[Gamer.Saga] Neopets.com Review 9/30/2007

[FuRom]

This is just the first review of many that I will make. I'll try to make at least 1 review a week on any pet site. Right now I'm going through a list of pet sites.

Neopets has drastically changed since it's beginning. It is a misconeception that neopets is the first virtual pet site because it feels like it's been around since the beginning, but it's not the first virtual pet site. Neopets.com is probably what sparked the entire virtual pet site community as a whole. It's what generally makes people want to make pet sites. Seeing as it is owned by a big corporation, it is expected to have the highest quality of games and activities. It holds true to it's virtual pet aspects. You can do so many things with your pet in so many ways that are not implemented on many virtual pet sites out there. The introduction of the neomall is kind of a big downside to the site along with merchandising. It brings big money making things to the site. Which is understandable seeing as they're aim is to make profit, but merchandising also takes away from the game play along with other companies being endorsed in many of their games. Also, their use of ideas from other sites such as gaia online, and youtube, makes for them to lose points with me in being unique. They seem to be going with nothing but trends in many instances, which isn't the best way to have a site. The community is massive! So massive that it is hard to really uphold a conversation in the message boards. It also makes it hard to build up a decent sized guild. With features like banking, shops, stock markets, auctions, and trades, it does help with teaching understanding of how to handle money to some extent. It provides entertainment in conjunction with learning. Which is good in many aspects. The explore is still outdated, but there are tons of maps to explore to make up for being an outdated concept. They regularly update their content too! Which is a plus. The biggest complaint I've seen about them is they regulate their rules too strictly. They announce new rules and do not add the rules to the list of rules like the users are saposed to read every announcement they make. They enforce these rules and don't give any leaniency. I believe the administrative team is just too harsh. You would think they wouldn't be so strict with the money they make, but I guess being rude comes with being greedy. The artwork has always been above par. They've had great art since day one, and they've kept it all up to date.

Art: 10 / 10
Staff and Administration: 2 / 10
Games and Activities: 7 / 10
Virtual Pet System: 8/10
Community: 0/10
Creativity: 5/10
Misc: 3/10


DISCLAIMER:
This information is "as is" without guarantee of anything! Be it implied or bluntly stated, there is nothing guaranteed from this review. Not your satisfaction, nor you opposed views and opinions. I hereby do not care if you disagree with me on any points made and you shall not flame me for posting my views and opinions of this site.

The bias against this review is a factor of 0! I hold no personal anger and/or anguish in my reviews or posts about other people's stuff. I give statements based on my own experiences and/or references to claims of other people's experiences. This too doesn't constitute for flaming and/or bashing.

[Russell]

thankyou alot for this year. I am new to virtual pet games so this review helps me decide whether or not to join.

[GodsGal]

The art is good, but I don't think it's great. I'd give it a 8.5/10 personally.

Great review! Completely unbiased is a good thing. Personally I just like neopets for the flash games.(it's so huge it's hard for me to get around and do anything else)

Hope I'm not messing up your thread, if you think so I don't mind if you delete this.

[-kj-]

For me:


Art: 9 / 10
-Drawings are really nice :)

Staff and Administration: 0 / 10
-Their administration is really bad. I have to say that the 'government' is corrupt.

Games: 9/10
Activities: 3/10
The games are abundant and are really nice to play. Good job on this aspect. However, the activities are totally crap. (for eg. the Altador Cup has been poorly planned, the quests are virtually impossible for a beginner, the beginners guide is as good as it's not there)

Virtual Pet System: 5/10
Graphics has been Neopets' strongest point. But they've also been let down by the fact that pets don't die. This is what they claim will happen - but why doesn't it happen?

Community: 0/10
The boards are VERY inactive.

Creativity: 7/10
Overall site design is rather appealing.

Total: 2/10
Graphical Appeal is nice. But let down by various aspect- most important is the administration committee. I've been part of it and trust me, it wasn't a good experience at all.

[Chero]

I'm agreeing with your review. Great graphics, art, and games, but everything else isn't as great. Especially with Community and Administration.

[Mintacia]

Hm, I find myself disagreeing with you alot.

For me :

Art: 10 / 10

It's truely top-quality art.

Staff and Administration: 5 / 10

They arn't the best, but they do their job. Neo is very crowded, so they don't have time to everyone's complaints. And truely, it's just the moderators that are cruel. If you slip up and curse at all, you will get a warning at the very least. But most of the rules are pretty clear. So it's not common to get froze for a rule you had never heard of. Even though many people say it is. It's not. Common freezings are spam/gibberish, curses curses curses, using cheats {like the 50k-a-day cheat of awhile ago} and love role play.

Games and Activities: 10 / 10

Neopets owns when it comes to games. They've got a TON of them. Nearly too many! Of all types too. Even role playingish games, like NeoQuest, for those who don't want to play a short flash game. It's arcade is better then most pure arcades that litter the internet.

Virtual Pet System: 10/10

I'm afraid to say it's really flawless. Sure the pets don't die. Guess what? Most people don't WANT them to die. If you spend a long time saving up for a paint brush to paint a pet, you really don't want them to die after you paint them because you forgot to shove omlettes at them. Taking care of your pets is a short little impudent task most people ignore.
I mean, petpets and petpetpets, a custimization system {which I do enjoy. It gives people the option of putting a background on their pet, or a hat, or whatnot. Oh! And I've heard plenty of people say "Dressing up animals is cruel" and whatnot, but neopets arn't animals. Not REALLY. They SPEAK. In the plots, they've always had clothes. They're very similar to humans, in the way they act.} and many aspects go along with the entire pet system. Oh, and there's a ton of colors for the pets, and what not.

