For all everybody's said here, you're missing a major point...
Neopets treats everyone like crap.
Seriously. They do. Every last member. Shall we count the ways?
1. Glitches. ALL THE TIME. TP glitches, BD glitches, ALWAYS GLITCHES! What do you get when a glitch happens? If you're lucky, they'll acknowledge it. IF YOU'RE LUCKY. Your millions in items? Nah.
2. Downtime. Unscheduled. All the time. DFM Pteri? All the time.
3. Scammers, cheaters, hackers, etc. More often than not? You get screwed over because of them.
4. Ads, and lots of them. Big, freaking HUGE ads, on every page.
I don't know how people play Neo anymore. They treat the players like crap. Seriously, they don't give a darn about you, the individual player. They care about the players as a giant number, but that's it. They make MILLIONS on those stuffed toys and other stuff the sell. Cute? Sure. Overpriced? Like everything else. What does that get you? Servers that crash and lose you your stuff?
Say what you want about PowerPets as a game (and I'll freely admit I think the artwork is better on Neo)...they treat the players like people. they fix the problems and compensate people who lose because of them. I've NEVER had unscheduled downtime there, ever, in almost a year of playing. They don't toss ads at me.
Why do I play PowerPets? Because Neo treated me like crap, and I don't care to have that anymore.
http://www.powerpets.com/signup.asp?rfID=339450 sign up today. Best decision you'll make
And for those who say it's libel, it isn't. Public figures and corporations (like, saaaaaay...Neopets) are held to different standards for libel. In order for it to be libel, PP would have had to have malicious intent AND caused tangible (read: measurable) damage. Same reason Jay Leno gets away with making jokes about people ;)
And for everyone who said it's a cheap shot...
did you consider the things Neo does to PP? Naturally, you don't hear about these things, but that doesn't mean they don't happen ;)
Don't believe me? Consider this...PP has over 300k active users (they ice all the cheaters and actually DON'T count them in the user total. nice to see a legit amount ;x)...gets well over a mil pageviews a day. I don't know the exact number, but it's a lot.
Search engines rank sites by the traffic on the sites. PP may not be number one, but it's safe to say they're in the top 10. Google has them fourth, Ask.com has them 6th. They aren't even in the top 10 on Yahoo. Not even the top FIFTY. You read that right. Coincidence? Unlikely. Neo "asking" Yahoo to bump them? Well....
Lest we forget the countless times Neo's mailed PP complaining about things PP has done.
Anyone who's read the full article would know that there was a nice header attached to it. "Quite often we receive emails or questions on the boards claiming we "copied" some other site. In light of recent changes on a larger *other* site, we thought it would be fun to show you what Power Pets *could* be like if we actually *did* copy anyone else:"
The article was in response to all of the users who claim PP copied Neo. the Creators were making it quite clear...they weren't going to copy Neopets. They DIDN'T copy Neopets. The goals of the site are different and they aren't going to try and do the things Neopets does. That simple.
Say all you want, that it's a low blow or whatever. If you judge based on the one side of the story you know...your loss. Me? I'm never going back to the crap I put up with on Neo. Enjoy losing your H4Ks in unequip glitches and your 500 Dubloon Coins from TP glitches.
Inrun Edit: Please don't double post. Use the edit button located in the top right of your post box.