Neopets

 

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Neopets is an online virtual pet site where users can create and take care of up to four virtual pets, buying them food, toys and other accessories using a virtual currency called Neopoints. Neopoints can be earned through playing games, investing in the stock market, trading and winning contests. There is also the planet of Neopia to explore, and users can interact with each other through discussion boards, Neomail and guilds.

The site was launched on November 15, 1999, by Adam Powell and Donna Williams, and a majority interest was bought by Doug Dohring shortly after it was created. On 20 June 2005, Viacom bought Neopets, Inc. for $160 million. As of 1 May 2007, Neopets reports 139 million accounts and 204 million pets, and has an Alexa ranking of 166.

A pay-to-play version, known as Neopets Premium, offers additional features and benefits for a monthly fee of $7.99. Neopets, Inc. produces and sells a wide variety of Neopets merchandise, such as plushies, stickers, notebooks, two video games and a trading card game. Several issues with the site, such as immersive advertising, gambling-based games, hacks and glitches, and poor customer support, have sparked controversy.

Environment

Neopets is set on (or in orbit around) the fictional planet of Neopia, which includes various worlds and mini-worlds with their own themes. Each of these worlds or regions has unique shops, games, and other activities based on its theme. Each world may contain several different regions; for example, the world Terror Mountain has three parts: Happy Valley, Ice Caves, and Terror Mountain.

These worlds are usually introduced through in-game plots that involve their "discovery" or "destruction". For example, Maraqua was originally destroyed by the Kiko Captain Dread and his pirates in one storyline, but has been rebuilt, reopened, and saved from the pirate Lupe Captain Scarblade as a result of the Curse of Maraqua storyline. In the Lost Desert Plot, the city of Qasala made diplomatic ties with the city of Sakhmet (also made accessible) after their city was rebuilt.

In June 24 2006, the map was updated so that players could access the previously unseen side of the planet Neopia.

Lutari Island (a tribal-themed world), is only accessible after signing up to Neopets Mobile, which is a pay service for accessing Neopets on a mobile phone. As of December 2006, only T-Mobile and Cingular Wireless can be used to access Lutari Island.

As of December 2006, Jelly World[1] is the only world in Neopia inaccessible via the main world map. The existence of Jelly World is consistently denied by the Neopets staff (as a joke), despite all of the references to it such as a Jelly World NeoBoard[2] which cannot usually be accessed and Jelly World related games (Jelly Blobs of Doom and Bouncy Supreme) which can be accessed from certain game related links. However, on the Neopets Toolbar the Free Jelly icon links directly to Jelly World.

Plots

Major Neopets plots usually are advanced in a comic book-style form, which is used as a springboard for player participation. This participation may include solving puzzles, playing games, fighting opponents in the Battledome; depending on the activity, players may find themselves working with or competing against other players in real time. Players receive prizes for their participation at the end of every plot. The time it takes to reward participants with these prizes has sometimes been considerable, as the scoring of varied steps for a large number of players is a complex task.

Many Neopian plots are used to release new worlds or features on the site.

Advent Calendar

The Advent Calendar is only active during the Month of Celebrating (December). On each day of the month, a user can visit the Advent Calendar in Happy Valley to watch a flash animation, and collect a prize, which is usually an item, Neopoints and/or an avatar. Users are only allowed to receive this prize once. Users who create multiple accounts to receive multiple prizes may have their account frozen.

The Altador Cup

In 2006, TNT released the Altador Cup, a competition for a game called Yooyuball, which lasted for about two months. The ball in this game was in fact a Petpet, the Yooyu, which took the form of a ball during the sport. Sixteen of the Neopian worlds "participated" in the event, and users could choose a team. Tournament match-ups were posted and players could challenge opposing teams. After the competition, the game of Yooyuball was removed. In a issue of the Neopets Magazine, it was stated the Cup will return in June.

Neopets

Neopets is also the collective name for the primary inhabitants of the world of Neopia. In total, there are over 50 different species of Neopets, some of which may be limited edition or restricted. A user may own up to four Neopets per account. Neopets may wear clothes or be painted different colours.

Petpets

Petpets are Neopets' pets. They are found in shops all over Neopia. Some variations include Slorg, Feepit, Babaa, and the Meepit. Petpets are capable of doing some actions their Neopet owner cannot, such as waking up the Turmaculus (a giant Petpet that may eat a user's Petpet) and jump in the "Mysterious Symol Hole". Petpets were once able to assist users in Battledome fights, but this option has been retired. However, Petpets now have their own battle arena, called the "Petpet Battle Arena".

