Fun Debate: Neopets vs. Subeta

[Jessi]

Damion, accounts on Subeta get purged after 12 months of inactivity.

That is the one thing I can't stand about Subeta. One year is not nearly enough time to purge because I think it's a reasonable hiatus. While I think Neo takes far too long to purge info, Subeta doesn't give you a chance to stay away.

Try telling that to people like me who are desperately waiting for pet names to free up ;) Honestly, I think a year is plenty of time - even if you are on a reasonable hiatus. If you were interested in keeping your account, just log in once every couple of months, and your account won't be purged.

I've been thinking of how to put this into words, and I think I've come up with my explanation: the two sites are incredibly different to me and I play them for different reasons, which might be why I don't play Neopets as much anymore, honestly.

For a long time, Lindsey and I played Neopets daily together and treated our Neopets accounts very similar to how we treat Subeta. I'll be honest in that yes, I am one of those people where 2.0 killed a lot of the old Neopets charm for me, and I wasn't as into it anymore. I used to love going on Neopets to play flash games especially, but even that has lost its charm for me. I can't quite explain it. I log into Neopets maybe once a week, usually when Rah reminds me to ;D My characters there still exist in secondary forms, but honestly, other than flash games the main reason I play ANY pet site is because I love making my pets into characters, and Subeta gives me more freedom to do that - which is why I think I play Subeta a lot more.

Things like pet friends, the freedom of coding a pet profile, the ease of overlays and most of all TREASURES attract me to my Subeta pets a lot more than my Neopets. Sure, on Neopets I can post art or items in their lookup, but it's not quite the same. I find the pets on Subeta are nearly limitless in what you can do with them, and that's the biggest thing that has attracted me to Subeta over Neopets.

Neopets used to get me excited for plots/game challenges/etc, but honestly... I start them and just stop them after a few rounds now. I haven't even bothered with the last few game challenges. I honestly just forget to log in or think, "Oh I'll play games" but I just kind of put it on the back burner.

Also, I seem to be in the minority here, but I actually like the Subeta forums a LOT more than the Neoforums. I never used either to an extreme (I have like, a whopping 700 posts on Subeta after 4 years!) but I've always hated how the Neopets forums are just an endless sea of bumping. I find it a lot easier to navigate the Subeta forums and also to actually interact with people, though the comment system (as well as pinging and forum groups and what not) probably has a lot to do with it. I've made a -lot- of awesome friends on Subeta through the ease of being able to communicate with each other, and like Tom, I have a great cult that is full of amazing members that I get to interact with on and off site, which has made my Subeta interactions even better.

The one thing I will say that I enjoy far more on Neopets (for the MOST part) is the items - some of the Neopets items are just unbelievably drop dead gorgeous and I think the smaller size of items on Subeta makes them lack the same kind of beauty sometimes. That being said, I don't get the same 'nostalgia' feel some other people do from items looking old ;) I just look at them and go, "Eugh, that item is really old and ugly" XD

Also, for the record, because there are some people that seem to think this - no, I do not think Subeta is ~perfect~ JUST because FMD is an artist there. I often am very vocal about my dislikes of certain things on the site and I have no problem bitching to Lindsey (or other people) about the things I don't like. Subeta has just become one of my 'homes' on the internet, much the same as Neocolours has! I can't imagine logging onto my computer to do something quick, like check my e-mail, and not quickly check NC and Subeta while I'm at it!

[Iggy]

One of the thing I like about Neopets is that you're 100% sure X specie will get new colors during the year. Of course, older pets have more coloring options, but unlike Subeta, you won't have to wait 2 or 3 years for a new color because the pet isn't assigned to an artist right now. All pets are getting representation with pet days and stuff.

Like, in a six-months period, we had five Jollin releases (Bloodred, Nightmare, Angelic, Dark Matter and Reborn) over a couple months. Yeah, Jollins are cool and popular, but in the end I was a little sad to see them get tons of attention compared to other pets.


