Neopets: How Much is Too Much? by Shoyru_Lover

The eternal question no doubt (actually not really, but it makes good conversation!!). How much Neopets is too much and is it really good for you?

I once chatted with a lovely girl called Kaorichan and, after a while, the topic of “How much time do you spend on Neopets” popped up. After careful prodding and prying, Kaorichan mentioned once speaking to a man who told her he spent on average about 13 hours a day on it. The response, “Hello! Wake up, have a shave and brush your teeth!” seemed to be on both our minds.

While the example above is an example of someone who clearly spends too much time on Neopets to the point where it is unhealthy, I’ve witnessed some people who are absolute fanatics about the game to the point that it scares me, even more than Cruella Devil on 101 Dalmatians (she did a real good job of terrifying me).

Clearly bad news for the advocates of sport and outside activities, some people are spending more and more time sitting at their computers playing computer games, and more so in this case, Neopets. If it was an hour or two every few days, I wouldn’t have a big problem for it, but seriously, 5-6 hours everyday on a little net game? That’s simply obsessive behavior on little bits of data which should only be treated as a trivial game. Even I, Yukio, the webmaster of the largest Neopets fan site, which receives over 65 million hits per month alone hardly spend that much time on Neopets.

For the curious, I, on average spend about 5-10 minute every day on Neopets, resulting in about 1 hour every week just for Neopets. Even with this little time, I have managed to create in surplus of 10 million neopoints in one account, thus dashing the rumor that you need to spend hours on Neopets to become ‘rich’. Even then, I would be more than willing to donate all the neopoints to the money tree, simply because I hardly ever spend them, seeing nothing worth spending on.

I simply treat Neopets as a game. I don’t obsess over it and from my view, I think everyone else should treat it the same way as well. However this is not the case. Too many times I see people spend 4-5 hours on Neopets everyday and doing nothing at all but refreshing main shop pages, chatting and wasting precious time just staring at the computer screen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling people how to spend their time, but if they really want to think about it, they’re wasting countless hours, working for meaningless points which has absolutely no effect on them in real life. Will having 100,000,000 neopoints make you a better person in real life? Will having that many neopoints improve your family life? Of course not. However some people seem to have lost sight of what Neopets really is and how it should be treated.

So to answer the question, “How much is too much?”, let’s look at some easily answered questions

1. Do you find that you plan times to wake up in the middle of the night so you can grab that finishing auctioning item?
2. Do you find yourself scamming users just so you can gain Neopoints?
3. Do you find that Neopets is affecting your real life?

I would think that answering yes to any of the above questions would result in the conclusion that you are spending too much time on Neopets. People who do need to step back, count up on average how much they spend on Neopets every day, multiply it by 7, then multiply it by 4 to determine how much they spend on Neopets every month. It really looks large now doesn’t it, now that you’ve counted it all up? Moreover, anyone with over 80 hours a month is spending way too much time on Neopets.

Again I assert that Neopets is only a game. It is an excellent medium for meeting friends through it. However, isolating the game alone without the factor of online friends, please be aware that even if you are scammed on Neopets, even if you are the richest person on Neopets, even if you own the strongest pet on Neopets, in real life, nobody gives a rat’s butt.

For many users who are obsessed, this article is for you. Do yourself a favour, wake up and help yourself, for nobody else will and embrace life as it should be embraced.