A Neopet can also talk to their Petpet by typing in what they wish to say. The Petpet then responds with one of a number of pre-programmed text actions. The actions vary with the type of Petpet, although if any profanity is used all of the Petpet's lines will read: "Oi! Don't swear! This site is family-friendly".

Like Neopets, Petpets have levels, which can be raised either by visiting the Turmaculus or by fighting in the Petpet Battle Arena. Petpets can also be painted a variety of colours, albeit with their own Petpet paintbrushes.

Petpets can be mixed in the Cooking Pot with other Petpets or items to create a new species of Petpet as well, such as the Zamillion (Zoomik and a Gallion) and Wuzzer (Buzzer and Dwarf Tree), respectively. Older Petpets that have been replaced by newer Petpets will turn into those newer Petpets if they are unattached from their Neopet. Petpets are also featured in various games, like Extreme Herder, Petpet CannonBall, and Hasee Bounce.

PetPetPets

Petpets can have their own pet, called Petpetpets, bug-like creatures that live on the Petpet. They are found through rare random events and can be sold for Neopoints or attached to the main Neopets Petpet. To attach a Petpetpet to a Petpet a user must leave it in their inventory until it attaches itself to the Petpet of the active Neopet. Petpetpets cannot be removed from a Petpet but will disappear if the Petpet is removed from the Neopet. Petpetpets serve very little purpose other than to have fun, but some like the Mootix or Moach can give a user an Avatar. Some games on the site, such as "Mootix Drop", are based on Petpetpets.

Paint brushes

There are certain kinds of paint brushes that players can use to paint their Neopet. Many paint brushes, such as the Baby Paint Brush, are rare. To get a paint brush, players may buy one from another user, from either other player’s shop, the Mystery Island Trading Post, or the Auctions. These paint brushes can be very expensive. However, lucky players can win one from Tombola, the Fruit Machine, or as a random event. Players who get hold of a paint brush can go to the Rainbow Pool to paint their pet if the colour is available for the pet. Players can no longer use Glass or Stone paintbrushes.

Users can gain other colours for their Neopets that do not involve paint brushes. One species, the Chia, can become various colours, like asparagus, carrot, and pea, by eating certain types of magical Chia Pops. Colours that severely alter the physical chemistry of a pet can only be obtained through the lab ray. A user can only obtain access to this ray by completing the Secret Laboratory Map.

Games

Before November 22, 2006, when the games room was revamped, most of the games on the site were divided into three categories: Puzzle, Action, and Luck/Chance.

Puzzle games are those that require thought and often language or mathematical skills. For example, in "Spell-or-Starve", a player must spell as many words as possible in a limited time by clicking the letters on the screen. Action games are arcade-like games. In "Hannah and the Ice Caves", a player guides the characters Hannah and her sidekick Armin through increasingly difficult icy caves, while collecting treasure and avoiding snow beasts. The Luck/Chance category includes various slot machine games such as "Brucey B. Slots", and other gambling-themed games. Card games and a game based on hide-and-seek are also part of Luck/Chance.

Players may earn trophies for their trophy cabinet if they score high enough for the High Score Tables. On the first day of each month, many of the game High-Score Tables are wiped. This means that many users can earn trophies with relatively low scores, compared with the middle or end of the month.

Flash and Shockwave games

Most of the games on the site are Flash or Shockwave games, which require the user to have certain software installed on the computer. Many are similar to older existing games — for example, "Meerca Chase" is very similar to Snake, while "Korbat's Lab" and "Frumball" are like Breakout and Arkanoid.

A player may submit game scores for each Flash game up to three times a day, except during the 7-day period beginning on Neopets birthday (15 November-22 November), when a player is allowed to submit up to five game scores a day. Up to a maximum of 1,000 Neopoints can be earned per each score sent, thus allowing users to score 3000 Neopoints if they are good and dedicated at it. Users may earn trophies if they score high, or message board avatars from a select variety of games. They can participate in World Challenges (hourly competitions for a select variety of games) for the chance to win Neopoints and special world challenge map pieces. They can also issue public or private games challenges to other users, betting a certain amount of Neopoints for the chance to win more.

There is a different game featured every day. When a player achieves a score with the Featured Game, the amount of Neopoints usually given for that score is doubled. The usual maximum winnings is also doubled, allowing players to win up to 2,000 Neopoints each time they play. A Lucky Space Faerie Charm, one of the rewards for referring people to Neopets Premium, can also randomly double a player's Neopoint winnings.