Neopets and Subeta have both too many events for me to handle. I don't have the time to take part in that many events anymore, and it makes me sad. Yes, I love to be entertained, but not 365 days a year. I've got a job, I've got occupations as well. So, I'm perhaps growing out of petsites because of how much you need to do, yet I don't want to leave because I'm too scared of missing something

[Wingsrising]

Yeah, I think that's part of it... I no longer have time to really keep up with events on even one site, let alone two. I think Subeta events seem to involve more "occasionally refreshing" tasks and fewer "spend lots of time working out annoying puzzles over semi-protracted periods in conjunction with other people" tasks, which is one reason I barely participated in the last plot on Neo. (I even stopped reading the comics. I don't even know how it ended, but then again the Ixi could die and the Faeries remain stone for all I cared, so...)

[thelonetiel]

It's an interesting debate.

I gave up on Subeta a while ago. Not completely; I still have my pets, and I kept my favorite items, but I gave away and sold tons and tons of my wearables so that I would quit the site. Which has worked well, like someone else said, it seems impossible to catch up on wearables now that I haven't bothered in a bit, so it doesn't even cross my mind. I enjoy seeing what people come up with here on the HA thread, but I came up with an avatar I liked and haven't really fiddled with it much since. Subeta never really felt "real" to me, probably because of the ease of making money. It still sometimes feels like Monopoly money, whereas Neopoints are solid currencies. I'd invest in Neopets Bonds, but never Subeta's, if that sort of comparison can be made.

The main reason I can't get back into it is the site lags for me. I don't care enough to wait for the few seconds for a page to load. I don't know if this is common to everyone, or I just have a short attention span when it comes to Subeta, but it doesn't work for me. The recent zombie-fest I tried to keep up with it, but it seemed like I would click, and it took a bit to load so I clicked over to do something else. And then would remember the tab five or ten minutes later, click again, and repeat. I can't say this is entirely Subeta's fault, but more my lack of patience towards websites, but I gave up quickly trying to do anything on the site.

Similarly, I think the thing I hate most about the site is the inefficiency those page loads. I'm spoiled by the Neolodge, where I can book all my pets in about 8 (speedy) page loads. Rather than the resort on Subeta, where it takes four or five page loads each, multiplied by 10 pets. I lack the patience to do it. The inventory page does the same thing for me; I like having a popup rather than having to click back, only to have my inventory slowly reconstitute in front of me. Even when the site was zippy (which I think it was for a while), it would frustrate me at how inefficient things were.

What actually killed the site for me was the drama. I loved tuning in; I didn't love having this Neocolours account hacked because my Subeta password was spread across the internet. Even still, quite a lot of the staff members bug me. I'll agree being able to converse with staff members is better than waiting for weeks or months for an automated Neopets response, but I don't seem to get along with the forefront staffers I see on Subeta. That's probably my problem more than theirs, I'll admit. The forums seem inane to me most of the time; the signature sets and avatars quickly add to up being gaudy as well. And I've had pets revamped to my complete disappointment, and that's hard to recover from.

Neopets isn't perfect; I would have quit a while ago if I didn't have the Premium sidebar that blocks all the ads on the site. But I've been there for 8 years now, I'm lucky enough to have many UC pets that I absolutely adore and receive frequent compliments on. They give me big images to play with for graphics, especially with all the flash wearables that have gorgeous art. The customization shift still has me a bit scarred, but it wasn't all bad. I recently got a permie that is actually customizable (rather than a mutant, baby, or UC) and am incredibly satisfied with him, and how the available items helped shape his character.

I'll admit that I got a bit sucked into pet trading. For a while it was an interesting thing to do, where patience was rewarded, meeting lots of interesting people on the boards, trading pets that I had fallen out of love with for new, bright and shiny characters. I've also enjoyed being a voice of reason on the Neoboards and helping people out, it's made me feel a better part of the Neopets community. At this point though, I'm nearly done with trading, with just one pet I'm trying to trade whenever I get bored. But I think I'll still be lurking the boards for a while, watching the drama I'm very distant from, and offering my never ending supply of well intentioned advice.

