Fun Debate: Neopets vs. Subeta

[Elucifer]

This isn't to bash either site. I want to see the general consensus of the likings/dislikes towards each site.

I've not played Subeta, but I do like the art very much. Sometimes I don't care for a certain pet, but that's okay. The artist still puts in an amazing amount of effort. I want to play, but I think I wouldn't be able to get along with the community. I'm pretty high-strung, and I'm very afraid of being attacked by the userbase. I've browsed the forums without an account and i'm kinda of unsure of the forums. I know, pretty silly, but I'm just afraid of people.

I played Neopets long ago, and it was great. Neo was my first virtual pet site ever. And I still like the pets, even though I miss the Unconverted days more. Still, I had a great time in my lab ray group, and I even met my long-life best friend there! I still like some of the post customization pets and art. Sometimes questionable, but relatively, still a good site in my memories. I don't know what the userbase is like there now as I quit years ago, but I'll let you guys talk now.

What do you like about each site? What do you think would benefit either site?
Maybe you just play one? If so, why that one and not the other?

This is just a fun debate! I'm just curious to read everyone else's opinions. ^^

[Wingsrising]

Hmm, let's see if this stays friendly or ends up in an argument!

The main reason I no longer really do anything on Neopets is that there's simply nothing on there I'm interested in doing anymore. For a while I was interested in training and battling, but I've realized I'm not interested in 2-player battling and since it looks like the old-style wars are pretty much gone, I'm not that interested in 1-player, either.

For a long time I was very into my Neohome, but I had trouble getting the new-style Neohomes to run on my old computer and it just doesn't excite me as much as old-style Neohome did somehow. I still have my old Neohome, but with no new furniture ever appearing for it it's hard for me to get excited about it anymore.

I was really into the Stock Market for a while, but my main reason for playing the Stock Market was to make Neopoints, and the NP was never an end unto itself with me... it was what the NP let me do, and there's nothing I'm that interested in doing at the moment.

I liked the idea of pet customization when it was first floated past us, but it turned out to be more fun in principle than in practice, thanks to the slow, clunky interface and a shortage of items that I actually want to use. The whole conversion thing did deal a big blow to my interest in the site, though. Not the fatal blow, but a blow nonetheless. I personally didn't lose much from the conversion (though, happy as am with my RG Peophin, to this day I'm kicking myself for not getting around to painting Dar Faerie before the conversion). But the old pet art was so much more interesting than the pet art now. Not always better -- Peophins in particular gained a lot from the conversion -- but you could have interesting, original, beautiful art for pets in way that almost never happens now.

***

Whereas on Subeta, there are things I'm interested in doing on the site. I like messing with my HA, and I like buying pretty items for my pets' treasures. That's mostly what drives my interest in the site... but hey, it's something! Right now there's nothing I'm interested in doing on Neopets.

(That said, I actually weirdly find that I'm doing less playing with my HA as both my standards for an HA and the choices of clothing available to me increase. It's like the whole thing has become too overwhelming and a little too much like work. Dunno, anyone else find this?)

Mind, I don't spend as much time on EITHER site as I used to: I have less "fun" time in general as I'm working longer hours at a more demanding job now, and I'm also messing around with other computer and iPod games as well. But my interest in Neo has really bottomed out in a way I wouldn't have predicted a few years back.

Two features that I think have helped sustain an interest in Subeta (besides the HA): pet treasures and wishlists. For some reason I was never into having a gallery, but I like the idea of a collection of objects that goes along with my pets' characters. (Maybe it just seems less overwhelming: I can have a bunch of little collections in pet treasures, whereas "gallery" feels like a "big project" to me.) And being able to easily keep track of items that I want to buy inspires me to hang around and make a little virtual money to buy them with. With Neo it's too hard to keep track of stuff I might want to buy, so I just forget all about them.

EDIT: Also, while I was never part of the target age group of Neopets, it does feel to me like the site has become more and more child-oriented over the years. I'm likely older than the target age group of Subeta, too, but it's not a site for children and I find I like that a lot.

[Ailiel]

For me, it's just the history that I have with Neopets that keeps me playing and interested. I was very disappointed with conversion-- I think all of us here at a site called NeoCOLOURS were disappointed in some way. New colors coming out are not the same, and one of my favorite things was picking apart the different poses with all of you here. That whole aspect is gone. But now I've gotten into trophies, neohomes (unlike Wingsrising I could never get into the old Neohomes, but am adoring my new one since I started working on it), pet trading, earning Neopoints, interacting with my guild mates, working towards avatars, writing poetry, NT articles, etc. I've also come to like customization.