On November 21, it was announced in the News that a section of the site was going to be revamped. On November 22, it was revealed that the section to be revamped was the Games section. On November 23, the Games section's new avatar announced that he had a challenge on offer to all Neopians, which involved playing a set list of Flash games (submitting a score of at least 50 for each one), finding hidden games to send scores in, sending challenge cards and, of course, the mystery challenges.

For the month of March 2007, every day a user could challenge "AAA" or "Abigail" to the featured game. If they beat the required score, they received a prize. Extra prizes were awarded at the end of the month. If a user challenged Abigail (the challenger with the lower score) on a certain day, they were ineligible to challenge AAA on that day, and vice versa. An avatar was rewarded for successfully beating AAA and/or Abigail 15 times.

Sponsor games

Neopets is sponsored by a number of organizations, businesses and companies, and therefore there are a number of sponsor games. Sponsor games come and go from the site, and are often wiped from the site completely long before actual Neopets games are. They have no high score tables, but are often easier than regular Neopets games, although the Neopoints won are not always high. When the contract with a sponsor ends, some of the sponsor games are changed to remove any ties to the former sponsor (Toybox Escape and Turmac Roll are examples of such games).

PHP games

There are also numerous PHP web-based games (which are more accessible to players with slower computers), such as "NeoQuest", "Plushie Tycoon", and card games like "Pyramids", "Scarab 21" and "Neopets Blackjack". NeoQuest and NeoQuest II are classic role-playing games in which a user travels around a world, fighting monsters and performing quests. Plushie Tycoon is a business-running simulation, in which the player must manufacture and sell Neopets plushies. There is also a daily crossword ("Faerie Crossword"), a dice game ("Dice-a-Roo", which is no longer playable by users under 13 years old to avoid any gambling accusations), and a Neopets version of Minesweeper ("Neggsweeper").

Any user may issue a "game challenge" to another user for a two-player game, such as "Kacheekers", "Armada" or "Geos."

Contests and Spotlights

Neopets also offers several different writing and art contests, the largest of which is the Neopian Times, a weekly electronic newspaper which includes short stories, a question-and-answer editorial, comics (traditional and animated), story series, and articles. A published user receives a trophy, as well as special rewards for special Neopian Times issues (such as milestone and themed issues).

There is a poetry contest that runs approximately twice a week and a story-telling contest in which users write and submit the next part of a short story. A "Random Contest" requires a different task, chosen by Neopets staff, to be completed each contest, such as drawing, making up "Dr. Sloth's answering machine message", and creating recipes, and so on. The Caption Contest requires users try to write humorous captions for a picture. Players can submit drawings of their pets for the Beauty Contest where other users can vote on their submissions, artwork for the Art Gallery, a picture and short story of their pets or Petpets for the Spotlights, galleries of items, custom-built levels of certain games, or their Neopets-based web pages (theoretically for their pets) or petpages. When users win one of these contests, they usually receive a trophy a Neopoint reward and sometimes an avatar too.

Quests

There are many types of quests, in which the user must retrieve certain items for a non-player character in exchange for a reward. Faerie Quests are given out through random events while browsing the site, while the user may volunteer for other quests.

Random Faerie Quests are given by one of many faeries: Fire, Light, Earth, Air, Dark, Water Faeries, the unique Faeries (Fountain and Space), and the Faerie Queen. While browsing the site, the user may encounter a faerie through a random event and be asked for an item associated with her (like clothes, trading cards, etc.). To make such quests more challenging, users cannot use the Shop Wizard to quickly search through user-owned shops while they are still on the quests. Users must find the items through auctions, the trading post, or ask others for help. The faeries will select one of the user's four pets randomly and raise one of its statistics.

Receiving and completing a Fountain Faerie quest is usually very difficult. The quest is a very rare event, and the faerie usually asks for a highly expensive item. After the user completes her quest, the Fountain Faerie allows one of the pets to be painted to almost any colour (with the exception of Ice, MSP, Royal, Sponge and Robot).

Neopians can also go to Jhudora's Cloud or Illusen's Glade for quests with various prizes according to how many quests the user has previously completed. For these, the player is allowed to use the Shop Wizard, but must find the item within a time limit. The more quests the user completes, the better the rewards are, but the faeries will demand rarer and more expensive items. Failure to retrieve the item on time resets the quest and brings the player back to level one. After completing a quest for Jhudora or Illusen, users cannot do either of their quests for another 12 hours, and after 50 completed quests, there are no more reward items.