Community: 8/10

I LIKE the community. And most of the people who hang out on neo boards would agree with me. Sure, it might frighten you small-pet-site peoples at first, but for people with short attention spans, it's heaven. Read one topic, perhaps post, then flit to another if it doesn't interest you. There's always something to do. I could spend the entire day on the boards. If you complain about the boards, then you havn't really tried to enjoy them. They are an endless cauldren of entertainment. And, everyone there is very nice. Tons of people to befriend! I have quite ALOT of friends there.=3 On smaller pet sites, I'd have trouble finding more then 5 good friends.

Creativity: 6/10

They were first in alot of things. Perhaps not the first pet site, but probably had the first petpets, and definitly first petpetpets. Sloth, meepits, lawyerbot, TNT goes all out, and it really adds to the site's personality. They have everything, and I've yet to see another NQI, or even other forms of custimization, or some of the ingenius colors neopets has. WAY more creative then most sites. I mean, really, alot of pets sites {fillintheblankpets.com} are just copies of eachother. Get X pet and paint it Y color, buy it B fruit, feed it, visit N island, attack P petpet/minipet/partner, collect R avatar. Not many sites tend to be creative. Not saying that none are; Wajas, webkinz, and Mr. Tiki are all good acceptions to that. Again, that's just me.

Misc: 7/10

Have you even seen Neo's new plot? Sure, it has the headache evil modifiers, that take hours to complete, but the newest step is genius! You work TOGETHER to finish it! Anyways, neo presents alot of little things to do. If you didn't wanna count neoquest under games, then you could probably count it under misc. Just exploring can entertain you for a long while.

Over All : 8/10

Neopets is a very delightful site, which most will get sucked into and addicted to. There's one major difference between it and most sites : it can entertain you for hours on end. I have yet to find one site that I can spend an entire afternoon on. Not counting forums, ofcourse. You can play the endless amount of games, complete plots {there's often one going}, read the neopaper thing, explore, RS, try and collect avvies... there's alot to do. And it's all shiny, it loads quickily, it's fun, and glitch-less. And, high-quality games. It's been running for like, 11 years or something. During that time, it's been shinnied and perfected and what not.

Oh, and notes on the plushies and NCMall :
They are GOOD. You can COMPLETLY IGNORE THEM. NCMall items are actually kinda worthless. But people buy them anyways! And I can only congradulate TNT. They're making money. If they weren't making money, they'd have to shut the site down. OPTIONAL. You can't complain about optional things.
AND, they arn't degrading the site experience. They're UPGRADING it. Why?
More money for neo means less ads for everyone. It's true. They havn't had a new sponsor game in months. Why?
NCMall.
They're making enough to not need sponsor games. Next thing to go could be the top banner ad.
And they've always had plushies and other products. Infact, other pet sites would probably market plushes too if they had a big enough crowd. But they don't.


Anyways, that's all I gotta say.^^ Perhaps it's pure opinion on neo. And as a side note, I've been to countless other sites. I know alot. Signed and played most noted on these here forums.

And I think Neopets is the best.
Wajas and webkinz come in second-ish.
Ish because neither are wonderful. Webkinz's childish, and I don't get entertained as easily as a 10 year old with the babyish games and stuff. Plus I feel bad when I can't get a high score in one of those kiddy games.x3
And Wajas... well, it's beautiful... but it's server is so messy! It's slow, and dies often.=/ Oh, and it seems to have an over-breeding problem.o-o

That's right. All other sites, recreatu, mrtiki, marapets, zetapets, chibipaws, verpets, nutrinopets, subeta, and cyopets all ended up boring me after a day or two of playing them. I just plain ran outta things to do. And that's why I love neopets. There's always something do.
But anyways, again, my opinion.xD

And yea, I do have a very, VERY short attention span.


Geez this is a lengthy post.xD

[Chas]

Art: 9 / 10
Generally, I dislike this sort of cartoonish style of art. However, It's my opinion that neopets does this style than other sites. At least the art is same throughout the site (except really old pages) and
Staff and Administration: 6 / 10 They may be detached from the users, but who cares. The site is self-sustaining enough that the neopets site is self-sustaining and honestly with the amount of users they have, you can't hardly expect them to help everyone. Also, if you purchase items from the NC Mall or use Neopets mobile they are much more responsive. IMO, it makes sense to favor CUSTOMERS in CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Games and Activities: 10 / 10 Neopets has the best games. Most sites don't even have flash games. They have something for everyone and you will never get bored.
Virtual Pet System: 7/10 The nw customization system rocks. However, there is no reason to ever play with your pets and you only need to feed them if you want to use the battledome I really dislike sites where the epts die, but there should be some sort of reprecussion.
Community: 0/10-I've never use the neoboards and I don't think I ever will.
Creativity: 9/10 They invented online pets and defined the genre. How you can say they lack creativity when all of these other sites just used the same basic formula they developed?
Economy-0/10 Inflation on this site is ridiculous, and the staff aren't do much about it, it's getting worse all the time. This reminds me of the of the Weimar Republic. This site would be better if they just reset everyone's NP to 0 and started over with a better system. NC Mall combats this a little, but NC Mall only sells clothes. They should sell morphing potions and paintbrushes and battledome gear too.

[nlee20]

I believe Neopets would go farther if the staff were more into the game and with the community.