Hi, I'm Daniel and I'm 16 years old. I left school recently and start college in September. I love t...
Hi, I'm Daniel and I'm 16 years old. I left school recently and start college in September. I love to read and write! Leave a message in my guestbook if you want to get to know me.
Member since:18.01.2002
Reviews:65
Members who trust:26
INTRODUCTION
A couple of years ago, I came across Neopets. At that time, virtual pets were the latest craze across Britain, and Neopets was becoming immensely popular.
The basic idea of Neopets is that users can sign up and create their own virtual pets. They can choose their colour and species, as well as personality. Its' users can play, feed, and battle their pets in a virtual world known as "Neopia".
After a few months, I got bored with the site. It had lost it's appeal to me - mainly because I was getting too old to be playing with something which is really only an Internet image.
But, it was last week, when I was forced to entertain a 9 and 11 year old, that I remembered Neopets. I had read a couple of opinions on Ciao - one praising the site, and one slagging it off. I thought I might as well give it a go - the kids were bound to like it.
~*~
THE SIGN-UP PROCESS
I realised once I reached the website that I had forgotten both my username and password - it had been a while, so I signed up James and Chloe (the kids) with their own accounts.
The process is quite simple - first of all you select your age-group (under-13s do not have access to chat functions unless their parents complete a consent form), and then fill in some basic information.
Then we were asked to tick some boxes on subjects which interested us - I should have known better, as I was greeted with many spam emails afterwards. After that, we were all set to create our first Neopet.
We were allowed to choose the pet's species, but some were "limited edition" and had all run out. They opted for a blobby looking creature, known as a "Kiko" to Neopet obsessives. Then we were transported to Neopia and left wondering what we were to do next.
~*~
NEWBIES TO NEOPETS
We noticed that we had been given 250 Neopoints. Neopoints are the online currency of Neopets - used to buy toys, games and food. We had also been given a "newbie pack," which consisted of four items for us to use. How thoughtful of them (I can't even tell myself if I'm being sarcastic).
But what to do? Neopets had changed a lot since I used to play. For one thing, there were
a lot more places to explore, new shops, with I assumed contained a lot of new items.
We decided to visit the Neopet shops, to buy their newly created Neopet a present. We tried the Toy Shop first, and were presented with this message: "Sorry, we are sold out of everything! We get restocked every eight minutes or so, so please come back soon."
"The toy shop must be popular," I thought. "Let's go to the gift shop," I told them. Surprise, surprise, we were given the same message. Wow, this could get boring really quick...
So, Neopets expected us to sit there refreshing the page while we waited for them to restock their shops. As you can expect, this wasn't likely to go down well with the kids. After four minutes or so, I gave up on the shops and we decided to go to the Explore page instead.
The Explore Page gives you a map of Neopia, and gives you the choice to visit one of their "worlds", including Desert World, Pirate World and Winter World. We decided to visit FaerieLand - described as a world above the clouds where the Neopian Faeries live. The thing which stands out the most here is the Wheel of Excitement.
"Step right up, step right up, one and all for the .... Wheel of Excitement. Give it a spin and see what it lands on, only 100 NP a go," we were told. Our Neopet seemed to like this wheel - it was smiling happily, so we decided to spend 100 NP on the wheel. We saw a Flash image of the wheel spinning around and around, until it landed on "The Skull". It didn't look very pretty, but the button said "Click Here to Collect Your Prize". It was then that we were told that The Wheel of Excitement had given their pet a disease.
From now on, whenever we visited their pets page, we were not given the familiar image of our pet sitting happily, instead we were given an image of our pet sitting unhappily in bandages. Luckily, James and Chloe were not too upset by this, but I can see that a lot of younger children would be.
I learned later on that this was not the "leave it for a couple of days and it'll be fine" disease - we would have to go to the Neopet shops again to buy a cure - and I told you that you get nowhere there.
Okay, so now we'll play a game, I told them. I have to admit, the Neopet games are pretty impressive and fun to play. They have a wide selection of over 80, which you can find in the various Worlds or in their Games Room. Some are Neopet versions of old favourites like Tetris and Snake, and some are new games which Neopets have created themselves. And there's another good point - they actually give you the chance to earn Neopoints. At last!
Some were easy and some were hard - and they gave away more Neopoints as you reached the higher levels, but they didn't really give them out really generously. Okay, perhaps okay if you wanted to buy a toy or two (if you ever managed to catch a restock), but not for some other things, which I'll explain later.
After playing a few games, I could tell the kids were starting to get bored with Neopets. I sighed. "Let's go to the Nickelodeon website," I told them...
~*~
THE GRAND OLD WORLD OF NEOPIA IN GENERAL
Here's some information on what the site has to offer.
NEOMAIL: Neomail allows Neopet users to send short messages to each other. These messages are not checked, but Neopets give an abuse email for children to contact if they spot anything bad. But, I don't feel that this is a good enough solution to the problem - by the time they've spotted it, the damage is done.
EXPLORE MAP: The portal to all of the Neopian worlds. These worlds are:
Terror Mountain (aka Winter World): This world offers a lot of winter and snow related shops and games. There's an advent calendar running each December, and if you delve further into this world, you'll find another world called the Ice Caves.
Tyrannia (aka Prehistoric World): This jungle-like world offers access to the Wheel of Mediocrity (Yippee - another place to get your pet diseased!), some more games and shops, and a Giant Omelette which offers free food for your Neopet.
VirtuPets Space Station: This is a space station which is supposed to be floating around Neopia. It offers battle armour and weapons for the BattleDome (explained later), and as usual, some shops and games.
Haunted Woods (aka Halloween World): This dark world gives access to a lot of Quests for your pets to try, a Haunted House, shops, items, games, and an online colouring page.
