I went through last night and bought all double tickets. I do it all the time I know to let the pages load, I did everything just right. But all my accounts just say 75 tickets instead of 150 tickets. I spent a bunch of HPB to do the doubles, I bought them right out the cash shop...can someone check on this for me? Thanks :) 

Amen to this response!

No negative words for the admins that work their butt off for the game, but I too remember the days of being a mod and not being paid for it. Pretty sure the same timeframe as nyt.

there has been quite a few questionable things happening as of late and to have certain "players" talking down at others or insinuating they don't read is also bs.

I've been doing a LOT of thinking lately and trying to keep myself playing this game has gotten harder and harder to do. And spending money towards keeping things going really isn't setting right with me. Don't get me wrong I LOVE hp and all the friends I've made but things are really turning for the worst as of late. I just don't know if there is any turning back from it.

Amen 🙏🏻 we love you Nyt. 💜

I’ve held my silence for the past few days, watching what was originally a minor issue snowball into something much bigger than it needed to be. To be honest, I’m both stunned and deeply disappointed by what I’ve seen. It’s disheartening to watch some players openly call others “stupid” and publicly insult them over what are, at the end of the day, minor mistakes. This isn’t just frustrating — it’s unacceptable, and I’m truly struggling to come to terms with what’s happening in this community lately.

I’ve made some great friends here, and I’ve developed strong relationships with players from all around the world. That’s something I hold dear, and it’s part of what made this game so special. However, I can no longer bring myself to support a game that doesn’t actively support its players and allows this kind of toxic behavior to go unchecked. It’s beyond disappointing that, instead of fostering an environment where people can learn from their mistakes, the game’s systems allow players to be belittled and insulted for something as simple as making a mistake.

And it’s not just the community; the game itself is failing its players in some pretty obvious ways. One glaring issue is the fact that accounts with 00-00-0000 are still allowed to purchase double tickets through the cash store. This creates a frustrating situation where players are essentially encouraged to spend more money when they might not even realize the tickets they are planning on doubling may not be eligible — all because the system doesn’t have safeguards in place to prevent it.

I’ve spoken about this before, but I’ll say it again: I firmly believe the cash store should not allow the purchase of tickets if a player has already bought them from the regular store. I get that coding for this kind of change is no small task, but it’s hard to ignore that the lack of attention to this issue is just causing more problems. Last year, I experienced this very issue, so this year I made sure to purchase tickets only after the system clearly shows they’ve expired. But even that feels like an unnecessary workaround — one that shouldn’t be necessary if the game just functioned the way it should.

Now, after all this, I’m really starting to question whether I want to continue investing my time and money into this game. The truth is, I’m struggling to bring myself online to play. What was once something I truly enjoyed has become a source of frustration. Every time I log in, it feels like I’m just dealing with more issues — both from the community and the game itself. I find myself wondering if it’s really worth the amount of money I’m spending every year to continue dealing with these problems.

I’m not the type of person to jump ship easily, but I have to be honest with myself: if this trend continues, I’m not sure I can keep pouring my time and money into something that feels so mismanaged and toxic. I care about this game, but I’m at a breaking point, and I need to seriously evaluate whether this is still a place I want to be.

Thank you for reading my thoughts. I know I’m not the only one feeling this way, and I hope some changes are made soon for the sake of the community and the game itself.

Iri, out.

Ok. I think there is still a lot of confusion around double tickets (and maybe tickets in general?) based on what I am seeing both here and around HP overall, so I felt it best I do an in-depth explanation in hopes that clears up any confusion.

First, however, I want to apologize for being short and blunt in previous replies to this thread. When you make a news post specifically with the goal of preventing being flooded with messages about the issue, only to get what feels like double the amount of previous years, you reach a point where you're very much over it. We make a post about it every year, and there are always still a few people who don't let the pages all load, or who don't wait for their previous month's tickets to expire before trying to double, however this year was like nothing else. Not sure why this year was that much worse, but it has been. So for that I apologize.