I've enjoyed the plots on Neopets. I prefer the instant repetition, rather than Subeta where I can do something every 5-10 minutes. Neopets I can chug on something for an hour, with no pause.

Since I've nitpicked Subeta enough: Why on earth must Neopets use so much laggy Flash? Nearly everything with Flash these days they feel the need to animate excessively, and as a result I end up minimizing Firefox to get the Flash of the screen before it'll respond without waiting 15 seconds. It's absurd. They insist on using Flash maps instead of images for ease of languages and such, which I guess I can understand, but I wish they would make a lowquality, unanimated setting available, so I don't have to slog my computer through their fancy flowing water and shimmering rainbows that I couldn't care less about. I think this is also a Firefox thing, I'm not sure how other browsers compare, but yegawds it is frustrating. Even now my Habitarium is making my poor computer whir without doing anything interesting.


I could probably talk about the topic for a longer while, but this already seems to be a beast of a post. Oops!

[Ierosbats]

Same old Neopets story for me: Loved the site for many years, played daily, made lots of great friends (two of whom I now can't imagine life without; for that, I'll always be grateful for my time on Neopets), four accounts full of pets, Customization, DOOM, haven't been back since. I can't even remember the passwords to my accounts, and they're all attached to my old email so it's a good thing I have no desire to play anymore, because even if I did, I can't.

There was a time when I would have said Neopets was my favorite website. It was special to me during a really formative period in my life. I don't feel the same way about Subeta; I've never felt like it's my favorite site. I don't feel like it's special. I still "play" almost daily, but some days that just involves pet training, buying keepsake boxes, and maybe on a good day doing quests.

As much as I love working on my pets (like a lot of other people, Treasures are my favorite aspect of the site) my biggest problem with Subeta is that when there isn't an event going on (and sometimes even where there is...) the site is boring. It's just all the same: mindless clicking. And not even DIFFERENT kinds of mindless clicking, it's really just a lot of quests. I think this last mini-plot is the perfect example of that. It seemed like there was a lot to do, but there wasn't; it had only a few things to do, you just had to do them all hundreds of times so it took weeks. Collecting pastries and sending boxes, collecting candy hearts, giving and receiving kisses, donating flowers... those are not exciting things to do individually, and they certainly don't get better when you have to do them literally one thousand times. What it comes down to is Subeta is a hobby, a game to play when you have leisure time. Why would I click and refresh 1000 times just to get a kissing achievement, when I could read a book, or watch TV, or play any other game or do any other thing that is even slightly more stimulating than clicking until my face falls off. Maybe next plot I should kill two birds with one stone and watch paint dry while I refresh 1000 times.

I liked a lot of individual aspects of the plot, though. I liked the inclusion of the Underground, even if the only thing you could do there was collect garbage. One of the things I miss most (maybe the biggest thing) from Neopets is the sense of playing in a world. The World of Subeta exists, but.... who cares? The individual places are nothing more than a collection of links. There's no maps for the vast majority of them, and the little images they do have are so terrible they'd probably look better with nothing at all. And I know, I know, Keith has said a million times they're working on maps. I get it, they take a long time to make because the art is wonderfully detailed, but surely at least one must be done. Release them one by one, at the very least that's a gesture. It's more of an acknowledgment that yes, the current "map" system sucks than just promising to change them somewhere down the road.

I think the Altador Cup is a wonderful example of the difference between the two sites. When it first came out, picking teams was exciting because people had favorite worlds and they could actually pick a team with pride. What would we see if an event like that happened on Subeta tomorrow? Where would you pick? I like that the Wizard gives me tokens, but that's not enough to like the Sacred Lands. I guess that's the team you'd pick if blue is your favorite colour? Why else would you like that place, or any place? Everything on Subeta feels so shallow. I don't care about the worlds, and I don't care about the characters who live in them. And just to clarify, the Subetapedia does not help. It's there, and you can read it, although I don't know why you would unless you were looking for a trivia answer. The writing in it is drier than some of my textbooks. What were those things on Neopets with the amazing artist drawings of characters? The book of villains and gallery of heroes or something. Those were great, those added a lot. There was something very charming about those. Subeta has nothing like that. I do think an effort is being made by doing things like having shopkeepers post on the forums, but.... ugh, the forums. Let's just... not go there. Figuratively and literally.

