Lurapets

For posting threads about MMOs, console games, other virtual pet sites, gaming news and suchlike.
Mistress Morbid
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Lurapets

Post by Mistress Morbid »

Shock and awe, it's another pet site! xD

www.lurapets.com


I found this one because an artist that I watch on DeviantArt started submitting a bunch of the pet images and my curiosity got the better of me. I haven't done much yet on the site itself, but I do have to say that the pets are absolutely gorgeous, so that alone drew me in. Here are just a few of the basic ones:
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The redraws are lovely as well:
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If you create an account you can view these forum topics which list all colour possibilities:
Basic colours: http://www.lurapets.com/topic_display.p ... 1&t_id=483
Redraw colours: http://www.lurapets.com/topic_display.p ... =1&t_id=61

There's also human avatars to customize.

Admittedly there seems to be a lot of Subeta-inspired aspects, and also Neopets ones, but nonetheless I've heard some good things in general about it so I might give it a go for a while, see what it's like to make money, etc. My username's Mistress_Morbid.
Last edited by Mistress Morbid on 31 Dec 2009 11:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Faun
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Faun »

Oh those pets are so pretty! That snake thing is lovely. :D
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Mistress Morbid
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Mistress Morbid »

The snake one (Zalcoa) is my favourite, but I found out that it's a limited edition pet which can only be obtained with a potion (which is bought from the 'cash shop'). :(

Still, the other pets are beautiful too, and if it turns out I like the site I might buy myself a Zalcoa. ;)
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Faun
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Faun »

Oh darn. I wanted one of those. :( Im pipkin on there by the way. :)
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Griffin
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Griffin »

My impression is that the pets and items are great, but the HAs are poorly drawn in contrast. They're generic and cartoony and just don't fit with the site's style. I think that will affect my desire to play more than a week, especially if HAs are supposed to be as integrated as they are on Subeta.

I like the detailed style of the pets and the mythological influences some of them have. It reminds me of people's custom designs for their pets, but I mean that in a good way. Of course, the first pets I wanted to create (Vergoit and Tigral) turned out to be limited. Isn't that the way it always goes?

The adoption center seems to have some really nice named pets. (I say "seems" because I thought names like "Seraph" and "Ridley" would be gone in a split-second but they seem to be sitting around. I haven't tried adopting one.)
Mistress Morbid
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Mistress Morbid »

Yeah, I'm not too fond of the human avatars, I can't really get a base that I like, but I still like the pets enough to stick around for a while.

The adoption center indeed had some awesome names, and there's many good names that are free.

I really like the way they've done their undead pets. In order to get one you let your pet's hunger go down to 0, then it 'dies'. Once it dies it is sent to the graveyard where you have 24 hours to reclaim it before it's made up for adoption to the public. You can then pay to adopt it as a zombie pet or pay an additional fee to return it to its first colour.

At first this concerned me because I immediately thought of 'What if I'm not online for weeks and my pets die and get adopted?' but their hunger levels only go down while you are online, and it seems fairly slow so it should be easy to keep them fed. This also adds an actual feeling of wanting to feed and take care of your pets. I find most other sites it's almost an optional thing since there are no ill effects for letting your pets starve.

I've already gained 35k just from playing a couple easy games (the Rock, Paper, Scissors is great...you can play it 50 times a day and win 500sp each time you win, so I just kind of picked the same one for all 50 times and got a pretty good winning chance), so money doesn't seem to harsh to get.
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TCStarwind
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Re: Lurapets

Post by TCStarwind »

That snake thing is really pretty. :D If I don't stop playing, I may end up getting one. I also like that squirrel and the winged lion thing. I'm also not really fond of those HAs. They need to be redrawn, and I don't really like the way the wardrobe works. You can only use 5 items at once? Who's idea was that?

But most of the other artwork is pretty and I like exploring through the maps.

And I got an event earlier that says I have to clean up after my pet... What? o_o;
Huggles
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Huggles »

You can't make a black avatar, not unless they're really really light-skinned with straight hair. Fails.

The zalcoa is exceptionally beautiful. More so than it has any right to be since I can't get one. The mantis thing is precious though, and they even have what appears to be the first adorable otter/beaver pet I've seen. No one's ever gotten it right to me, despite the real ones being so cute.

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Random anthro, again. Pretty items and pets, but I am underwhelmed by the amount of things to actually do. Restocking. I just want to kick everyone who adds this as a main part of their site. Gods. I hate restocking. I didn't mention that on Neuro Galaxy, but the same sentiment applies. I almost remember the first incarnation of Lurapets, or maybe it was Lunapets? Regardless, I'm already bored.
Jessi
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Jessi »

I've never had much interest in Lurapets because when it first opened, it was pretty much a 100% Subeta ripoff - Subeta would post an idea or a new item and two weeks later it was on Lurapets, too, more or less. Also, the owner of Lurapets was quite adamant about bothering Subeta staff artists to draw for his site, then acting quite dumb and ignorant when they told him they worked for Subeta.

