Neopets often does not listen to what their users want, and this is the second reason most people leave (first is being frozen). 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. Any item that actually does something worth while costs so much money that you would have to save up for several months to get it, which by that time, either the item is no longer available, or no longer has the desired effect.
A common example is when they release a decent battledome weapon, then quickly downgrade it, dropping it’s value severely. The high score lists are also nearly impossible to get on, and the games barely give out enough at times.
Several random events are completely horrible, from color changing ones changing a pet into blue/red (basic color), invisible, or baby, which can set you back millions if you spent the money on a paintbrush for your pet, to events that can steal neopoints (which happens much more often then gaining neopoints or items; a typical person that visits the chat boards for 5 hours can loose over 3,000 neopoints). Neopets has a huge focus on marketing and sponsors and is overcrowded, and over marketed.
Most users on Neopets are 12 – 17 years old, and despite their claims, the chat boards are not completely suited for 14 and under users. There are not enough monitors to go around most of the time, roughly 5000% of what they have now would be needed.
The boards are filled with ‘lovesicks’ – the act of being so desperate for love (which, on Neopets, is a date for your pet. Neopets has stated several times that pet dating isn’t allowed, but doesn’t do anything to inforce it), it is ridiculous and sickening.
Neopets claims it is not a dating site, however, during most of the day, most of the boards are filled with posts about pets or users wanting a mate/date. 99% of these do not get deleted, even when some of them start talking about the act of mating. The roleplay board is full of posts about ‘wolf mating season’ or ‘lupe mating season’, you get the point.
The most popular board on Neopets, the Fan Club boards, is filled with all sorts of colorful posts. Most of these posts include neopet dating, mating, perverted or obscure things, people pretending to act popular,or worse – people asking to adopt painted or rare pets, some which cost over 1 or 2 million neopoints.
To ‘adopt’ someones pet you have to ‘transfer’ which Neopets doesn’t allow, but never does anything about. The people on the boards are mostly not friendly, and it’s been a proven fact that if you’re a male on Neopets, you’re likely to get a lot of neomails from girls.
When you make boards about Pokémon, people are very rude and say mean things, I have even seen them call people Pokémon f**kers, using a way to bypass the filter and the staff did nothing. People who ask for items and donations and are called. Boards rarely stay on-topic.
Neopets has a huge issue with its users (mostly the 12-15 year olds) stealing other members or other sites pictures. They do little about this when reported, and often the offender gets away with it indefinitely. The biggest place to see images stealing is in the Beauty Contest, where most images in there are stolen — up to 90% of the top 50 in most weeks. The art gallery is another hard hit area, but sometimes pictures actually get removed from it.
Neopets has also let pictures from other pet sites win the beauty contest, with no obvious care to delete or freeze the user, as their terms and conditions for the beauty contest states. If you have a virtual pet site, or any site at all really, be warned – Neopets will not listen to you in regards to getting your images removed from their site. They will instead, state that they cannot monitor every picture in the beauty contest or some junk like that.
They give this same excuse to any artist that emails them (expect a 3 – 4 month wait for a reply if you are lucky enough to get one). I reported a user stealing an image about a year ago and it took 6 months to get a reply, that was just a generic “We can’t do anything”. Neopets however, rigorously goes after anyone that infringes on their trademarks.
Another One Said This
I worked hard for 7 months playing games and the dailies and freebies almost 24/7 I scrimped and saved to get a baby paintbrush for my new Ogrin and just a week after he was painted I tried to login and was told:
This Account Has Been FROZEN For the Following Reason: This account was being used to earn neopoints.
Well if you can’t use your account to earn NP how are you supposed to buy things? Then I made a new account, 2 days later, hadn’t earned anything except getting my newbie pack and that account was frozen.
And One User Had This to Say
All top scorers are cheaters. Neopets is all about the benjamins. They breed a constant need for neopoints, for avatars, for stamps. Anything for inflation. So people spend more time on the game. So Neopets get more money from their sponsors. McDonalds, Disney. All one happy commercial global family.
Neopets doesn’t care about anyone. Unfair freezings, glitches. Unless you’re rich and powerful they don’t want to know your name. You’re not a cheater? Maybe not yet. I used to play just to take care of my pet. But the sponsors don’t care about that. Neopets scammed and screwed me over.
If you’re not a cheater then that’s why you’re not the best. Neopets was made for cheaters. Whether they’re conscious about it or not. Long live the mighty dollar! Long live the mighty neopoint! Don’t forget, this is all about competition and addiction
Another One Has This to Say…
This person has a board saying they want to disown one of their pets so everyone said their Aisha, and I said keep them but they said they didn’t want the Aisha so i said find it a good owner and not a begging moron and now people are whining saying things like this in response.
UR ACTIN BLACK AND I BET UR NOT! JOIN NEOPETS IS ALOT BETTER AND IT ONLY FREEZEZ UR ACCOUNT FOR CURSING AND STUFF! IT IS A LOT BETTER THAT POWERPETS AND THERE IS A LOT MORE TO DO! IT IS ALSO FREE! THERE IS A LOT MORE WAYS TO GET MONEY! EVERY1 SHOULD JOIN AND U CAN USE THE SAME E-MAIL 4 TIMES COMPARED TO POWERPETS HOW U CAN ONLY USE IT ONCE! PPL ARE A LOT NICER AND THEY GIVE U MUCH BETTER STUFF! U CAN HAVE THE COOLEST USER-LOOKUPS AND EVRYTHING! AND THEIRS GUILDS AND STUFF! AND IF U LIKE H.P {HARRY POTTER}YOU CAN JOIN GUILD! iF U JOIN HER GUILD U GET SORTED BY THE SORTING HAT IF YOU HER! JOIN !!!!
Of course, there are some staff and users who are as helpful as they can be. I will not give out their names because I don’t want them to be flooded with help requests.
In conclusion, Neopets is vast, over-marketed, over-populated, understaffed, poorly monitored, and too popular for it’s own good. However, as long as you don’t visit the chats, guilds, or lose any items, Neopets is rather fun. It’s the first virtual pet site to reach this large and shows no signs of stopping, as long as they have sponsors. Contrary to popular belief, Neopets was not the first virtual pet site. Some had existed since 1996, but most are long gone now since most refused to sell out to sponsors.