The next generation of virtual pet sites?

[cpvr]

The next generation of Virtual pet sites... Who am I to say? I'm just cpvr, right? Well, you're wrong, my name is Carlos Andrade and I've been in the virtual pet industry for about a few years now - and I'm the owner, and founder of Virtual pet list, and it's been a huge success ever since it first launched back in 2003 on freewebs.com. So, let's get down to business and talk the next generation of virtual pet sites.

Well, we've all seen the success of Neopets and how fast it grew, then Powerpets came next and tried to compete with it - well, it did succeed, however; a new virtual pet site also emerged while Powerpets was "trying" to compete with Neopets and that's Marapets.com and its now one of the more-populated virtual pet sites next to Neopets. Let's not forget about Subeta, I believe it was after Powerpets, along with Creature World. However, Subeta first "opened" up using CW's code, and then re-emerged a few years later as a "huge" threat to the industry, however; Marapets quickly put them to shame with a plethora of new features that would shock the industry as a whole.

Prior to Marapets blowing up and taking advantage of the industry as we know it, many users went around saying that Marapets was the exact "copy-cat" of Neopets, however; it was not, it was creating similar features that Neopets contains, but in its own ideas. Marapets has hit the industry hard, and now ranks for many "big" keywords on the search engines, such as; "games", and "virtual pets", and Neopets is falling down on the rankings. Can Neopets come back up?

Now brings my next topic, Zetapets was opened, and created back in 2003 and after numerous "downtimes" so to say, it re-emerged, I believe in 2004 - and was one of the leading virtual pet sites - with a great, and active staff team, it was the pet site to beat, but then Marapets came along and put Zetapets to shame... Why was Zetapets to shame? It's hard to believe because of its art, and content that it offered to its users, however; Marapets opened up with a bang with a ton of features that Zetapets has yet to seen, but claimed to have, such as; it's plethora of quests, and things to do... Zetapets has a few features for its user base, but with talks of v3 coming out, it just may be the pet site that everyone was hoping for in the past. We'll see.

Well, what's the next generation or "Wave" of new virtual pet sites? Well, Subeta and Marapets both have huge "character-systems" next to the basic "pets-system", however; I see more sites adapting to this feature because of the huge success of "Gaia Online" and if more pet sites want to survive in the industry, they need to come up with new ideas that'll shock everyone. Why can't everyone be unique in their game? Why can't we have more innovation in the industry? Why do a lot of pet sites boost the same-old tactics "create a virtual pet, and raise it?". Beats me, but now to the next subject...

Rescreatu is one of the newest virtual pet sites to hit the industry with a bang - it boosts many unique features that old, and new pet sites don't have yet. Users can choose a "world" to be apart of, and if you're not apart of a certain world/land then you can't use certain features. It also has a nice credits system where if users don't want to buy new credits, then can just do the sponsor offers. Rescreatu seems to be one of the "new" pet sites to beat right now.

The fastest growing virtual pet site right now is Marapets, and I believe if you really want to compete with Marapets, you must be as fast as Ian, and Laimay at pumping out new content. If you have a great staff that work hard, then you might be able to beat them. You must also try to get "investors", or you won't have any luck catching up to them. Their plethora of content and features are amazing, and I'm sure if anyone puts their mind to it, they can possibly beat them.

The industry is currently seeing a few new virtual pet sites in development, such as; Misticpets and Cyopets. There's a lot more virtual pet sites in development in 2007 (http://www.virtualpetlist.com/showthread.php?t=1861) - and we believe a lot of them show great potential, but it is up to the owners, and staff members to succeed and bring more life into the industry as we know it....

Let's talk and discuss the next generation of virtual pet sites! :D
So, what do you guys think will be the next generation of virtual pet sites?
Written by: Cpvr, owner of Virtual pets (http://www.virtualpetlist.com).com

[FuRom]

The one that takes home the gold of "BEST" virtual petsite ever will be whatever one releases explore v2.0 first.

Explore v2.0 is a petsite concept I'mma take credit for thinking of just because I have an entire inefficient version of it already to prove I DID IT FIRST (If someone can predate this concept with actual coding before 2003 just speak up, I dare ya.)! The concept is simple. 2D MMORPG style exploration instead of maps of areas. The concept integrates the fundamentals of an RPG, community, and petsite basics such as chatting, exploring places, shopping, quests, and much more. It's 100% possible and easy. I have a simple flash version of it already made. My source code is useless on a grand scale because it continuously send an http request just to get the server to return variables, but I'm sure there is someone out there that can do better.

What really sets neopets at the top of the food chain is their arcade. Neopets actually incorporates flash games so much it's sickening. They have something do to. They have recently added features like that of gaia online and this is setting them a bit more above the bar, but this ain't completely why their so successful. They bring new and innovative things regularly to their user base. They update so much you just don't get bored.

Bringing true RPG elements to a petgame is the only way that the "petsite industry" can really do, otherwise you'll probably just have another wanna-be-like neopets site that I'll be angered about and I'll just take my angers out on my deviantart journal.

It's really stressful to see so many programmers wasting their time making nothing but clones of the past or sites with defaced features that are saposed to resemble that of a petsite, but are not worthy to be labeled such. Yeah, I sound like a killjoy, but really read it for a minute and absorb what I'm saying instead of defiling the internet with another made-in-china clone.

There are so many new and innovative ways to create a website these days. The excuse of being limited financially is nothing but a lie! There are free flash development tools, there are free java development tools, javascripting is 100% free, and hosting isn't a problem with free webserver packages such as wampserver and xampp panel (apache friends).

