Neopets. Virtual pet site addiction.

according to the news, the daily dare is starting on the 11th... so that means I need to practice again.

And I doubt this will get many posts... XD -wobbles-

I used to have an account, ages ago. I never found it particular addictive, though.

Gah do they still have that cash mall?

I remember that site when it wasn't assimilated into Viacom.

Besides the inflation is horrible.

I also used to play this, back when I was like 12.

yeah, they still have the cash mall. =/

It has some surprisingly interesting stuff from back in the day when it wasn't overtaken by the Periphery Demographic

I used to play it. Now I only pop on to keep in contact with that one person who I don't have on AIM or MSM.

Sometimes if I'm really bored I'll go to the roleplay forum. But it's a pretty crappy forum.

You know, it never really occurred to me that the site would still exist now. I think it's been about eight years since I quit playing it.

I remember that I created a poem for the writing corner thing, and some vanity publisher snatched it up and put it in some audio anthology of poems which they tried to sell to me. I didn't buy it, but I got some perverse gratification knowing that everyone who did was forced to listen to mine.

It was also the site that got me into online roleplaying (something I used to do a lot, now, not so much) despite the fact that the standards for R Ping there were absolutely awful. You had to put a *Literate* mark next to any RP if you wanted to raise the admission bar filter out those who cannot communicate with actual words.

I remember participating in one labeled *Highly Literate,* only to give up in disgust when I saw that the participants, while capable of crafting characters with interesting pasts and coherent personalities, were not up to the level of interacting with the other participants. Everyone was so wrapped their own story that they couldn't bring them to intersect with anyone else's.

I don't spend a whole lot of time on Neo anymore— just to feed my pets, and to chat on a couple of threads. It's also where I got my start in forums and such, and where most of my character ideas have come from (my pets— characters that I still need to develop, actually). The site has admittedly gone downhill in recent years; I blame Viacom.

You know, it never really occurred to me that the site would still exist now. I think it's been about eight years since I quit playing it.

I remember that I created a poem for the writing corner thing, and some vanity publisher snatched it up and put it in some audio anthology of poems which they tried to sell to me. I didn't buy it, but I got some perverse gratification knowing that everyone who did was forced to listen to mine.

I think it was a girl, that STOLE a bunch of stories from Neo, and tried to sell them as a BOOK on amazon.

She got sued big time.

I remember when Lupe and Akrisa became the new pets.

Viacom ruins everything.

edited 5th Feb '10 7:21:05 PM by PippingFool

They do own Nickelodeon your know.

Avatar: The Last Airbender aired on that channel you know.

I used to frequent this site quite a bit, back when I had no real friends so I filled the void with virtual pets... XD

It was fun, but the more it went on, I feel like it became more kid-friendly and something about it just butchered all the fun.

But, fun fact: My oldest role-playing character, Eloanneo, (as well as one of my Guild Wars characters) shares her name with my Peophin, my first neopet. My husband always rages at this name because to him it sounds like I garbled some random letters together. And considering that it was something the neopets name generator spat out at me after I put in some stuff, it is pretty much true.

I quite Neopets a few years ago (and I quit another time before that). This was before they had the cash mall but after they started really ramping up the merchandising and plastering ads everywhere.

I have a handful of good memories of the place, but overall, the moderation was just too much and the merchandising was far too agressive.

edited 5th Feb '10 8:52:03 PM by Miijhal

Wow, this was... Forever ago. I think the last time I logged in was a year or two ago. All I know is that I completely skipped the phase where cash items were introduced.

I think I started sometime in 2003 or 2004, and was shortly drawn into a war. I think it was the Terror Mountain one. That war and the Maraquan war about a year or two later were the only ones that I participated in, although I did participate in the Lost Desert and the somewhat more recent Virtupets Station redesign (or whatever that sattelite was called) plots/mini-wars.

(Man, the Lost Desert plot was tough. I regret temporarily quitting Neo about 3/4ths of the way through the plot. I am now sure that if I finished the next step, I would have earned enough plot points to get that certain rare Battledome weapon that might now probably cost somewhere in the 50+ million Neopoints range. At least I can proudly say that I finished the Virtupets Station plot and got the grand battledome weapon prize from that.)

The big draw to me back then was the Battledome. I only spent Neo Points on battledome equipment, as I didn't really consider anything else to be worthwhile. Painting pets? I didn't want to run the risk of painting a pet only to run into a random event that changes my pet's color (although I was lucky enough to have Boochi zap my main Battledome pet, a Flotsam, years ago, who to this day remains my only painted pet). Books? Food? You can't hope to chase the top positions in the leaderboards anymore due to event books/food that are super rare and no longer available.

I tried restocking for a bit, especially in the Bakery. Somewhat successful, but extremely frustrated. I remember lots of issues regarding auto-buyers. And stores not restocking for hours at a time.

I also liked their two Neo Quest games, and the battledome items they gave out were well worth the more boring hours of level grinding. Come to think of it, I really need to finish Neo Quest II on Insane mode. I think I stopped somewhere in Haunted Woods...

I wonder if they ever made a Neo Quest III.

Hm, maybe I should check on my account. I probably have old stuff that probably costs a couple hundred thousands of points by now.

edited 5th Feb '10 11:16:34 PM by Alilatias

I think it was a girl, that STOLE a bunch of stories from Neo, and tried to sell them as a BOOK on amazon.

Can't have been. It wasn't a story, wasn't a book, and wasn't being sold on Amazon. I'm not sure what they were doing was legal either; it's possible that Neopets has some deal where you don't keep intellectual property rights to whatever you post on the writer's block, but I can't see why they'd do something like that.

I used to have an account. Became infuriated at the number of games I had to play.

Whippersnappers! Back in my day Bruces looked like butlers, players could own theme parks, and there were murder mysteries!

Lmao. Neopets was a fun time waster, good times... stopped playing a few years after I started when someone stole my account password, and any recovery I could have used was moot because it was registered to a defunct email address...

Dang, it's been a while since I played. I'll have to check in again.

Whippersnappers! Back in my day Bruces looked like butlers, players could own theme parks, and there were murder mysteries!

I'm pretty sure all of that was after I quit.

My Nimmo and Lenny have probably attempted to eat one another by now. Not that either of them would win a fight, because the combat required literal weeks of grinding (and Codestones) just to be able to fight anything tougher than the training dummy.

One thing I found pretty ridiculous was the "Neopian inflation level."

They had a counter that supposedly recorded the level of inflation. However, it was completely out of touch with how much inflation had actually occurred. By the time I quit, the counter was still in the single digits, but the average costs of goods had gone up by, in my estimation, several hundred percent. The opening of the battledome (which was advertised for about two years before it was finally released) also increased the value of battle items dramatically, sometimes by as much as two orders of magnitude.

Oh, man. I remember the old Neopian days.

My pets were Pets of the Day once. If my account still exists, I bet some of the items I've got from one of the waaaay old advent calendars are worth a fortune now...

So. I finally logged on again. Things have changed, arguable for the worse. I miss the era where there were no ads.

Still, the amount of new content available was absolutely amazing to me. When I learned I could go to the other side of Neopia, my jaw freakin' dropped!

I also tried my hand at some of the new games. One of which was called the "Wheel of Monotony"...

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... ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!

edited 12th Feb '10 6:30:43 PM by itsmeyouidiot

Wheel of Monotony? New?

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...HA.

But seriously, a lot has happened. Some of it for the better (there are, like, 50 Neopet species; and there are many new worlds, items, games), and some a lot for the worse (the NC Mall, Neohomes 2.0, and so on).