That being said, some of the pets are really pretty...but I think the inconsistencies in the art on this site are glaring right on the front page. These are the five 'most recently released items', apparently:

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Clearly the first three and the last two were done by two different artists. That doesn't bother me - I actually like how I can look at Subeta items sometimes and go "Oh, Rah drew that!" or "Oh, Arbor drew that!" - but it's just slight differences in style. The thin, flowy art of the first three items and the huge, chunky lineart and heavy shading of the second two items is making a huge difference. Even just clicking various links to see what items show up (I don't have an account so I'm clearly not logged in) are showing me how vastly different in quality all the items are. Just my two cents on the art quality, haha, which I don't think is that fabulous.

And like Huggles, I don't really have much interest in playing a pet site that has the exact same elements as every other pet site - oohh explore and restock, I can hardly wait. If I sign up, I'll just end up doing nothing with it, just like I do with my Misticpets account, so I think i'll let this one be unless something magical and interesting happens.


ETA - Okay, I lied, apparently I DID have an account from who knows when (it made me do a bunch of security crap when I logged in) - I wanted to see the HAs you were all talking about. And it's rather terrifying. Like... REALLY terrifying. I kind of want to pretend they don't exist.
Seerow
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Seerow »

I joined Lurapets so I could get the pet images since they do have some wonderful pets, but the site rather annoys me. Like Jessi mentioned, the owner has always come off as an ass to me. Lurapets has drawn all sorts of negative attention on other forums for the antics of owner and staff and I just don't think it's a site I'd ever enjoy. And I couldn't join a site where I'd have to adblock their HAs before they gave me nightmares.

The snake pet is hands down the best snake pet of any pet site ever though. It does annoy me that when a new color/species is released it comes in all colors at once. I mean, way that's great for the fans, but then there is absolutely nothing to look forward to pet wise. Unless they are constantly adding new colors/pets then it's going to become stagnant quite quickly.
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Goldenchaos
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Goldenchaos »

That sucks, ..I really wanted that snake pet..D: and cash shop only? FFFFF
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Alecko
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Alecko »

Signed up as Alecko to check out the pets. Aside from the snake, none of the basic forms really stuck out, though admittably there is a nice variety. But the redraws are lovely and for the first time in frigging ages, there are pets there that I know I need if I do start playing actively. The Celestial and what-ever the baby colour is called Kreston. The Archangel and Aquatic colours are also beautiful.

Buuuut I don't think I can be bothered with drama. From what Jessi and Seerow said, sounds like it'll always be lurking in the background. So probably no pretty birdies for me.
Cranberry
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Cranberry »

There's a 27-page thread about this site at SubetaDrama. All the stuff Jessi said is accurate, and there's more. I think the owner, Ken, contacted practically every Subeta artist begging them to work for him -- I know he asked Rah, Pie, Arbor and a couple others, for sure, as well as several artists from different petsites. He also tried to steal Luxe and DNA. A lot of the site rules and whatnot were copy/pasted from Subeta (he's since replaced them after being called out). Many items and features are too similar for it to be a coincidence. Keith posted a blog entry about it, and there's a good post from Luxe on page 9 of this thread at Virtual Pet List.

Some of the pet art is lovely, but the human avatars are actually bordering on scary, and Ken doesn't sound like the kind of guy anyone works for for very long. He's allegedly not very good at actually paying his employees -- at one point he was telling different employees that paydays were on different dates, then ended up "halting pay" on artists altogether so he could pay his coders. Also, a former Misticpets staffer said that in 2007 Ken applied for a mod job at that site so he'd have access to the mod forums (probably to steal ideas), and when he was denied, he harassed the mod team trying to make them reconsider, and repeatedly messaged a bunch of the site's female employees to the point where some of them felt like they were being stalked (and after they blocked him, he sent staff from Evodragon, which he co-owned at the time, to deliver messages for him). He just seems like bad news.
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Kantark
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Re: Lurapets

Post by Kantark »

I had a quick look around the site earlier (though it appears to be down with a PHP error right now), and was going to make the groundbreaking comment that these sites all look very similar only to find Huggles and Jessi have done it before me. If you took the names off these very similar pet sites I'd have real difficulty telling them apart, what with the restocking, chatboxes, petpets, cash shops and avatars. It's a genuine shame to waste well-executed artwork and code on sites which have little in the way of original features or gameplay to recommend them.

Re: the drama - I did notice one news blog post there which accused someone* by name of hacking/cloning items, which doesn't seem to be a particularly mature way of dealing with a problem.

(* apparently the owner of another of these 'clone'-style petsites - the list just goes on and on!)
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kerise1
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Re: Lurapets

Post by kerise1 »

I signed up a couple of days ago as Legion. The pet art is gorgeous, it's basically the first thing that draws me to a petsite (: I especially love their volcanic, if only neopets' new magmas looked like that! Too bad the pet limit is only 4.
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As far as originality goes, all that stuff mentioned (restocking, cash shop, shoutbox etc) aren't exactly groundbreaking or copyrighted. Practically every petsite has those, so I won't hold that against Lura. (I still don't really see the similarities in HAs with subeta :o Seeing as they're just drawings of people, how unique do you expect them to be?) Their HA art isn't that good, but I like the shift in focus from 'fashion' to 'fantasy' types, that was one of the things I hated about subeta HAs. I also really like their concept of the graveyard/undead pets, and it's a pretty original way of getting new pets rather than just creating, adopting or painting one. LP isn't that hard to make either.

One complaint I have is that the cash shop is really overpriced, at US$10 for limited pets or colours :/ But overall Lura seems pretty good, I'll give it a try for a while longer.
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