What is Neopets? ================= Neopets is a free online virtual game where you can create and account, create up to four pets and you must feed and care for your pets. You must earn Neopoints (Neopetmoney) to buy food for your pet by playing games and opening a shop to sell your unwanted items. To be honest as the review goes on you will see more and more of what is available on Neopets and understand the endless possibilities for you to achieve with your pet and your Neopoints and the reason as to why this site has become such a huge success to millions of users who really do range from 8 yrs old to over 45 years of age. I am personally addicted to Neopets and have to confess I am 35 years old and I am in no way the oldest as I have a few close friends on the site (Neofriends) who are over 45 yrs old. Neopets was first created in 1999 and has continued to grow and flourish since with a massive 185,450,036 created in Neopia at this current time and this number is continually growing.
Opening an Account. ======================= As I said before opening an account is free, all you need to join is a valid email address. You simply click on sign up and fill in the requested details, you will then been sent an email confirming your request and asking you to validate your account. I recommend you do this as soon as possible as your account is limited until you do this. Once you validate you account you can then go ahead and start to create your Neopet.
Creating a Pet. =============== When you go to create a pet, you are given a choice of over 50 species to choose from. Some pets are restricted and limited addition, this means you cannot choose some species they have to be obtained another way. Each species is available in a choice of Red, Green, Yellow or Blue (you decide) and you can also choose if you wish for a male or female pet (not that it makes any difference to the game itself). You have to decide on a name or you can request a random generated one and the vital states of the pet can be changed up to 4 times until you are happy. When happy you just click create pet and you are off.
Extra Info. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ When you first join
Neopets you are given 200 Neopoints (this is basically the Neopet version of money), when you create your first pet you are given an additional 50 Neopoints and you are also given a Newbie Pack for joining Neopets and creating your first ever Neopet. (You are not given the freebie pack for every pet you create and please note you can have a maximum of four pets per account and you are only allowed one account per person.)
The Idea of Neopets. ======================== The idea of Neopets is to earn Neopoints to spend in shops buying food, clothes, grooming, toys, medicines, and much more for your pet, open a bank account and save Neopoints and gain interest at the same time. Built your Neopet a home, furnish it and give it a garden, buy plants and furniture for the garden too. Buy your pet a Pet pet to play with. Buy stock and build a shop to sell you stock in, put your items up for auction or even trade your items for different items you decide. The more points you earn the better your shop and house can be. The list just goes on and on but that is the basic scenario.
Things to do on Neopets. ======================== In this section, I am going to try to list as many features on offer from Neopets as possible, but as you will see by the list there is a great deal and I probably have not mentioned on the site. For this, I apologise but I am going to try to be as informative as I can and will have to keep some of that brief or you will be reading this review all day.
Games. ~~~~~~~~~ Neopets offers over 165 flash games to play, each of those you can only score Neopoints on three times a day. These games are split into one of three categories Puzzles, Action or Lucky Chance. Here is a list of some of the games, but I am only listing a few to keep my review basic at this point.
Meerca Chase II Test your Strength Snow Wars Neopoker Illusens Glade 200m Peanut Dash Dubloon Disaster Destruct-O-Match II Cliff Hangers Kacheekers Plushie Tycoon. As you play the games you will notice a similarity to normal arcade classic games in these games, they have just different names due to them being the Neopets versions. As I said though the list above is only a few examples, there are loads to choose from.
Open a Shop. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you open a shop on Neopets, you can sell your unwanted items in your shop. To get an idea of prices so that your shop gets business and is not too expensive you can use the shop wizard to search for the items you want to sell. The shop wizard always tells you who is selling that produce and for how much listing from the cheapest up. This gives a good guide of how much to charge and occasionally you can get great bargains from the shop wizard too. Another good way of getting items to sell in your shop is to visit the Neopian main shops and haggle with the shop keeper, but don't haggle to much as stock is limited and everyone in Neopets is trying to buy it too. The Neopian shops refill there stock every eight minutes so you can always keep checking back if they are sold out. Bargains are available from the Neopets auctions and are a good way to get stock shop and you can trade some of your items for better items on the trade section of Neopets on Mystery Island.
Making Extra Neopoints. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Open a bank account and save your excess Neopoints this way you can collect interest on them daily, the bank also works on the basis the more you have in your account the more you can upgrade your account status and the more interest you can collect. Fancy you luck on the stock markets then Neopets can offer that too, buy shares cheap and then keep them until there price increases and you could be cashing in on a tidy profit. Maybe you are more for chancing your luck, try spinning the wheel of knowledge, fortune and more to win Neopoints or great prizes to sell in your shop. Perhaps you like scratchcards, well Neopets has them too, you could buy one and win thousands of Neopoints or a mystery prize.