As everyone else has said, the pet art on Subeta is beautiful. It outranks the Neopets pet art, and always has, even when the Neopets pet art wasn't complete garbage. Even the old grey pets and plushie pets can't compare to nightmare or reborn, they're in a league of their own. The other day when Ty's pet Grym won the pet spotlight, some dumbass in the news comments said "This pet doesn't even have an overlay..." and I scoffed. As much as I appreciate how easy it is to customize pets, like by giving them overlays, the art doesn't NEED it. It's great art, and most of my pets don't have overlays because of that. A lot of them do, but in many cases the tweaks are minor, because I like the original art so much.

But as much as I enjoy the pet art, I don't actually care about the pet species. Unlike Neopian pets, Subetan pets are barely represented in the world. There's the Hustler, and the Computer Nerd quest guy, and a handful of others, but for the most part, it's a bunch of anime humans you're usually "interacting" with. Some pets have custom species weapons, most don't. Some have a lot of colour options, some don't. They all have a line of beanbags and plushies, but I think that's about it. Even little things, like the terracoon hats, help with that. They add some depth, they make you feel like oh, okay, the pets aren't just sort of... there, watching me do quests. I wish I felt like they were a bigger part of the Subetan world.

Against my better judgment, I do spend money in the cash shop. I guess that means I have a certain level of attachment to Subeta. I love my pets very much (they give me a reason to play around in photoshop and write short stories), and I love looking at my friends' pets, and treasures are great, and the wishlist is great. Subeta has a lot of things I like, I'll never deny that. It probably has more things I like than things I dislike. But the things I dislike, I dislike a lot. I don't feel comfortable with a lot of the staff, for example. I don't like Keith's impromptu webcam sessions where he just eats cheese balls and plays with his hair (really? This is the person I give money to?). Filing a ticket is always kind of a gamble because sometimes you get a really nice, helpful person, and sometimes you get a subeta-nazi. The forums are a bog of human misery like I've never experienced; what a truly horrific collection of people. I feel like I say this everywhere, like a crazy person, but the point really can't be overstated. The site is monotonous, and the art is inconsistent.

I just think it's so telling that even after Neopets did a horrible, horrible thing that made me quit after years of dedicated playing, I'd still pick Neopets over Subeta in the grand scheme of things.

[Huggles]

I think the Altador Cup is a wonderful example of the difference between the two sites. When it first came out, picking teams was exciting because people had favorite worlds and they could actually pick a team with pride. What would we see if an event like that happened on Subeta tomorrow? Where would you pick? I like that the Wizard gives me tokens, but that's not enough to like the Sacred Lands. I guess that's the team you'd pick if blue is your favorite colour? Why else would you like that place, or any place? Everything on Subeta feels so shallow. I don't care about the worlds, and I don't care about the characters who live in them. And just to clarify, the Subetapedia does not help. It's there, and you can read it, although I don't know why you would unless you were looking for a trivia answer. The writing in it is drier than some of my textbooks. What were those things on Neopets with the amazing artist drawings of characters? The book of villains and gallery of heroes or something. Those were great, those added a lot. There was something very charming about those. Subeta has nothing like that.

Ultimately, this is the main reason for the lack of interest in Subeta. Even Valenth, the adoptables site run by some of the staff, has a more coherent and concrete world. Although I may not care for it much, it exists. That is what made trying to write stories about my pets excruciatingly difficult. So many of Subeta players' pets are simply fronts for their completely human and totally Earthly characters. That's fine, I guess. I mean, why not if there's nothing else to work with? I just don't care to read about them. I can't imagine something like the Neopian Times existing for Subeta, let alone containing anything worth reading.

