Defenders of Mirror World HQ

Neopets - Defenders of Neopia Lobby

Defenders of Mirror World HQ

Wondering what happened behind the scenes of the 2006 Defenders of Mirror World Plot? Well, here are some random facts about really went on while everyone was waiting and working...

Red-herrings

This year we were able to work a couple major red-herrings into the plot. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a red-herring is a clue or piece of information that's either meaningless or is intended to distract you from achieving your main objective - in this case, solving the plot.

MISSION NINE - You were never supposed to give Lord Darigan the Orb of Ambition, which is why the Island Mystic said very early on in the plot, "Those who fail to learn from the past are DOOMED to repeat it!" (Fortune #7). Because so many users were trying to solve the puzzle before missions were officially released, we intentionally uploaded the Darigan red-herring two hours before the rest of the final mission was released. Anyone who brought the Orb of Ambition to the Darigan Citadel and assumed Darigan was their new advisor was subsequently told to go to the Lost Desert and defeat Razul. The inhabitants there were even tricked into believing that Razul was attacking, but in fact, he never was.
MISSION FOUR - On the Mirror World "Feed Florg" page, various Petpets are listed that Florg will eat. However, what isn't listed on the Mirror World page that IS listed on the real "Feed Florg" page is that Florg hates Slorgs. Every petpet listed on the Mirror "Feed Florg" page is available somewhere on the site, so users were led to believe that they should locate on those petpets. In reality, they should have been looking for the two Slorgs on the Mirror "Attack of the Slorgs" page.

Easter Eggs

"Easter Eggs" are little features or surprises hidden in games by the person or people that created them. Every now and then, the Neopets Hive likes to surprise its visitors with a few Easter Eggs of their own. Included in this year's plot were:

If you fed Florg the Mutant Niptor he just regurgitated, Starbladez (prince_raptor's Neopet) would appear and attack Florg.
If you tried to return the Pile of Soot you got from the Secret Lab Ray to Defenders HQ or the Archivist, Starbladez would appear again very angry.
If you used the "angrykass" passcode on Lord Darigan after giving Darigan the Orb of Ambition, Kass would lose.
One of the Mortog's in Meridell is named "JUDGEHOG." This is a joke directed towards all the users who got mad at us for spelling "Judge Hog" wrong at the beginning of the plot. We accidentally spelled his name "Judge Hogg."

Ilere of the Woods

Random Facts

There were a great many changes made to the plot for one reason or another. Sometimes changes were made out of necessity, other times things were planned but just couldn't be fit into the plot properly. Here are some random facts related to this year's plot:

Morguss was going to be a major villain implicated in the Plushie Curse that befell Neopia. All of the characters in the Haunted Woods, as well as those in Altador and the Lost Desert were going to suffer a similar fate, but because this would require extensive editing, it was never done.
Because Faeries were used so heavily in previous Hive plots, they were majorly excluded from this one. In fact, Ilere of the Woods was going to be the villain for any Haunted Woods based mission we assigned.
Among the characters we decided not to use for villains were: Dr. Sloth, Ilere of the Woods, Werelupes, Sophie the Swamp Witch, Razul, the Spirit of the Ruins, the Bringer of Night, and Ramtor or Zombom from Neoquest.
When the Darigan Citadel and the Haunted Woods made it to the finals of the Altador Cup, we were actually counting on the Haunted Woods to win so that we could have a viable Darigan/Kass related story for this year's plot.
Mirror Kass was going to be the villain for this year's plot, but since everyone was so certain that he would be (and because prince_raptor is such a big fan of his), Darigan was made the villain instead.
The original Haunted Woods mission required participants to locate and defeat a series of werelupes. This idea was later nixed since it too closely resembled the Mummy Mission in the Lost Desert.
Neither Kiko Lake, Jelly World, nor Roo Island were used in this year's plot. In fact, Kiko Lake has NEVER been used during a Neopets Hive contest.
The idea for "Defenders of Mirror World" as this year's theme was chosen at the very last minute. The plot was originally going to be titled "Mirror World Trinity" or "Mirror World III."
The original ending for this plot was going to involve defeating Lord Darigan without ever finding Judge Hogg. This was changed at the last minute once we realized how short the last mission would be without it. Had we ended the plot this way, the first mission for the "Defenders of Mirror World - The Series" would have been to find the Judge Hogg Plushie, defeat Morguss, and obtain a cure.
Brightvale was originally supposed to suffer from the Taint, as was Meridell. Unfortunately, while we were uploading Training Mission Two, we realized that a "Tainted Brightvale" TCG card was never created! Plus, tainting a location takes a lot of time and recoding, so it ended up being a lot easier just to leave them both as they were.
The end of the plot was *supposed* to revolve around the Haunted Woods TCG expansion set, but we didn't end up having enough time, images, or material to make that work. Maybe next year, folks :)
The Lenny Curator, from the Haunted Woods TCG Expansion Set, was going to be everyone's third advisor for the Haunted Woods/Darigan-based missions, but we didn't end up using him. We were also planning on using the Lenny Conundrum Lenny.
King Hagan was going to be the advisor for the Brightvale/Meridell/Darigan Citadel missions, but we never ended up using him.
We were planning on using animation sequences from the Invasion of Meridell plot during this plot, but we couldn't work them in.
The Scary Abandoned Plushie in the Haunted Woods was secretly added to the map just before that world was taken over by Darigan's forces. We were hoping to use it somehow, but ended up keeping it as a small distraction.
At the very beginning of the plot, we spelled the Defenders' Leader's name wrong by adding an extra "g". This caused a great deal of chaos, especially since is appeared with a single "g" in certain instances, but appeared with two g's in others. From this point on, the Mirror World DoMW leader is known as Judge Hogg, whereas his Neopian counterpart is "Judge Hog." Sorry to everyone who hated this name change, but it'd take too much work now to change it.
Originally, we were going to work two extra scarabs into the plot - a Dung Scarab and a Golden Scarab. We also decided against using the Darkness Scarab at first, but then added it once we realized that some users could use it to navigate the Temple of 1,000 Tombs (which does not, in fact, have 1,000 Tombs).
We never figured out a way to include the Cyodrake's Gaze in the plot but wanted to.
No users were disqualified from this plot (thankfully)!
This contest had an estimated 200 participants, but less than 90 completed the plot in time.
Only three users have beaten all three Mirror World Mysteries before final submissions were ended - megneo666, dodobutt222, and speedyweedy298. Nobody has made the high scores table for all three Easter Negg Hunts, however.
This plot lasted longer than any other Neopets Hive-run contest. It officially started on July 7th and officially ended on August 22nd.
This is the first Neopets Hive contest without trophies or Neopoint rewards. The 2006 Easter Negg Hunt did give out trophies, but because of the rules of Neopets.com, it was the first contest we've hosted that couldn't give out Neopoint prizes to its participants.
There were at least four major errors during this contest. Three involved spelling errors - Maraquan Cream Soup was accidentally spelled Maraquan CREME Soup, Judge Hog was spelled Judge HOGG, and Scrolls were spelled SCOLLS. The fourth error happened when the Temple of 1,000 Tombs was released. For some reason, none of the pages or links involved in the direct path to the Statue of Nuria uploaded correctly, which led to some VERY unhappy participants for about a half hour into the mission.