I tried out Subeta a LONG time ago, recommended here, and then I guess they did some sort of reset? At any rate my pets were gone. I just couldn't get that emotionally invested in it. I'm sure it's really fun and cool, but for me one petsite is really enough, and since I have such a long history with Neopets (eleven years now) and I'm still happy with it, I have no reason to switch. Starting Neopets so early and having an old account really gives me an advantage in the game too, and I just don't have any real desire to start from scratch somewhere else.

[Tom]

Heh, I've been thinking about creating a topic here for a while regarding the 'downfall' of Neopets, so to speak. That part of the site is so much less active than it used to be... and it interests me to gauge what level of activity people still maintain there - if at all. So this works pretty nicely.

Neopets mainly runs off nostalgia, I suppose. That'd be the only reason I'm still active there. Unlike most people here, I was never too interested in pet colours. They can look pretty, but I've always been so poor on both Neopets and Subeta that obtaining most of these colours was undoubtedly out of question (I've had more than a million sP once in over 7 years - yeah...) and resigned myself to never obtaining them, but for whatever reason it has never bothered me, either. What always drove me on Neopets was collecting avatars. For whatever reason they stopped releasing them on a regular basis, I do not know. Avatar collectors, to me at least, seemed like one of the most dedicated set of players. I ran a couple of guilds back in the day and could easily spend over 10 hours on the site during the weekends - and I certainly wasn't alone.

I remember one of friends at the time asking me and another friend when we planned to stop playing Neopets. Our responses were both the same, 'never'. Heh. As coincidence would have it, me and 'another friend' now go to the same university and are really good friends and still log on. But for me, the decay of the community I once knew has also played a big part in becoming so much less active. The people I was once in guilds with, would send occasional Neomails too, have all but vanished. I try to log on daily just to do things like spin the wheel of knowledge, etc etc, but after I don't know how many years, you certainly lose faith and it just becomes monotony. I also check the news out of fear - missing the Negg Celebration avatar last year was particularly annoying.

I've been on Subeta for just over four years now and still very much enjoy it. Though I'd never think about touching the NC Mall with a barge pole, I'd happily spend money on Subeta. I suppose actually being interested in the main feature they cater to, human avatars, helps a lot, and having a great community which is really active (my cult on there) keeps me playing the game. Not having to work forever for your goals really suits my needs, as I don't have as much time as I once did - an hour a day would leave me enough time to do the important quests, so I can easily sit down, watch something, and monotonously click away at the side without giving it a second thought.

Though the latest plot was a bit of a disaster, I still really enjoy what they offer the players and how much closer the level of interaction between staff and users is. I have been frozen three times on Neopets - once on my first account (it had a horrible name - I'm happy I never got it back) and twice on my current. Trying to find someone who would even listen to your query was such a problem, let alone them bothering to follow through and act on it. I was lucky enough to be unfrozen both times, but on Subeta, I can file a ticket and know I'm getting a response in ten minutes. I recently made a suggestion on the forums and it was actually implemented - oh my. I'm not too crazy about the forums, personally, and generally post rather infrequently, but there is still a sense of community and spirit that I definitely miss on Neopets. The site makes me question it from time to time, but at the moment, I have no intention of leaving.

[mellaka]

I think I'm attached to both sites equally. For Neo, I'm in a mall and I'm also a guild leader, so both of those things keep me coming back. My guild isn't nearly as active as back when TNT looked the other way to guilds holding events, but I still feel obligated to keep it going. The last plot was fun too, and it's nice to know that Neo can still do an OK plot (the reduced role of battling does annoy me). I also have a pretty decent battle pet, so I do have some sense of accomplishment about the site. In addition, I'm a premium member and I regularly chat on a few charter boards. I would probably miss that the most if I stopped playing.

The things I'm tired of are too many to list, but I guess topping that list is of course the horrible state with CG's, etc. I'm also really, really sick of most flash-game events.

I've been on Subeta for about 5 1/2 years, though I didn't really play for my first year there. What got me hooked on Subeta is that you can actually accomplish many goals there in a reasonable amount of time - pet colors are pretty affordable and when I first started training my pet, making him into a decent battle pet seemed possible too. Of course I've since learned that I will likely never have any of the great weapons that I want, or achieve too high of a ranking with my battle pet, but that doesn't bother me most days. I feel like they do things well that Neo lost its way with. I can't say how much I love that Subeta has actual wars, and battle admins that care about the game and keep trying to improve it and keep us interested. And of course the staff interaction is great and I love, love the pet and item artwork.