Unless the meat gameplay of your game is utterly compelling and delicious in its own right—to be frank, there is none to speak of on Subeta—then what else are you going to offer me? I'm still looking for a browser based free-to-play game that centers around character customization and world exploration, and I haven't found one that holds my interest as much as Neo did. A game where I don't feel that I while I'm playing I have to devote to it all my focus and computing power, nor one where I feel hardware and price excludes people from the community I'd like to join or build. KoL almost had me, and now Minecraft teases me. I still feel a part of the greater gaming community as a whole, sometimes. And there's still tons of great pc and console games I have yet to play or finish, but I haven't found the one. And the more I think about creating my own game and the more I learn about the things I'd have to learn, the more inclined I am to just go read a book.

To clarify, I'm mostly indifferent to Subeta and only occasionally poke around the site. I haven't played Neopets since customization and I wouldn't think about it at all if it weren't for Neocolours.

[Rakumel]

That's interesting...I didn't realize it before, but when I compared my Neopets and my pets on Subeta... which, by the way, are the main reason I play on both of those sites...anyway, when I compared them, I noticed that I think of my Neopets as being a certain species and living in certain parts of Neopia, and I can't really see them as anything else. My Subeta pets, on the other hand, could be completely human instead of a Celinox or a Montre and it wouldn't change them much at all. In fact I've often depicted them as such, both in drawings and HAs.

At one time I had a very large story in my head about how all my different Neopets came to know each other, starting with the ones on my main account on Mystery Island and traveling around various locations in Neopia. Everything took place there. Every pet was a certain species, every pet had a job that was related to where they lived or, if they didn't have a job per se, their lives were shaped and dictated by stuff that happened in Neopia. My Darigan Blumaroo Djauko was the only one who had any "canon" outside influences whatsoever. But anyway, what I'm driving at is, that big story not only took place in Neopia, but was tied into events that happened on the site and occasionally dealt with existing Neopets characters. If you took the story (or even any of my pets) out of that context, it wouldn't make any sense.

Whereas my Subeta pets aren't tied to Subeta or its events at all. They could easily be human or possibly even take a different form in another "universe." In fact, they're pretty much just embodiments of conceptual things I like or original characters I've developed over the years. I have to rely pretty much on just the character alone to dictate what they look like, what they do, and what kinds of shinies they collect. I tried to make a story similar to the Neo one with my Subeta characters, where the "pets" all have met each other at some point...but they didn't gel as much and ultimately it was less cohesive and compelling than the Neo one, so I dropped it. Also I wound up giving a lot of the "related" pets away, so the ones I have now are mostly stand-alone.

Anyway, to answer the original question...as far as sheer entertainment goes, I still primarily go to Neo. I'm a gamer at heart so there's a lot more for me to do there. At any rate I can always find something to do; games, plots, finding pets in the pound with excellent names to zap and give away to other people, Customization, the Habitarium. Subeta, though, since I'm not big into the social aspect or the HA's, it's a little harder to hold my interest and it's not unusual for me to stay gone from there for months at a time. The layout's nice and simple though...for the longest time I had an old computer that would choke on Flash layouts, so when Neopets 2.0 came out and I had to use Firefox with AdBlock just so I could get one page to load, being able to navigate easily on Subeta was like a breath of fresh air. And I do have to agree that getting help with a problem on Subeta's nice and easy, too. The two times I remember having a problem on Subeta, I was able to file a ticket and get the problem resolved within an hour. Whereas on Neopets, it's a miracle if you can get anything other than an automated response in less than a week.

Oh yes, and one more mention for the lovely Subeta art. The thing that drew me to Subeta in the first place was the Common Celinox. ("Ohh, pretty! I can have a pet like that straight out of the box? No painting or anything? Hell yes, sign me up!") That's why it doesn't bother me that I can't afford overlays; I don't really need or want them anyway. I think the Subeta artists do a good enough job drawing pets I like. Neo used to have some very nice pet art too - I still have a UC Faerie Peophin that I will not get rid of EVER even though his name's not too great - but I just don't like it quite as well as Subeta's.

