Virtual Pets Blog

In the beginning, there was Neopets, and it was good.

Borne in November of 1999 from the minds of Adam Powell and Donna Williams, Neopets was an overnight success. By the end of the year, Wikipedia reports that the site was receiving 600,000 page views and had outgrown the bank accounts of its creators. Enter the Dohring Company. Dough Dohring and a team of investors bought a majority share in the property and Neopets Inc. was born. Since then, various merchandise and advertising licenses have been sold, and finally, the property was purchased in full by Viacom in 2005.

This is where things got messy. What began as a fun and radically new community based game has spiraled into the depths of corporate cold-heartedness. Something happened during Neopets’ journey into fame and corporate sponsorship; it became a victim of its own success. Let us examine the two problems that are slowly eating away at what was once one of the Web’s most friendly user communities: Pride and Site Security.

The obvious place to begin is pride. With it’s current status as the Web’s premiere virtual pet site, Neopets has become so caught up in it’s own success that it has forgotten how to deliver that most paramount of services: Customer Service. Users are constantly finding themselves the owners of frozen accounts after having done nothing wrong. They simply receive the standard form letter when they attempt to login, and when they attempt to contact the company, they are treated in a way that is frighteningly similar to how the IRS deals with the American taxpayer. It seems, these days that Neopets believes itself to be above explaining its actions to the users that it casts aside. How many innocent users does the company believe that it can treat in this manner before the flocks that have found their way to the site begin to migrate, en masse, to a friendlier locale?

Usernames play a big part in this. Hundreds of users per week find themselves frozen by TNT (The Neopets Team), many with accounts that are well in excess of two years old, for unacceptable usernames that were allowed to slip through the system filters, if there are truly filters in place at all. These users have been the most faithful, abiding by the rules of the site, providing the clicks that maintain the flow of advertising dollars, yet for their longevity they are not even given the chance to rectify the problem by changing their username and being allowed to login once more. They are simply given a cold farewell to their account and told that they are welcome to start anew. At first look, this does not seem to be so bad, until you consider the collectible avatars and trophies that are given out in the plots and promotions, then retired and never offered again. Then there are users who had pets that were given drastic and unattractive makeovers after the layout change, and allowed to choose which artwork they liked better. Should they try to recover the same species of pet and paint it as the former pet was, they are treated to the artwork that has been so highly criticized, with no option to get the former look back for their pet.

The customer service failings do not end here, however. There is a total lack of investigative willpower among the staff on Neopets that is just sickening. Accusations are thrown about on the site all the time, and if those accusations are made by a person of a significantly young age, they are accepted without question and no attempt to investigate the problem is made. The accused is simply frozen and told to start again. When true rules violators of the site are found, they are often left untouched unless they break one of the two cardinal rules of Neopets. Those cardinal rules are: No item duping, and no hacking accounts. It is my belief that the only reason these offenses are taken seriously at all is because they reveal the true severity of the second problem that plagues Neopets even today… Site Security.

Site security is a huge issue with Neopets. Cookie grabbers abound and it is not uncommon for the unwary user to click on a link they are led to by a seemingly friendly user, only to wake up the next day and login to find their entire inventory, bank account, and gallery empty. What’s worse is that they are then told that Items and Neopoints cannot be returned. After having worked hard to earn millions of Neopoints, and rare items, they are told that they must simply start over. Whatever happened to server logs? Would it truly be that difficult for staff to look at what was moved and simply put it back? Or is the reluctance to return these items suggestive of a bigger problem that TNT does not want to be brought into the light? Could it be that this problem is so widespread on Neopets that if they were to start returning things to victims of hacked accounts that they would need to hire a team of administrators just for that purpose? You be the judge.

I cannot, however criticize Neopets for disallowing item duplication, as this obviously would destabilize the site’s economy and deflate the value of the truly valuable and rare items that are subject to this cheat. What I do fault them for; however, is their handling of the matter. Oftentimes, in the early onset of a duplication wave, unsuspecting users are snookered into accepting what they believe to be a legitimate item, only to have their account frozen for cheating, and then given the cold silence that users have become so accustomed to when they try to dispute the claim against them.

I have to give credit where it is due. Neopets is a brilliant idea, and has spurred a plethora of smaller petsites that aspire to the greatness that Neopets has achieved. As the old saying goes “Pride goeth before the fall”, so too will Neopets be toppled one day by the ideas they helped to inspire in petsite fans everywhere.

Thank you all for listening to my rant.

Yours Truly,
TheDarkBaron
Permission to use this article is granted exclusively to Virtual Pets Blog (www.virtualpetsblog.com) and it may not be posted whole or in part on any other site without the express, written permission of TheDarkBaron.

Have you ever thought to yourself why or how Neopets grew so fast? Well, we’re as curious as you and we believe we have some reasons to why Neopets became so popular so quick. First of all, Neopets was one of the first virtual pet sites to actually open up - and it relied on its user base to help it grow. So, if your pet site doesn’t have a referral system yet, then be sure to implement one as soon as possible - with referral banners, buttons, links, etc.