What I don't like about Subeta is that it is so quest focused. With less time lately to spend on the sites that I enjoy, I really don't like sitting there doing quest after quest to accomplish anything on the site. I was never much of a restocker, so I really don't know what else there is to do. I am happy that we have battle quests and can train our pets with them, but I hate that it's yet another quest to do, leaving me with less time to attempt Wiz quests and Saggi. I guess maybe I like Subeta a little more than Neo, but I couldn't imagine quitting either one.

[DamionDarkheart]

I was initially pretty angry at the pets being converted until I realized that mine were essentially untouched. The essential lack of new avatars (by far my favorite part of the site) is irritating, but it's given me time to actually work on the ones I need instead of putting them off forever. Several other motivating factors for me continuing to play Neopets include the age and general awesomeness of my account, making bank with Food Club (eternal thanks in the direction of Cranberry), seemingly being the shit at all the site events and plots, and recruiting IRL friends to play (resulting in ludicrous real life hilarity I'll never forget). There's also the sense of elitism I get from others being in awe over my and others reminiscing over the boards of the past. Plus it's where I met my WIFE <3

I also definitely would never have met any of the awesome people here were it not for the Neopets.



I hate Subeta. I thought it was fun for like five minutes (the approximate time it took for a couple pages to load back then), but IMO it's vastly inferior to the real thing. Plus my account was purged for no obvious reason. I'm also still pretty mad at Subeta for causing the indefinite hiatus of avatarlog. The only pet I especially liked (the Antlephore, or whatever) was redrawn pseudo-derp, and I cannot stand the boards - there were times when I found 4chan to be more intelligent and sophisticated, and that is unacceptable.

Out of sight is out of mind I suppose

[Kantark]

"Neopets was my first love, and it will be my laaaast.... Neopets of the future, and Neopets of the paaaast..." ::cue random instrumental section::

Erm, yep... in short I got hooked on Neo, for several years (my interest surviving several random freezings) but lost interest somewhat after the Customisation changes and followed many here over to Subeta. It really looked like a mass exodus was on the cards for a while. I played Subeta for I guess about a year or so, then lots of irritating stuff happened and I lost interest (my account has now been purged). My Neo addiction didn't pick up again immediately either - for a while I just went on to do dailies. But recently I'm once again addicted.

Why I fell out of love with Neo: Customisation, over-cutifying of the site after it was bought by Viacom, a perceived persecution of adult Neopians.

Why I fell out of love with Subeta: Initially I loved some of the pet artwork (I'm thinking the dragon-like one - Dragarth was it?), but it kept changing! Not always for the best. At the time I was playing, the site was up and down like a yo-yo (that very badly handled lolcat situation really didn't help), though I believe it's now a lot better? What really did it for me was the HAs, dress-up-dollies really didn't appeal, and it seemed the management were hell-bent on turning it into some kind of social network site with a virtual pet function (rather than a virtual pet site with a social network function.)

Why I fell back in love with Neopets: They started releasing pretty items for Customisation, and time has been a good healer on that issue too. Also, there have been some genuinely innovative new colours recently (Transparent, Maractite, Woodland). And TFR <3 . I know I keep banging on about this but they really did get that plot so right. I also enjoy having an older account with pretty pets! With Subeta it seemed pretty easy to earn large sums of money quickly and, say what you like about inflation, there is definitely a sense of achievement with Neo when you can finally go out and buy that item/paint brush, etc.

Sometimes I'll go to the Subeta section of Neocolours and take a look at new pets/colours. And in most cases they are very pretty indeed. But I'm not interested in signing up again.

TL, DR: Pretty much what Damion said.

[Elucifer]

Very interesting so far! Thanks for keeping it very civil, I really appreciate that. xD

Now, here's a random curve ball:

Neopets fan sites (Leopets for example);
sites dedicated to the old Neo art, to where you can make the UC pets and sometimes a site-created pet species. Low budget, donation-funded and often have very little to offer as far as games. BUT, the community is tight and very art-oriented. Thus, art can draw in points and that's how you get the PBs and such.

That's a general run-down of a fansite. Now to the question regarding these:

Do you support these fansites? Do you think they're the way to go for trying to get UC pets or RW/RN pets?
Too difficult in trying to apply? Feel that applying shouldn't be required? If not, why?

[AngharadTy]

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

Neopets for me was so much fun for so long. And I'll always love it because it brought me here, and I've gained so many invaluable friends because of NC. Hugs all around! ...But I too used to laugh and say there was nothing that could tear me away from the site. They broke me with customization. I was so sure they wouldn't autoconvert all pets. And then they did. I only had two or three pets that were grandfathered, out of five full accounts. But I had gradually been growing dissatisfied with the site overall. The feel of it. Too kiddy, too chaotic, too ad-ful. Even with adblock, the layout feels so full. And pets load so slowly, and I hated coding lookups around their filters and with their word limit. So I've basically quit; I only go back to buy stocks sometimes, because why not. I still love my pets there (so much that I never recreated any on Subeta, if that makes sense outside my head), but more as a memory than as what they are now, definitely.