[Kali_Lupine]

Hmmmmm I started playing neopets in 2000 when I was a teenager, and have been there for over 10 years. It was (and to a certain extent still is) a huge addiction. I truthfully could care less about the pets, I like the way they are drawn for the most part and I have all my dream pets. I play for Habbitarium and for hoarding...I find it easier to hoard on neopets because of the mass amounts of cheap items. I just hit 7000 different items in my SDB. I put money in the NC Mall to buy a few clothes and lots of stuff for my buggies.

That being said, if I had a choice then Subeta would win hands down. My biggest reasons are the items/HA?Cash Shop. I am super addicted to the Cash Shop, and I tend to get most of my wearables there. For a writer I am pretty terrible at putting my feelings into words (I worry I'll sound stupid ) Anyway, the biggest reason I love Subeta so much is that it is gay friendly, and I can get away with having a serial killer/true crime gallery. Also because I live in a very small town I prefer to shop at small independently own stores than to give my money to a big corporation. I feel the same way when I have to decide to put cash into the cash shop or NC Mall. The Cash Shop always wins!

[Elucifer]

Okay, new questions:

What would you like to see become of either site in the few years?
Maybe for Subeta, more focus on the pets than being a social network? Maybe for Neo, new and better perks for the oldies, that really give the old Neo nostalgia?

Where do you see yourself in the next few years with either/both sites?
How do you guys feel about the communities and forums of both sites? Childish? Too much aggression? Too many n00bs?

[DamionDarkheart]

I feel the need to say that my Subeta account was purged after much less than a year. Around the same time Ty lost her original account (maybe I'm misremembering this? I remember POS having issues with the servers before his life was hacked and all his inappropriate pictures and whatnot was open for all of the internets to see)

I would love more user perks - either a bigger HT discount or being able to do the various timed activities e.g. Buried Treasure or SOMETHING. Above that though, I want more avatars; They're easy to create, fun to acquire, and I don't want any 'but you haven't figured out the Wishing Well avatar yet' bullshit. Also if they kept their word on things like, again (surprise, surprise), releasing that avatar they porpoised for collecting Advent Calendar every day - I doubt they even fucking made one. I share RD's irritation with the lack of actual games to beta test in premium too. Monthly neocash for premium members would be awesome too, seeing as how we're already feeding that endless pit. An option to unconvert pets would be cool too. Or being able to ignore low rarity items in shops. Or view past prizes for things like the Lenny Conundrum, BTY, etc. I could go on for hours; there's just not enough of the old user love on Neopets. It's like "Yeah you helped us build the site from the balls up but meh"

I actually really like the neoboards and don't find them childish or that spammy or full of n00bs. It's just that I miss all my old friends and my old chat group and our cliqueiness. I've found a new one I kind of like okay, but it's too fluid - there isn't that sense of comradery and that's a little depressing

[Elucifer]

I know what ya mean. I had a wonderful group of friends back before customization. We were a lab ray group called ZAP! and we'd stay up late till 12 am NST to zap our lab pets. Oh the fun we shared with each other. In a way, it felt like I belonged. I was also a typing master and could pump out paragraphs every 10 seconds. Or something of that speed. I'm too slow now compared to then. xD

I could go on, but in the end, we disbanded after someone in our group betrayed us and some of my friends were chain frozen during TNT's period (lots were frozen that one day). Dark days that never saw light again. Then customization hit and that did it.

I also remember avatars. I almost hit 200 when I quit. But I'm still really pissed that they dd another Bonju avvie. I think it's their excuse to not make avatars like they used to. I remember we'd get a new avatar for every pet day. But now...I think the guy who originally did the avatars left or something. That's the rumor I heard.

So I agree with you tons Damion. I can relate to so much that you posted.

