NeoPets is Surprisingly Cool…
Despite NeoPet’s poor privacy and spam policy for older children and adults, I must admit that I’m hooked! I can understand why children and adults of both sexes enjoy it — it’s got the fantasy aspect of faeries and mystic creatures, the feeding and taking care aspects similar to the long forgotten electronic gigapets, the vast challenges of online and solo gaming (puzzles, chance, and action games), hidden surprises, and the opportunity to knock the çráp out of someone else’s neopet in the Battledome!
With more than 68 million pets registered into the system, the online service requires probably more bandwidth than AltaVista, yet needs the security of My Yahoo mixed with the transactional data requirements of Amazon and online banking. We’re talking serious ecommerce — tailored for kids.
I find a lot of interesting parallels with adult life. You can adopt pets, interest is earned daily for neopoints deposited in the bank, treasured items are stored in safety deposit boxes, kids learn the inside and out of buying and selling through their own online stores, homes can be purchased and furnished, and there is an online auction of neo-items that mirrors much of the functionality of eBay! Pets go to training schools, and can donate goods to other needy neopets. The site is fun and they are accidentally learning some basic grownup concepts, which I doubt was due to any intent on the part of NeoPets.
Here’s a list of places in Netopia to visit every day:
And a list of places in Netopia to visit every couple of hours:
My current, ever-changing list of favorite games:
- Zurro Ball - play up to three times a day.
Scarab 21 - play as much as you want, limited to daily winnings of 5,000 neopoints. Each game nets from 100 to 200 neopoints.
Dubloon Disaster - play up to three times a day.
Spell-Or-Starve - play up to three times a day. (an average player can get about 2,500 neopoints per day playing Medium or Hard)
NeggSweeper - play as much as you want (you can easily get at least 150-250 points per Easy game, and 400 to 600 each Hard game), limited to daily winnings of 3,000 neopoints.
Cliffhanger - play as much as you want, limited to daily winnings of 1,500 neopoints which can be easily reached within ten tries of this Hangman game (when playing Hard).
Tyranu Evavu - play as much as you want, but the good winnings are few and far between; after a dozen or so fast games, I am typically ahead by only 100 to 200 neopoints.
Somehow I know that I’m going to end up eventually expanding this into one of my regularly updated content pages and pulling it out of the blog…
i was just playing zurroball and thought i’d do a google search to see if i could find any tips anywhere. Your page was the only one that came up (besides a neopets page). Got any hints? Also, just curious, are you in a guild? Which one? How do you like it?
No, I don’t really have any detailed hints for Zurro Ball, although I get a lot of points when I repeatedly bounce the ball off the left or right walls. I also get a Round the World (or something like that) once when I used one of the smaller balls. I think I bounced it very fast off of one wall and it went all the way across the screen to hit the other wall before I bounced it up again. But that’s almost impossible to recover from reliably. And, nope, not a guild member. Not really interested. - RDL
What do you think about neopets harrasing christians? You can put in your guild on userlook up or shop, any mysitcal, cultic, witches wicca, ect. They do not care but if you are in a christian guild or dare to say God bless you in any of these places they will freeze you. Your shop, guild even your account. Say they do not allow religion content. But all the evil is considerd religion as well. And since they have wizards, witches ,spells, ect. They are breaking their own rules.
Interesting point. I can see that their intention is to avoid being a bulletin board for various causes and to keep the fantasy aspect of the site intact. You are correct that most of the concepts of the fantasy land derive from many different ancient religions, and that some people get a bit carried away in their postings and shops. It won’t be me, but I wonder if someone will eventually end up testing their monitors (censors) by incorporating ancient gods such as Chemosh, Moloch, Serapis, Tanit, or even Zeus — all of which were appeased by their respective civilizations’ religious zealots with the sacrifice of children in ancient times. - RDL
Okay I told myself I wasn’t going to post any more comments that might start another argument, but I couldn’t help myself. Anyways, Neopets does not harass christians. In my shop I have a picture of a cross that looks like an item to buy that says, well I don’t remember what it says because I don’t have it in their anymore, but it said something religious, and Neopets didn’t freeze my account. And there are lots of shops that have american flags that say god bless america under them, well at least there were for sometime, I haven’t looked for awhile. Just because they have faeries, witches and what not on their site doesn’t mean they are promoting wiccan religion or whatever. Also, if they freeze your account for saying god and being in a christian guild (if that’s what you are saying) then how come there is a christian guild intilted “christian” who uses the word god and jesus numerous times and the people who run the guild don’t have there accounts frozen?? hmm isn’t that amazing!! People are really stupid.
A good hint for ZuroBall is to run programs in the background that will slow your PC down, making it much easier to control the ball
Helps if you have a çráp PC like me of course. Anyone tried cellblock? I found a combination of moves that can almost guarantee a win everytime and from that have made around 100,000 neopoints in total. Then there’s the anagram game, who’s name I can’t remember, but you have to solve anagrams to move around a maze and kill the ghost… there’s plenty of anagram solvers out there on the web and you can make around 650 neopoints for evey ‘hard’ game that you win. Not that I ever play all this of course, they’re my girlfriend’s pets. honest! ;P
Neopets has never sent me any spam and I have been on for over a year. Your daughter most likely signed up with some of neopet’s sponsers to get money. Also if you’re worried about bad words and stuff like that then you should not be sending her to school because unlike neopets there is no filter or anything to stop that from going into her ears. Honestly I bet she already knows all this bad stuff and is embarresesd by having you do all this.