Lost Desert: I'm told this is one of Neopet's most recent worlds, which offers some good chances to win Neopoints - including a Fruit Machine, and Coltzan's Shrine which sometimes makes your Neopet stronger.
Faerieland: Hmm, very pink. It offers an Employment Agency, Bookshop, more Quests, and a game which allows you to bet money on a "Poogle Race".
Mystery Island: It gives you a Training School to make your pet stronger, a fortune teller, and a pointless tour around the island.
Krawk Island (aka Pirate World): The pirate world revolves around ANOTHER currency known as "Dubloons" which you can find in shops and around the site. There's a restaurant, another Training School, and yet more games.
CHAT: Not available to under 13s without parents permission, the chat rooms are full of hackers, scammers, profanity and sex. Yes, on a kids' site. I'll give you more of this in a minute.
GAMES: The games are good - there's something for everybody. They're one of the only things that actually give out Neopoints, and they vary in difficulty and theme. One of the best parts of the site really.
SHOPS: Here's where you get the shops that never restock, the chance to open up your own shop in the MarketPlace (for a price), Auctions, the chance to open up a Bank Account, Wishing Well, Neolodge... etc. There's lots to do here if you're lucky to get there before somebody else does.
NEWS: Neopets DO update the site almost every day, and they announce everything that they add to the site here.
HELP PAGES: You'll need it. Everything is pretty useful here, you can search by keyword, find a HTML Guide, and a How to Draw Your Neopet guide.
~*~
IT GETS WORSE....
After seeing some bad stuff when I was with the kids, I decided to do a little investigating on Neopets. I hung around some of its fan message boards, and heard some bad things there and checked the News page daily.
I finally figured out what my password was, and went to the chat boards. It wasn't pretty. Neopets said that the boards were monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but it was obvious that this was not true. There were people on there who posted boards of a sexual manner, found ways to fool the profanity filter (it wasn't hard) and it was also full of people who wanted to get innocent people's passwords.
So, when parents had signed their children's permission forms to have access to chat rooms, they were under impression that the boards were monitored. They weren't in any way, shape, or form. People were tricked into scams like "Give me your username and password and the Neopoint generator will give you millions of NPs!" and there was nothing that users could do but report them. By the time Neopets did sort it out, the damage was done.
There were also boards like "Can any girls aged 9 or under Neomail or IM me?" I don't need to paint a picture for that one.
Neopets is also very crafty in the way that it makes money. They release items every now and again, which are only available by signing up to other websites. Therefore, Neopets are actually making a lot of money out of the website. At the day of posting this, Neopets has over 30,000,000 owners. Now, obviously some have stopped playing, and whatever, but you can still say that a fair amount of people will sign up for these offers. We can clearly see that Neopets is making a heck of a lot of money, and when you think about it, all we get is an Internet image or a few Neopoints.
Neopets have also recently disposed of any games which give out a lot of Neopoints, which is really, in my opinion, a scam to get more people to sign up for the above offers. This means that it is harder for people to find cures for their pet's diseases. Cures in the main shops sell out extremely quickly, and obviously go to people with faster connections. Cures in the MarketPlace sell for ridiculous amounts of NP.
~*~
OTHER FEATURES
Battledome: A bit like Pokemon, the chance to battle your pets. This is where training schools come in handy. They make your pets stronger or wiser, which is good for these battles.
Soup Kitchen: Offering free food to newbies.
~*~
RECAP
Okay, here's a recap:
The Good:
~ Gives young children the chance to learn Internet skills. ~ Great games. ~ Sometimes it can be quite fun. ~ A well-designed and colourful site.
The Bad:
~ Chat boards not monitored. ~ Children have access to material they shouldn't be seeing on chat boards. ~ Neopets making a lot more money out of the site than they let on. ~ Neopets do little to sort out hackers, as they can easily sign up for multiple accounts if their old one gets blocked. ~ Neopets do nothing to give back stolen items from hackers or scammers, when it is actually partly their fault for doing little to monitor chat boards to STOP this.
The Scary:
~ "Any 9 year old girls wanna Neomail me?"
~*~
CONCLUSION
Neopets can be fun sometimes - they do offer good games and some good features to keep children entertained. I do not recommend letting your children have access to the chat features. There are rarely monitors online, and it's just not worth taking the risk. If your children already have access, make sure you monitor what they do on Neopets, and if necessary, email Neopets to request that your children's chat access is blocked.
Thanks for reading this - if you have any questions, leave a message in my Guestbook!
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Comments about this review »
ariadne 08.02.2005 01:08
First review I've read here that mentions the darker side of Neopets... I guess it's always a problem, especially for sites that cater for all age groups - maybe they should just prevent *all* kids from using the chatboards as there is no way Neopets can realistically filter out *all* the bad stuff. Anyway, good review.
paww 15.04.2003 16:58
I love this place and spend many a happy hour there. I earn around 2000 neopoint a day on the games and have my own house and shop and have only been a member for three weeks.
I do my own thing and do not bother with message boards or chatrooms. ALL members that I know of have been warned about the scams and abuse. I get the fealing that if you visit often then you find out the good and bad and can stear away from them.Penny xx
cgibson 21.03.2003 22:22
good op:) My 9 year old plays on neopets, but she doesn't go on the chat rooms. She has more sense.
Advantages: Great fun, and if you get a group of friends to register, then you can swap tips and items! Disadvantages: VERY addictive, and unfortunately, the pets don't actually move.
mailmekm 24.09.2001 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of neopets.com
Advantages: free, easy to use, lots of games and activities, safe for children Disadvantages: can be so addictive that you forget about the outside world
Dizzy_Lizzy 05.10.2004 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of neopets.com
Apr 28th, 2002
exceptional by (2%):
very helpful by (94%):
helpful by (2%):
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