whatsername3114

[whatsername3114]

the girls having a wraith killing competition 😊

Close up!

[whatsername3114]

I really don’t think we appreciate how how absolutely strange, bonkers, wacky and incredible Neopets was in every single way.

It was technically an American website but it was founded by a couple of Welsh expats so it primarily used British Commonwealth English and St David’s day was officially recognized as a holiday.

In addition to the use of Commonwealth English the site’s grammatical and linguistic style was always a bit… idiosyncratic and prone to typos.

The art style and design evolved and changed several times over the years but some legacy art was never changed even as the site grew and became more sophisticated.

The in-game economy and market system was always gloriously broken and many player’s stores were essentially just display cases for their rare items with the prices set at the absolute maximum so they couldn’t actually be purchased. As such there was a bit of a class divide between rich and poor players and the site kind of leaned into this with features like the donation tree and a soup kitchen for players with less than a certain amount of neopoints

It began during a time when broadband internet was not widely available so using the site with dial-up could definitely put you at a disadvantage particularly with the aforementioned donation tree or attempting to buy items at any of the official in game stores.

That said having a combination of a slower internet and an older computer could give you an edge in at least one game: a shell game/three card monty against a caveman kangaroo where the slow animation speed made it easier to track the movement of the marble.

Oh yeah, there were various gambling games, and even a CASINO.

The various regions of neopia included a desert/Egyptian area, a prehistoric area which featured a giant dinosaur egg omelet, an underwater kingdom (that eventually was destroyed,) a space station, two (iirc) different medieval kingdoms, a halloween spooky forest and a sky kingdom populated by faeries.

These faeries were essentially the only humanoid entities in the world; early some characters seemed to be vaguely human shaped but many of them were retconned either into faeries or neopets.

OH WAIT I was wrong there were humans: the dev team had their own chibi self inserts and one early game was a MURDER MYSTERY where they would be killed off in humorous ways.

There were several species of neopet of various levels of anthropomorphism but the site’s unofficial mascot pets were these weird little pudgy plant/featherless penguin looking things called chias that look hideously cutesy and could transform into various fruit and vegetable shapes when they ate ice pops.

Some species of neopet were limited introducing yet ANOTHER class divide!

Several features of the site were gated off if you were under 13 requiring you to have your parents fill out an actual physical permission form to access it even if after you turned 13 iirc? My brother got my dad to do it for him but for one of my accounts I just lied but I forgot what fake birthday I picked so I was locked out.

There was official merch including stuffed animals, mcdonalds toys, handheld electronic games and even a ps2 game that I’m not sure ever made it out of development hell?

The site changed ownership a few times and was eventually purchased by Nickelodeon/Viacom but at one point the owner was allegedly a high ranking member of the Church of Scientology who reportedly pressured employees into participating in CoS auditing. Needless to say this was a bit weird given that one plotline involved an evil space overlord.

The site as far as I know still exists but is a security nightmare and since flash is dead most of the games are too.

I might be misremembering several things but yeah, it was definitely very weird and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

[whatsername3114]

these two ads ALONE makes this april fool’s prank one of my favorites ever

+ my favorite theory

[whatsername3114]

I think these are my favorite fake ads

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NICK NEOPIA!!??!?!?!?

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public service announcement

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I worked really hard on this so pls don't let this flop lol

[whatsername3114]

x

[whatsername3114]

RZK pics 🥹

[whatsername3114]

- Merry X-mas! - For god’s sake, Paul, it’s only October! …. - Although … whatever

[whatsername3114]

Richard Kruspe interview at Full Force Festival, Germany 1997

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The Making Of: Du Riechst So Gut ‘98 🐺