As embarrassed as your parents are by your poor spelling, punctuation, and reading comprehension, I’m sure. Your comment on this page is off topic. Did you bother trying to read and understand the parts mentioning the independent testing, the email address created solely for testing Neopet’s distribution of email addresses? Nowhere do I say that Neopets sent the spam; they merely provided the email address to other companies that spammed instead. You can never know that they do this unless you perform the test with a virgin email address, so to speak. Granted, the spam to that email account has diminished to only several received per week, but it still shows a violation of their posted policies. - RDL
when playing Zurro Ball click on the grundos badge and he becomes your ball ps hes very hard to use
I think there is a flaw in your argument. Neopets would only sell your email addy to 3rd parties to gain money, yes? So let me address the financial issue first. Each year, scores of companies pay neopets lots of money to have themselves or their products advertised on neopets, which reaches many people. I can’t remember the exact amount neopets makes because I asked Donna this about a year ago, however, it was more than $5 million, possible even $10-$15 million. With this amount of money coming in from the immersive advertising that neopets is so proud of, why would they need to sell people’s email to create spam? The companies that send spam most of the time couldn’t afford to pay neopets what ACTUAL sponsors can. And since neopets boasts so much of its immersive advertising, they aren’t going to give users spam, as it would cause them much more trouble than its worth - so they just stick with making millions off immersive advertisements of companies such as sony and mcdonalds to name but a few. And I think there IS an issue of privacy here. I’m not a omnipotent super-being, so I can’t tell you that you are raising your daughter wrong, but I’ll express my opinion. The comment about not sending your daughter to school is clearly an exaggeration, but what was said was true - Your child WILL hear these words etc at school. There’s no denying that - Little girls and boys hear swear words and they say them left right and centre. But they won’t do it in front of their parents in most cases. So chances are your daughter already knows about sex, or vulgar swear words to that effect, and she probably has also heard a plethora of other abuse. There’s nothing we can do to stop this from happening, apart from educating from home and not allowing use of the internet, or the watching of any program after 6pm, or watching any film that is about a Universal Rating. Judge for yourself how that will affect a child. What we can do is to bring our children up right - If you have brought up your daughter in a way that teaches her that abuse, swearing, violence, cheating, lying, et cetera are WRONG then what harm will hearing foul language do? Now I have 2 further points to make When your daughter is 15, will you monitor her emails? When she is 19 will you monitor them? What will you do then, if she finds out? She’ll be a lot more intelligent than she is now, won’t she? She’ll be able to argue her case. I don’t think you’ll like that. Spam is why we have these wonderful tools called “junk mail filters”. they help STOP spam.
First, who said she doesn’t know that I am monitoring her emails? Access to email and the Internet are a privilege, not a right. Part of earning the privilege to use email and the Internet in the privacy of her own room on her own computer was an agreement that the communications will be monitored. She understands and accepts that. So, what’s the harm in following up with the agreement? Second, spam filters do NOT STOP spam; they only serve to help identify and trap some of the spam. And, once again, you make an errant assumption that I am not using spam filters? *sigh* - RDL
It’s truly amazing to me how nasty people are being about this! I signed up with Neopets about nine months ago, and I used an email address that isn’t used for anything else. I haven’t recieved any spam, but that’s not to say that your daughter doesn’t get those spam emails from Neopets. I don’t understand why people are taking this so personally. First and foremost everyone, you are NOT raising his daughter, so you are in no position to speak. I am a 23-year-old mother of a two-year-old son, and I can tell you that I would be disappointed as well if he received those emails. Of course kids will hear worse language at school. Of course kids will hear vulgar things elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean it has any place in an email box for those under the appropriate age to read it, especially from a site aimed at kids. She still underage to go to a rated “R” movie, let alone to be getting emails about Viagra. I cannot believe that most of you dare talk about how to raise another’s child. You can raise your own children if you are fortunate enough to have them, otherwise, shut up. Get a grip, people. Quit taking this so personally, and open your mind a fraction of an inch. It IS possible. “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.”
OH, MY GOD! SOMEONE WHO IS BOTHERING TO READ AND UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! - RDL
I was reading the comments on the first statements then went here and someone brought up the spam/email thing again. I just would like to mention that if you do not want your email on the site you can go to the help button on the sidebar then click on user preferences on the next page and erase your email address and you will never get spam. I have been playing for 2 years on different accounts and I have received spam but once I erased my email I never did get anymore. I do think that you are being a bit overprotective of your daughter though. I mean I wouldn’t want my parents overlooking every detail of my life or prying into what I send and receive via email. I won’t be checking back to see if there are any replies to this but if you want to email me you can.