Defending Neopets: A Counter Argument Against the Article in Australia

There was a completely slanderous and false article released about Neopets in Australia, and also on the news. The reporters did not even check out the site, since they would clearly see that what they were about to write was in error. Another article from Pink Poog Toy points out the errors in the article.

The number of javascript scripts targeting Internet Explorer, several people who are unable to switch browsers have turned off javascript. You cannot access any items (so you can’t feed or play with your pet via items). Only a few games are inaccessible. Those who have disabled javascript should look into visiting the Soup Kitchen, which lets users feed their pets for free if they have under 3,000 Neopoints. Not that it really matters if you can buy items in the main shops, since getting anything of profit is insanely hard. Good item stocking shops can have over 65 people in them trying to buy items at any time, even with the random restocks.

Neopets also has a bit of downtime, which can last anywhere from 3 hours to a day. While isn’t all that much, it’s enough to make users leave the site and venture out. Of course, once they find another pet site, most users try and spam with their Neopets referral link, or call the site a copier/stealer. Their server usually goes down with no explanation as to why and when you lose stuff because of the server nobody cares. If you are lucky enough to get an answer from support, it will usually be ‘We cannot help you with missing items’.

When Neopets goes down, most site’s traffic doubles or triples. Users also often sign up with more accounts then the limit (most sites only let you have one, Neopets lets you have 4), and then scream and spam up the forums with new accounts they make when they are frozen. Most sites make users agree that they have read the rules before they sign up, so users SHOULD read the rules, which state clearly how many accounts you have. However, only 5% of them actually do. It’s utter chaos for smaller sites when Neopets goes down, since most of the users are not civil. I would say that 80% of Neopet’s users that visit other sites while it is down break over 7 of the major rules within 20 minutes of joining.

They will often join the site, create one of every pet, go onto the forum and then post their neopets referral link (A general rule of sites is to NEVER advertise other pet sites.) When they get a warning, they will make about 18 posts on the board, usually in all caps, saying that the site is a complete rip off of Neopets, and that everyone should join there. These users end up banned, and then they repeat this act either on another site, or the same site if they aren’t IP banned.

Neopets also has a plethora of Anti-Neopets sites. Sadly, reading over what they wrote, I can attest to hearing and on few occasions, witnessing the same events happening. I don’t want to steal their spotlight, so I’ll just link to the largest Anti-Neopets site I could find. Here is also a link to their testimonials page. If you happen to be a parent reading this review, I strongly suggest checking out the above linked site. Then again, I guess it would do everyone a good deal to read it.

Neopets is the perfect example of quantity over quality, intergrating banner ads into a site, annoying and/or ignoring users, and poor monitoring. Neopets has a huge focus on marketing and sponsors and is overcrowded, and over marketed. If you never loose an item or get frozen on Neopets, you will have a fun time. However, Neopets has been known to freeze for no reason, or a generic reason with little to no explanation. It takes most users over a year to get their account back when frozen, if they even get a response, which 95% of the time they do not. Of course, your experience with getting frozen will be either, you get frozen for the first offence (or no offence at all, then get a random copy + paste responce that has no relation to anything that you have ever done), or it will take somewhere around around a full description of two wolves mating with pictures.

Neopets may be the largest pet site in terms of features, registered accounts, and staff, but it is not certainly the best in my eyes. Most of the users here are blindly obsessed, rude, hormone induced little monsters. Stick about 80,000 of them in a 50 acre field, with 50% of them trying to buy items at any given time, and the other half trying to talk, and that is how it is. The group would be about 15% males and the rest females, with 80% of the females flirting with the males. Out of the group, there are maybe 100 moderators/police/whatever, most with no desire to much of anything besides maybe bother some random people when one of the bosses aren’t looking. The entire lot is covered with commercialized products including toys, stickers, billboards, banner advertisements, annoying flashing shockwave files, and generally other distracting features. You can barely walk around without bumping into someone, who, if you are new, will most likely spit on you and call you an idiot, and call you an idiot still when you ask what an idiot is.

If you happen to be using Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape or another browser that can let users have their own custom stylesheets, I’ll let you in on a secret. Have you wanted to make the Neopets banners at the top go away? If you are using Firefox, Mozilla, or Netscape (or variants), you can download Adblock extension. This will be a great help. Now… if you want to get rid of the space it creates… that’s going to be a bit more difficult. Mozilla lets you use custom stylesheets. If you only have one copy of it installed, search your hard drive for ‘userContent-example.css’ or a folder called ‘Chrome’. Find the folder, create a new text document in any program, and copy and paste the following two lines:

Remove any spaces between the ][ you might have picked up. They usually won’t bother anything, but some older versions are picky about it. Save the file as ‘userContent.css’ in the same folder. Next, all you do is close the browser, boot it up again, and Voila. I’d recommend using that in conjunction with AdBlock so the things don’t even load. Note that your friends using IE can’t use this trick, because they can’t support css3 selectors like i used to single out the Neopet’s table. Nor do they get the wonderful AdBlock.