Build your pet a home. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Neopets there is an option so that you can buy a plot of Neo-land and build a house with a garden, you can choose what you want your house made from how many rooms and more and you can buy furniture for each room. You can build it with a garden and buy plants and furniture for your garden too. You may prefer to send your pet on holiday for a little while if you are going on holiday or you just want a break. It does cost Neopoints to put your pet in the neo-lodge but whilst there you do not need to feed him but you can still lay games and earn points.
Explore Neopets. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pictures of neopets.com
neopets magazine
There are Seventeen different areas you can visit on Neopets, they are:-
The Dark Moon - Kreludor The Virtupets Space Station Terror Mountain Altador Lunari Island Tyrannia Haunted Woods Lost Desert Neopia Central Kiko Lake Roo Island Brightvale Faerieland Krawk Island Mystery Island Maraque Meridell
On each of these areas, there are many different areas to visit and many things to do and some of them even hold secret locations like the link to Jelly World and The Hidden Tower.
NeoFriends and Neomail. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Whilst on Neopets you can get to meet and chat to other Neopet users using the Neo-Boards, these are available for help and other topics to from advertising your shop to help if you are on a quest. A Neomail can be sent just like an email to other Neopet users to keep in touch and make friends as well and these Neomails are much more private than using the Neo-boards.
Trophies ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Neopets have a feature for you to win trophies to add to your user look-up page. If you score a high score, inn the games you could win a trophy for that game and Neopets run weekly competitions such as a beauty contest and poetry contest and many more. The weekly winners of these competitions win a trophy and Neopoints
There are still so many features of Neopets that I have not even mentioned in this review that you can do when you are on Neopets such as Multi-Player games, where you have the opportunity to challenge other Neopet users, enter you pet into a battledome challenge and even getting jobs. With all this in mind, it is quite easy to see why Neopets is so addictive. I am personally a member as is my daughter and although I occasional have a rest from Neopets most of the time I spend at least one hour a day on the site and some days even longer as you are always able to find something to do on there.
PARENTAL CONSENT. ============================ As I said earlier, you can register on Neopets providing you are eight years old or above. For eight to thirteen years of age, the child needs parental consent to access certain site features such as the games that come under the gambling category, no Neo-Mails or Neofriends and no access to the Neo_boards. I personally have not given my daughter any consent to this as I feel that thirteen years of age before you can access these is far safer than any younger. In my opinion, it is extra safety not to give consent for your child.
Rules ================= Neopets has a strict code of conduct that must be followed when using there site which is great as it does illuminate some of the pains from the site. When you break the site rules, you get your whole account frozen from Neopets and you are unable to get it back.
NEW FROM NEOPETS. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Neopets has now moved into the merchandise market in a big way. You are now able to buy the Neopets plushies, action figures, interactive toys, trading cards, magazinest-shirts, Gifts Mugs and much much more. They really are spreading there wings since they first started Neopets in 1999.
A MAJOR FLAW WITH NEOPETS. =================================== Neopets in my opinion is a great site and many of the games are very education for children, I have no problem with my daughter using the site but I still feel you need to monitor your child even when they are on Neopets especially if they have there own email accounts. The reason for this is as I discovered via my daughter that she created an additional account for herself without me knowing and gave a false date of birth giving her full access to the site. Also another flaw is that if someone breaks the rules on Neopets and does get there account frozen there is no system in operation to stop them from just opening one after another after another, continue cheating, and rule breaking it is a shame there is not a system that Neopets could freeze access from that particular I.P address.
Summary. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As I have said through this review, I personally enjoy Neopets and so does my daughter. There is plenty to do on the site and in my opinion, it is great and very educational for the younger users as well, teaching them basics like having to earn for food and saving money as well as the educational games that Neopets have such as Brain Teasers, Maths Nightmare and many more. It also teaches them that pets need to be cared for everyday and fed daily and that all this costs money. Therefore, to sum it all up I would give this site thumbs up and highly recommend Neopets.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: Fun, enjoyable for the whole family, plenty to do, educational. Disadvantages: Addictive, some pages need refreshing, down for maintenance occasionally.
KarenUK 04.01.2003 (28.02.2003)
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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
Aug 25th, 2006
exceptional by (29%):
very helpful by (69%):
somewhat helpful by (3%):