The Esophagor, Edna the Witch, the Underwater Chef, the Brain Tree, and the Snow Faerie also give quests upon request. The Shop Wizard can be used to find items for these. Users often only do the quests when the required items are within a certain price range, to avoid spending more than their potential reward.

Collections

Players can choose to collect certain items and display them in a "gallery". They may also collect collectible cards, trading cards (not to be confused with the actual Neopets trading cards), stamps, coins, and sea shells, and display them in albums.

"Neohomes" can be built after a user buys a plot of land. Each room costs Neopoints to build, and furniture may be put in and arranged. Extensions such as lighting, flooring, and insurance can also be purchased. Players may try to win awards for their Neohomes or collections. The address of a Neohome can only be changed after demolishing all rooms and/or gardens and selling the address back to the bank (Neopoints spent on the rooms are not refunded).

Shops

In addition to the regular shops, players open their own shops to sell items, sometimes after obtaining those items at a lower price from sources, such as other shops. (One may also exchange items at the trading post or use the auction house.) Shops run by non-player characters allow haggling. Buying items at the Neopian shops in order to resell them is called restocking, and can be very profitable for a player with luck and a fast internet connection. However, player-run shops can only sell items up to 99,999 Neopoints; any items with a price over 99,999 Neopoints must be traded using either the Trading Post or the Auction House.

Site themes

A site theme is a theme that is displayed on the top and bottom of the screen that is used while browsing the Neopets website. The default theme is star-decorated and yellow, which is seen when a user creates a new account or is not logged into the site. Similar to avatars, there are also secret site themes to unlock and collect, but unlike avatars, there are far fewer. Some site themes, like those for Valentine's Day and Halloween, are available to unlock on a particular day every year. Others, like the Altadorian Constellations site themes, are available to anyone who completes the requirements, but some site themes were plot related (Altador Cup, Shenkuu, Lost Desert) and are now unable to be unlocked. With the new layout of Neopets website, users are also able to have four new basic site themes: Neopets Yellow, Neopets Red, Neopets Green, and Neopets Blue, which do not require being unlocked.

Community

Neopets has a community in which users can chat with and contact each other by private "NeoMail" (on-site e-mail) or on public "NeoBoards", which are more like chat rooms than Internet forums.

As with all Internet communities, there is risk in giving out personal information to strangers. Players under 13 years of age who wish to access any of the site's communication features must fax or mail a document stating parental consent, with the parent's signature, to the Neopets headquarters, to comply with COPPA.

Avatars

On Neopets, avatars are small icons used on Neopian message boards to represent a player. Unlike many forums, players on Neopets cannot upload their own avatars and must use those provided by the website. In addition to the default avatars, there are over 300 secret avatars that can be unlocked in various ways. These tasks may include getting a high score at a game, visiting a particular page or beating a particular secret opponent in the Battledome. Others (such as those earned for past plots) are retired and no longer attainable. Some are can only be obtained on certain days of the year, like April Fool's Day. Several elusive avatars require some luck on the account's behalf. In a few cases, there are avatars that cannot be obtained if a collector has its "twin" or "sister" avatar.

There is also a high score list which ranks users according to the number of avatars they have collected, and help sites exist for collectors to keep track of avatars and tasks still needed. Additionally, there is an avatar only available to the administrators’ user account of the site, known as theneopetsteam, or TNT.

Guilds

Users with similar interests can create or join guilds, which usually revolve around a theme, such as battling in the Battledome, or non-Neopets themes such as those for the fans of real-world celebrities or animal-lovers. Some guilds are dedicated to certain causes or goals, such as helping poorer Neopians and/or new players, adopting the abandoned Neopets in the pound, collecting avatars, role-playing, and so on.

There are message boards inside the guilds, accessible only to their members. Guilds may also offer certain benefits to members, such as guild shops, "newbie packs" (usually containing inexpensive items as welcome presents to members, which could be classified as a form of scamming by Neopets rules), activities, and tips. Battledome guilds (especially Lupe packs) often have "wars" with one another. Members battle members of the other guild and a score is kept. Some guilds are private, which makes the guild not show up in any guild searches, and a player would need an invitation from someone in the guild to join.

Different guilds have different requirements for advancing in rank within the guild, sometimes with a corresponding increase in benefits and power. The leader of the guild can choose 4 members in their guild to be part of a "Council", and give them administrative powers such as the ability to change the layout of the guild, create a poll, or delete messages on the message boards (although regular members can also be given administrative powers). These council positions are often sought after by ambitious guild members. Many large guilds also have a sub-council, which is usually like the council in a way except sub-council members usually have fewer administrative powers and duties than the regular council. Guild messages are logged to prevent any suspicious activity.