There isn't any reason that developers can say something like "Making that is not possible because...". There is so many things that can be done to make a petsite or any site for that matter, great, fresh, fun, and innovative. If you don't know the programming languages required for innovation then just learn them! In any programming language all you have to learn is the basic editing program controls and the syntax structure! Most of the time you have to just learn the basic editor's controls because over 50% of the time the syntax structure is exactly the same as some other programming language you know! I speak from experience.

I deeply encourage every developer out there to push the limits of what is "now" and go for what will be tomorrow. I really don't want no one to take this post the wrong way. I'm posting this because I feel that no one is really trying for something new. I only see the same old features in every single petsite. I never see anything new and I really want to encourage everyone to be creative in their content and make their site their own instead of replicating someone else's work just for hits.

[cpvr]

What really sets neopets at the top of the food chain is their arcade. Neopets actually incorporates flash games so much it's sickening. They have something do to. They have recently added features like that of gaia online and this is setting them a bit more above the bar, but this ain't completely why their so successful. They bring new and innovative things regularly to their user base. They update so much you just don't get bored.

Exactly, especially with its "neoquest" feature. I've yet to see a new pet site come out with that concept yet - I think its another feature that puts Neopets in a whole new league than the industry itself.

Bringing true RPG elements to a petgame is the only way that the "petsite industry" can really do, otherwise you'll probably just have another wanna-be-like neopets site that I'll be angered about and I'll just take my angers out on my deviantart journal.

What are the true RPG elements though? Isn't there a ton of elements?

[FuRom]

RPG = role playing game.

Anything that takes the player towards the steps of really playing a role in a virtual world would suffice. The main thing that really makes an RPG and RPG is the quests. The concept originally came from dungeons and dragons (DnD). DnD was in essence the first RPG. Instead of adding just simple quests where you got buy a few crappy items from shops, they should take it a step further and add in more to bring more challenges. With a real explorable world, you can script puzzles like for example:

In my explore 2.0 I had a quest system. It was very bare frame. The player just had to accept the quest and go complete the objectives. The first quest I had involved a puzzle. You had to move a few boulders into a special position to open a portal to another level in a cave and then you had to fight a guardian monster for a key to obtain an item from a treasure chest in the cave.

Just something that makes the player really feel like their a part of the game would be an RPG element.

[cpvr]

RPG = role playing game.

Ya, I know what an "RPG" is. So, do you think more pet sites should adapt to the RPG aspect of games - what else can they adapt too? We see a lot of characters popping into pet games now, but what else can be done? I'm sure there's a lot more.

[mara]

What about more flash games could they help the next generation of pet sites or nah? Should new pet sites have a ton of flash games before launching? I've always wondered that.

[Patrick]

If I had some more capital, theres tons of ideas I would love to implement. Theres so many things that can still be done. If I had a professional firm programming everything my staff and I come up with, then things would be incredibly. People have time constraints, money issues, etc.

If a company dived into this market, they could do many things that would pass into the "next gen" for pet sites. Community can be a great power tool as subeta has shown. The character systems can be developed much more heavily. There are still PLENTY of unique ideas left which I don't really want to get into because I hope to use them sometime.

My point is, theres still so much room left in developing pet sites.

[FuRom]

I got a different concept for petsites that I've been workin on beyond the entire RPG elements, but I'm keeping it under wraps, I want to be the first to release it. I kinda got bored of developing my current website and started thinking up my new petsite concepts. I'll just say it'll be heavily ajax oriented and it'll involve a lot more of the community aspect than other petsite's have done.

[OwlManAtt]

I really feel like you should have mentioned Matrixpets somewhere in there.

Their battle stadium had AJAX before the term was coined. Khales was a bloody genius, I swear. And he put that thing together in something like three nights.

There were something like 100 users online at any given time with 30-50 in the battle lobby before Jamie went AWOL and operations shut down.

Oh, how I miss thee, Matrixpets...

[Patrick]

I wish I saw it. Can't say I've even heard of it.

[cpvr]

I really feel like you should have mentioned Matrixpets somewhere in there.

Their battle stadium had AJAX before the term was coined. Khales was a bloody genius, I swear. And he put that thing together in something like three nights.

There were something like 100 users online at any given time with 30-50 in the battle lobby before Jamie went AWOL and operations shut down.

Oh, how I miss thee, Matrixpets...
I've never heard about it before, OwlManAtt. Do you have more information about Matrixpets?

[OwlManAtt]

Matrixpets was pretty popular. It was around for about a year before ZP was started (Wulf and Jr. did some work for Matrixpets prior to starting on ZP; flash games, if memory serves).

They had some good artists and a lot of active users. The battle stadium was their killer feature. It had a chat lobby with mute/kick/ban buttons for site mods, you could challenge anyone else in the lobby to a fight, duke it out, and get XP for your pet. Eventually it would level up.

It featured weapons you equip to your pet (swords and bows/arrows), healing items, and one-time use weapons (like bombs).

It was pretty sweet.

[cpvr]

How long was it around for before it died down? Was it opened long?

[Ole]

I think Subeta can take it to the next gen. I know they have some good ideas, only the main programmer, keith, is very inconsistant. I dont know what goes on behind scenes, but they'll release something and it'll have so many bugs in it and glitches it just isn't fun. It'll take a good year or so before someone looks at it. But i feel there the only site going somewhere

[Patrick]

Keith doesn't program subeta anymore. He has some firm doing it.

[Ole]

He still does bits here and there. He's also helping with the recode.

[cpvr]

He still does bits here and there. He's also helping with the recode.
Do you have prove of that? I thought he's only the server administrator / the big boss.