has contacted Cher’s represenatives for comment. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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