The guild leaders can make their own pet pages for the fun on their members. Most guild leaders make their guild activity pages where they can win prizes. Prize giving is now banned because theneopetsteam think it is a type of scam. Other pages are 1NP Auctions, Adoption Centers etc.

Some guilds also have corresponding external websites (many times on petpages) to share information that usually includes their rules and other things about the guild.

NeoBoards

Various smaller communities of players develop on the NeoBoards. Some boards are more popular than others are. Discussions on these message boards must be Neopets-related and may not involve topics such as dating and romance, politics, and religion. 24/7 moderation is performed by paid Neopets staff members. Users can help moderate the site by reporting messages they believe are inappropriate or offensive. A filter also prevents users from posting messages with profanity or lewd content, though the filter cannot capture typographical errors intentionally placed by spammers and scammers, and some questionable posts still appear. There is private Premium NeoBoard, which only Premium users have access to.

Periodically, new boards will appear and disappear as new plots are developed. Once the plot is complete and prizes for the plot have been awarded the board is taken away.

On the NeoBoards, players can enter 'neoHTML' (Neopets HTML) in their Chat Preferences to use a font on the NeoBoards that is not the default font. These fonts can become very elaborate; designs such as a piano keyboard and a Mootix (a Neopets Petpetpet) are shows of players' creativity. Players often use fonts to match their avatar.

NeoMail

NeoMail is a personal in-game communication system, much like regular email. Players can write messages to other players or make "Neofriends", to whom they can send items from their inventory or make private auctions for. There is an option for users to only receive Neomails from their Neofriends. For many reasons, Neomail messages are monitored, and players cannot write to another player who is under the age of 13. However, if the person under 13 has parental permission to play on the site, users are able to send them a Neomail. Users may also block people who they do not want to come in contact with.

The website automatically "censors" Neomails, and disallows foul and/or inappropriate language. If users include inappropriate language in their Neomail, it will not go through to the intended receiver. They are redirected to a page that explains why their Neomail is unacceptable, also giving them the option of going back to the Neomail and fixing it. Users are also unable to send any Neomails with the word "username", "password", or anything related.

Neopets also has a "limit" on the number of Neomails that can be sent in a day, or more so, in a certain span of time. This is to prevent the server from slowing down and spamming. Users can save up to 100 Neomails in their inboxes. Users may also save Neomails for up to ninety days in a save folder. This is to make sure the database can handle the amount of users and mail.

theneopetsteam also uses NeoMail to congratulate and acknowledge a user if he/she wins a particular contest on the site. Examples include Lenny Conundrum, Mystery Pic and The Caption Contest.

Neopets Premium

Neopets Premium is an extended version of the site, for which members pay $7.99 (US) a month, or $69.95 (US) a year. Different packages may be purchased which include Premium, such as dial-up internet service. With Premium membership, external ads are removed and certain benefits are added, like extra Neopoints (2,500 NP for signing up and 1,000 NP for each additional month), a neomail.com e-mail address, a customizable portal, more random events, a special message board avatar that is more difficult for non-Premium members to receive, Premium-only boards, a weekly "Space Faerie" scratch card, and access to beta versions of games. In addition, Premium users have access to a Super Shop Wizard that searches the entire site for the cheapest items in user-run shops instead of only a portion of the site, though they can only use it a certain number of times per hour. Premium users can also use 'price-only' searches, which show the average of the top ten items available, provided there are more than three on the shop wizard. Because of previous abuse from some users, 'price-only' searches are no longer unlimited.

Items and Special Features that are exclusive to Neopets Premium include the Space Faerie Avatar, Weekly Scratch Card, Space Faerie Charm (Often viewed upon as a trophy) and the Premium site theme. Some items are revoked when a user stops the Premium service. These incentives make it easy for a player who seeks Premium to receive an invitation.

Controversy

Neopets has been involved in many controversies. Off the website, issues have been raised about the site's immersive advertising methods, and gambling-based games. Users have also complained about various security holes/glitches and problems with user interaction with The Neopets Team. Sometimes glitches within the site have caused the user to lose a large amount of Neopoints or rare items. These users have complained that the items or NeoPoints were not returned.

External links

• Official Neopets Website
• Official Neopets Press Kit
• Beckett Official Neopets Magazine

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