[Fjorab_Teke]

Neopets fixes: Allow the nifty "redraw pets" of old to be reverted. Nonstandard pose colors already can't have clothing, and there wouldn't be any strain on the servers or the artists, so i really don't see why they couldn't. The main thing, of course, is to find solutions to the horrid player treatment and site security. Allow certain pages to be customized, sure, but they should take coding for EVERYTHING except images, text format, and links out of shops!

Subeta fixes: Bring in more games and once-and-for-all repair the ones like Dark Matter Dice. I miss the times when players were able to VOTE on pet revamps, and/or i wish that the artists would try more often to retain the feel and style of the pets when doing revamps. For my personal example, they changed both the colors and body style of the Experiment #893 - definitely not keeping the essence of the pet beyond "cobra tail, horns, spiky mane" (though the mane grows out the side now). Perhaps i would be less offended if the majority of people had voted to change it like that.

[Kantark]

What I'd like to see:

Subeta: Unless they somehow magically un-purge my account, in which case I might pop in from time to time, I'm done with it. It's forging an increasingly different path from Neopets which, while possibly for the best for Subeta, no longer interests me. As far as improvements go, I would hope the shonky AJAX implementation for the forums is long gone (the one that rendered all your browser navigation buttons useless), if not then that would be a good place to start.

Neo: For the next plot to be as good as the last. The downside of doing a thorough well-proportioned plot like TFR is people will be disappointed if it isn't. I agree with Fjorab, I'd be all over a redraw reversion item/paintbrush/option. Elsewhere, I'd like that they left some legacy stuff here and there (and I appreciate the restraint they've shown to some areas of the site e.g. stock market), while doing a gradual update of some art e.g. phased update of shopkeepers. Like Damion I'd like to see more avatars - I'm not a keen collector but it's always a pleasant surprise to unlock a new one.

[Jessi]

As far as improvements go, I would hope the shonky AJAX implementation for the forums is long gone (the one that rendered all your browser navigation buttons useless), if not then that would be a good place to start.

Chris, if it helps, I have NO idea what you're even talking about xD My browser navigation buttons seem to work fine on the Subeta forums, or at least I've never noticed anything!

Neopets: I agree 100% about some sort of item, be it a Neocash item or otherwise, to revert pets back to pre-customization versions, because that is still, to this date, the number one thing that has drawn me away from the site. I'd also like to see accounts purged MORE frequently, because I think one thing that makes me far more attached to my Subeta pets is their names, haha. I'd love for Neopets to have an item like the Enchanted Hypnosis Wand on Subeta that lets you change a pet's name (I will never understand the whole "omg we 'd have to take down the WHOLE SERVER!!!" argument for why there can't be renaming items on Neopets...)

Subeta: I'd like to see more focus on the pets. Things like the newly released Movie Reel thing that was CLEARLY drawn for treasure items is a pretty good start, but I'd like to see pets just more.. entwined with Subeta and the world more developed. My HA is just a thing on the site I throw clothes on (usually to look like my characters, haha) so I'd love to see pets be more of the focus again.

[Ailiel]

I can't speak as to Subeta, because I don't play.

But I've been really happy with Neopets lately. The last plot was excellent, I've enjoyed the new Daily Dare with it's lack of a time limit, the neopoint wearables have finally come up in quality and are being released on a regular basis, new colors are as nice as can be expected. The loyal user perks may seem small but since there was nothing at all for YEARS I find it all very welcome-- the almost-abandoned attic, books occasionally not disappearing in various colors of smoke, unconverted pets immune to random events! All great stuff. I know they said they are in the process but I would really like to see Lutari Island opened up again. The fifth pet spot they mentioned could be an interesting feature. I'd like a few bugs taken care of with the Neohomes 2.0 and the Habitarium bugs (not the P3s, the glitches!). Speaking of, a few new P3s on the site would not hurt-- it's been ages since we got a new one. But really overall this last year has been one of the best on Neopets, I've really found a new enjoyment for the site lately, and it has a lot to do with the creative and fun plot, but I also liked the faerie quest event and the new faerie quests. I'm liking where things are going again since customization.