Seriously though, I do think it's best to explain some of the more important features and highlights of the game before anyone delves into the depths that is PI.
Pay-to-play
I can already hear the groans. Now, hold up just a moment before you go back to your regularly scheduled NeoColours and at least let me explain the whys. You see, back a few years ago there was VeeZ and ZarqX and the decided to make an online game based on My Little Ponies. However, they did not want many of the problems that plagued other "free" pet sites. Such as ads all over the place; pop-ups and people who did not read the rules. So, they made it pay-to-play and saw that this was good. The current price of a Full User Account is $14 for 6 months and $23 for 12 months.
Trial Accounts
Trial Accounts (Trials or Tris) are what your account is before you pay to play as a Full User (just called Users on PI). A trial account is exactly what it sounds like, an account to try out the game. If you like it enough and have the money then you can become a User. If you hate it then you don't pay and in a few weeks your account goes "poof!" and is deleted. Sadly, people abused the old system so trials can't do as much as they use to.
1. Trials can not breed with other users ponies be they trial or user.
2. Trials can not sell ponies to other users be they trial or user. Nor can they get rid of the pony by sending it to the Trial Market.
What they can do is this.
1. Buy from the Trial Market. Users can not buy from the Tri Market.
2. Create a Basic Starter without the need of BP.
3. Breed with ponies in their own stables, users can breed with ponies in their own stables too (of course) but it gives you an idea of how to breed with the ponies. The mother ponies take up to 5 days to give birth and the babies (including your starter) take 20 days to grow up. A lot of Tris never get to see their starter grow up.
The Manual and other Guides
The Manual must be read if you even want to consider joining. Their are more indepth tutorials within and of course, The Rules. I give you the link to the Rules page first. There are other links in the manual at the top of the page.
http://ponyisland.net/index.php?src=manual&sub=rules
PI Forums, non-users or non-tris can see the forums. Useful information can be gleaned from them and I'm glad they're visible as it helped me to decide on whether or not I wanted to join.
http://www.ponyisland.net/index.php?src=forum
Empress Poohgirl's Stable Presentation Page is a good place to find out about the different Breeds and S-genes.
http://ponyisland.net/index.php?sub=pre ... er&usr=826
And, last but not least Valkyries Presentation which (if you scroll down far enough) you reach The Colour Possibilities Chart for Starters. This is a near to complete list of all the likely effects of combining the Starter Ponies' "parents'" colors together.
http://www.ponyisland.net/index.php?sub ... &usr=24344
Note: I took about a year and a half (really in total time it was probably a day or two) of on and off lurking before even deciding to sign up for a trial account. I read the manual thuroughly (every single link at the top) and watched the forums. I'm not saying this is what you must do, but I definitely encourage such from anyone even considering signing up. After all, it is a pay-to-play site and it wouldn't be any fun if you happened to get frozen/banned for breaking a rule that you skipped over.If there are any questions about anything involving PI, please do not hesitate to ask.
If you do decide to sign up for a trial account or even a paid account, please click the link in my signature at the bottom of this post or put the name Lucifer Apollyon down as the person who recruited you. Once you pay for the account I get BP for recruiting people.
To our lovely Mods: If this is against the rules here, please delete and let me know. I didn't find anything in our guidelines, but that doesn't mean I couldn't have overlooked something. :/ Thanks!
Edit Added Pics of first four breeds that you can get on PI as purebreds in the Starter Generator. (The "father" has unicorn, but I didn't use it my first time. Also, S-genes are not available until you have 60 BP, but I thought you might like an idea of what they look like. Course, you can always go look at everybodies stables and click the name plate and see our ponies that way. Still, where's the fun in that. 
They're rather nice. Your girl is a rather pretty shade of green. XD
I enrolled him into four contests. I'll never do that again.
) I don't see why you couldn't make a few good starter mers after a while and have pure mers with very few breedings a year as your goal. 
Four contests are the max amount anyone is willing to do because they do survive those. Five or higher is often not a good idea. Though, the vet fees are really rough they use to be 100pg for every single bit of health lost. -_- If you lost 9 health points you were out 900pg instead of 450pg. It was nuts back then!