The flash games: Neopets’ flash games aren’t any exception to the game. Kids love to play kids and they’re so easy to play and to earn neopoints, so why do you think so many kids go on Neopets on a daily basis to play their flash games? Is it because they have so many - or is it because the flash games are good? We’re not sure, but if Neopets grew because of their flash games then your pet site can too.

The content, features: Neopets’ features are actually pretty good and try to incorporate different aspects of a virtual pet site - like their Neoquest game is actually a twist of a RPG-game where you can explore a world with your character. Neoquest actually has two versions, which are neoquest 1 and neoquest 2. Their quests are also very unique - and each have different levels. Neopets doesn’t have an unlimited quester, but if they did; do you think more people would be on or would it not make a difference? We think the restock system and how balanced it is usually brings people on Neopets on a daily basis, but we could be wrong.

The staff: Have you ever wondered what happened to the staff interaction between the users? Well, after Neopets started to grow even larger - and attract more fans, the staff didn’t have any time to interact with their well-beloved players (but could you play them?). How can you work behind the scenes with a site as big as Neopets - and continue to get your job done? Of course, you can try to talk to your users once a week or something when you have a day off, but perhaps; your days off are spent with your family.

The lands: Neopets is like a virtual world but its a virtual pet site - its land are like shops you’ll find in a marketplace of some sort, which is actually pretty unique. Each land contains a few features, then a few shops, unless its the world of Neopia - or the main shops map, where it only has the shops and some other things. The shops continue to help the new members, but when the shops are sold out, the new members need to go buy from other user’s shops and try to feed their neopets.

So, what do you think really helped Neopets blow up and become one of the biggest pet sites in the community today?

Are you sick and tired neopets fansites not being promoted, nor getting large? Well, we have change coming. What are you doing? Does your fansite have unique titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords on all pages? If it doesn’t, then be sure to update all your pages to have its own titles, descriptions and keywords - not only will having all these on your fansite help your fansite on the search engines, it’ll help your visitors understand what your pages are about.

Let’s take a neopets dailies guide as an example. What is your current page title? Does it read Neopets dailies - your fansite name here or something else? If it says something else, then be sure to edit it - and include a different meta description. Not only will it tell the search engines that your page is about neopets dailies, it will tell the visitors that they’re on a page about neopets dailies. So, have you managed to update your neopets fansite yet?

If you’re using php for your pages and a mysql database then your neopets fansite can be easily updated. Are you using a php include to select your meta description and such? If so, then you could easily create a simple function that’ll select from your database and you can put a url, site title, and meta description into the database. We won’t release our script to the public, but we’re sure you’ll be able to find it somewhere.

Any neopets fansite can be promoted to become a large one. If you don’t have graphics for your neopets fansite yet, then be sure to get some. Users love to customize their profiles, neopages and such, so they’ll come to your fansite searching for graphics. What about an avatar guide that tells you how to find all the avatars on Neopets? Try to build one, and make it be powered by a mySQL database so that you can easily edit it, remove a broken avatar, and have users submit new avatars to you.

neopets webmasters have been working on their fansites for quite some time now, however; a lot of them aren’t making a lot of money yet because they don’t know what they’re doing. Do you even have any advertisements on your fansite yet? Well, you should. Learn to it’s easy and you can customize your advertisements to fit your neopets fansite. Remember webmasters, if you can get ranked on the search engines for the very competitive neopets terms, then you’re looking at least $40 - $50/day just from adsense. It’s not hard, and if you can earn that much; then you won’t have to work a full time job or anything because you’re generating all your money from google adsense.

If you make over $100 a month from adsense, then you’ll receive a check. If a neopets blogger can generate money, then you can to. Neopets cheat forums are also great earners because you can sell programs, sell neopoints, and sell accounts. Even though you’re a neopets cheating community - you can still sell things to generate money. What about a forum subscription where a user subscribes to your forum - to access neopets programs and other features? If you know what you’re doing you can easily attract all the neopets users that are looking to cheat neopets - and become a better neopets player, however; if you’re cheating on neopets, then your account will be banned all the time - so using proxies is a great idea.

Promoting your neopets fansite: have you tried advertising via google adwords to target the following keywords “Neopets, neopets cheats”, not only advertising on both of those keywords will help your fansite grow - but it’ll be expensive. You’re looking at least $0.13 clicks to advertise on the neopets keyword. A good advertisement would probably be “Need help?” as the title and “Do you need neopets help? Learn how to play neopets today!” something like that could attract users that search for neopets and neopets cheats on google, however; if you’re advertising on the neopets cheats keyword, then be sure to come up with a better name and description for your advertisement - so it’ll attract people.

If you’re neopets webmaster and you know how to make a neopets fansite grow, then feel free to post a comment!