June 08, 2020

My time with neopets started in very early 2008. I was 11 years old. My two (2.5 and 4.5 years) older sisters and I saw a lot of neopets commercials on Nickelodeon and wanted to play so bad. At the time, we only used our computer for typing homework assignments or for MapQuest before google maps was a thing. 

My mom relented and gave us an email address through our ISP and got a shared neopets account for the three of us. This account was shared by the three of us for about four months until we decided that sharing neopoints (the in-game currency) with two other people was hard, especially if one of you worked really hard for those points. 

So, we branched out and made two more accounts. The middle sister kept the initial one. The oldest sister had an account and played every now and then but she was a bit old for it, I guess. 

My other sister and I loved neopets. We would always be online playing games, chatting on the neoboards, and making friends in our guilds. This especially happened more often when she got her first laptop and I claimed ownership of the desktop. 

I believe that she played for at least two years before she started going down other rabbit holes of websites. Whatever happened there is her story, not mine. Anyway.

I spent as much time as I could on neopets. My neopets were my babies, especially my precious kacheek. She is one of my original neopets. At some point kind of early on, I found myself in ownership of a Christmas Paintbrush and I used it on her. 😍 She was my BABY. 

I also spent a significant amount of time collecting avatars and earning neopoints so I could buy a Faerie Queen Doll or borrow it with a collateral and get the FQD avatar. That avatar was so beloved by me. I don't know why I loved it so much especially considering I hated the color pink at the time...

(Side note: I did eventually get the avatar. I think someone let me borrow it for free.)

I remember having three specific friends on neopets that I met on the site (none of my "real life" friends would join the site). I remember Tiffany, Aly, and Brendon. 

I think Tiffany was the friend I had been closest with. She may have been a year or two older than me and maybe lived in Winsconsin. I thought she was so cool. I think we may have role played a little bit. One thing that I had forgotten about until just moments ago is that I actually had a notebook where I wrote essentially a fanfiction of us and our neopets were real. No idea if I ever completed that and it probably got thrown away.

I remember Aly and Brendon with less detail. I know that Brendon was also friends with my sister, but I can't remember if Aly was or not. I do remember that Aly had a little sister that played, too, and we were neofriends, but I don't think we actually talked. 

The most impactful part of neopets to me was the ability to edit certain web pages. I spent hours learning html and bits of CSS so I could edit webpages. I enjoyed manipulating the code and changing small things and fixing everything to be just right. I would take code that other people had made and would slap different pieces together to make the perfect profile or petpage. If those pieces of code didn't initially work together, I loved the challenge and the satisfaction of fixing them to make them work. So satisfying!

I ended up making several petpages, often times changing them into something else later. I had a page to show all the avatars I had and the ones I still needed, what things I'd like to collect, a page dedicated to tasks you should complete every day ("dailies"), a page dedicated to funny chat screenshots ("screenies"), sometimes I'd make a page dedicated to a guild, and so on. 

I remember trying to become a "button" maker at one point. I think I called the page "green eyed buttons." It was fun editing pictures and turning them into buttons. I probably still have a few on my profile page. I knew that I wouldn't be successful in button-making since I didn't have any programs that allowed me to make moving gifs and those were all the rage at the time. But I had fun doing it, and that's what matters. (God, if I had photoshop at the time... 😍)

Towards the end of my big neopets career (probably around 13 and 14 years old), theneopetsteam developed a game that was essentially in beta the entire time it was on the site that was called Key Quest. Ask anyone who played neopets during that time and they will tell you that KQ was *the shit.* It made my desktop lag so bad and sometimes the connection would fail and I'd be kicked out of the game, but it was worth it for just a moment of gameplay. 😍

KQ was like a board game and it had many mini games incorporated into the gameplay. I cannot possibly tell you what was so fun about that game but it was the most amazing thing at the time. But KQ is no longer.

I believe it was when neopets was sold to Viacom or Viacom sold neopets to someone else, all the files and servers for KQ was lost. I believe this caused a dramatic drop in web traffic to the site. 

Neopets wasn't the same anymore. The owners didn't care like the old ones did. It was boring. Nothing new ever really happened. There wasn't much reason to stay.

Currently, neopets is in the possession of JumpStart, which is known for making kid friendly and educational websites. JS has provided some change and some hope, but for those of us who knew Neopets during the original run and when it was initially sold (the time that I began playing) know that it'll never be the same. 

The only reason I'm bringing this up right now is because I received an email from neopets tonight about their open beta for the mobile-friendly site. I was excited at first, but then I remembered that the site never has anything for me to keep logging on for. Maybe when the site is fully mobile... but I doubt I'll find a legitimate reason to become a regular again.