Now on to the explanation.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not a glitch that tickets don't expire on the same date every month that you bought them on. It has been coded this way since the creation of the game back in 2009. Tickets were a "thing" the day the game opened. The code for them has not changed at any point since then, minus it going from 30 tickets when the site opened to 50 tickets in June 2011 to 75 per set, which happened back in 2019. We as a staff have also been reminding people yearly about the February-March transition for tickets as far back as 2011 apparently:

So this is by far not a newer thing, nor a glitch. 

Buying tickets from the Store

When you buy a set of tickets from the store, it tells the game to note the current date in the htickets_purchased column for your account's row in the player table (or dtickets_purchased if it's dog tickets obviously). The nightly cron triggers the resetting of your tickets pass date to 0000-00-00 (amongst doing other things like eating expiring upgrades, eating a day of feed off animals, expiring vet/farrier/groom's 2 weeks, etc). The code looks like this:

https://prnt.sc/oZoiIYRX5bG7  [I originally had the code typed out here, but HP didn't like it and threw me a Forbidden error]

For those who can't read code, it basically is saying this:

UPDATE the players table. Set the htickets_purchased cell to 0000-00-00 WHERE the date for htickets_purchased is greater than 30 days old AND the htickets_purchased isn't already 0000-00-00.

I'm hoping that makes sense....

By the way, when I say 0000-00-00 on your page, this is what I mean:

When the cron runs, it goes through and checks every account's row in the player table on the entire game to see if it fits the above requirement of the date being older than 30 days and not already 0000-00-00. If it fits that criteria, it changes the date to 0000-00-00.

Making sense of February

February has 28 days to it (except leap years that have 29). That means every year, whatever date in February you buy your tickets, you can know they won't expire until 2 days later in March, because it needs to account for that 30 days. So if you bought your tickets on February 1st, instead of March 1st, it would be March 3rd. 

It works the same on months that are 31 days: January, March, May, July, August, October, December. Because those months have 31 days, your tickets will expire one date earlier. Example: March 14th bought would expire April 13th.

That's literally how it's always been since HP was created back in 2009. It follows the calendar. We can't control the calendar, which means every year in March we will have this happen. 

That's for regular tickets bought from the store...now on to double sets.

Buying Double Tickets from the Cash Shop

Double sets were introduced with the addition of the Cash Shop in 2014. It was coded for Sam by Gabby (while the original HP was coded by Amanda/Paradigm Programming, as you can see in the footer of every HP page!). She coded it so that the (newly created) column that notes when you bought your double tickets pass adds 1 month to the current day's date and records that date, not the current day's. So if I bought a double pass of tickets today, it would record May 5th as the date in that column for my account. Why did she do it differently than what was already in place for a regular set? I have no idea, you'd have to ask her.

Why then, if your tickets haven't expired to 0000-00-00 on your page, does it still sometimes let you buy a double tickets pass from the Cash Shop only for it to only give you 75? 

Once you go buy a set of tickets from the store and sell them, if you didn't buy a double tickets pass the previous month, it will let you buy a double tickets pass from the cash shop even if your store tickets license hasn't expired. It gives you a second (so double) set of 75. You just aren't getting both the regular set and the doubled set at once as you would if you bought a double tickets pass and your dates were 0000-00-00. It's literally adding 75 to the 0 you have left, which is why it shows as 75.

Should the two codes work together better? Yes. Do I wish they did? Obviously. But at this time they don't, and they never have. This is why as I said in that January news post, if you want to buy a double set of 150 tickets, you need to make sure the dates on your page say 0000-00-00, just like you would any other month of the year. To be completely honest, I'm confused as to why everyone seems to fixate on not knowing about the 30 days, because a quick glance around the same date each month would tell you if it was time yet, and if it hadn't reset, you'd just need to check again the next day? If someone would please politely help me understand why there is this much of a firestorm over a day or two difference and not knowing about the 30, I'd appreciate it, because I truly don't understand. It's also listed on the help pages in the area about tickets, and has been for several years now I believe. 

I've also noticed(and I double tickets every month) even when ur page says 00-00-0000, u still have to wait for the following day for the cash shop.. on the months u can get it early that is.

Insom that is correct, i had that happened to.  When my page said 0000-00-00 i still had to wait until the next day to buy the double set. which is whatever, but Blitz your saying that once it zero outs the date we are allowed to buy double in the cash shop?

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone. Robin Williams