I like Subeta more because it's more adult, the site feels cleaner, and because anything I don't like, I can code around. Being able to apply custom css to the entire site (so I added my own header, I block some things, I moved the clock, I turned off the mouseover menus, etc.) makes it feel much more like a "home." And I really enjoy coding pet profiles. There's so much I can do. Love the pet art, too, of course; pets are always my top priority. Originally, I thought that the lack of other poses was too weird to get over. But then I saw the wonderful amount of detail that's really there on so many pets, and I came up with pet characters that I adore, and kind of found myself addicted. I love HAs, too, and never expected to. There are more things that I like than I'm able to even discuss here. My post would turn into a dissertation.

That said--I do have problems with some things. The forums are a huge sore point; they're elitist and banal and full of terrible signatures and also really awkward to navigate (I don't always want to go to the first page of a thread, yo). Granted, I hate the Neoboards too, but it's even worse on Subeta because a lot of important info gets put out on the forums instead of in the news. That is terribly frustrating. I also have concerns about some of the ways staff deals with various things... but overall I concede it's a lot nicer to be able to reach staff. Because of those concerns, though, I can't bring myself to give any more money to the site. (For a while that didn't matter because I was really, really poor, but now that I'm just plain ol' regular poor, I would want to again, if....) Also, I looooooathe battling on Subeta. It is so goddamn boring. The strategy stuff can be interesting, but the actual physical act of battling makes me want to strangle someone. Scroll then click, scroll then click, repeat endlessly or until you vomit from boredom.

I also had a hell of a time achieving things on Neo (I'm kind of relieved to have given up on the site because there were soooooo many bone items I would never ever ever be able to get), and I hate the training system. I guess some might think Subeta is too easy, but those are people who never tried to earn 10 pet slots through mystical plushies (without spending real money), and having a pet with high stats indicates a hell of a lot of time invested. I still have a lot of goals of varying levels of possibility. However, one of those goals is to have a better battle set, and... like I said, I hate how it feels to fight things, so it's hard to want to spend millions and millions of sP just to do it slightly better.

Re. Elucifer's post that just came up while I was typing: I hate leopets-type sites. If you want to run a pet site, come up with something yourself. Don't just imitate. (General "you" here; I have no idea who runs any of those sites.) Similarly, I've never signed up for any of the various unofficial Pokemon sites, even though I love Pokemon. If it's not "real," it never will be real. I am not capable of tricking my brain into thinking it's worthwhile.

I don't care if the sites exist, but that's why I won't be joining them myself. Subeta has some derivative aspects, but it's hard not to when it's just a website about having pets; I think they have more than enough original content to justify their existence.

Oh, and Wings--I totally feel that way about HAs sometimes! It's worse if you try to go for the full wardrobe achievements, because there is so much crap to wade through to find the good items, and... there's also a lot of good items. I have my wardrobe open in another tab right now, but making a new outfit is slow going, heh.

[Goldenchaos]

Both sites are alright.

I don't use either site for very very long, unless there is some HUGE event going on, and even then, I only go there for a bit part of it, then go on with whatever I was doing prior to visiting the site.

Though, with Subeta, like Ty said, there is way way WAY too much that goes on on the boards, with NOTHING on the news..some of it event important. I don't even know these things are going on because I just forget the forums even exist. Its nice that staff is actively talking with the community, but sometimes they don't handle that too well. I do love the pet art, and the background art they use for some of the events..like the Underground image. I mess with my HA every so often, even if the majority of the stuff Id like is pricey lol (Which is the downside to the pretty art). Which is another downside, easy as it IS to earn money on the site..everything is so SUPER EXPENSIVE D: insanely so. OH SITE EVENTS. The holiday site events are awesome. Especially the Halloween and Christmas time ones.

Neopets is trying to back to the way it was..especially with having a Facebook now, and trying their best to bring back the old plot wars..example this last plot. I miss the old style pets the most, especially those redraws. I don't play as much games as I used to, since Im not going for any kind of goal anymore. The community is widespread, so there is no real sense of 'family', on Neopets, unless you are in a guild. I rather enjoy going on Neo when there IS a plot, especially pretty comics to go along with it. This last plot was great and reminded me of plots of long ago. But everything is pricey on here too, and its a lot more time consuming to earn NP than SP.

Leopets is kind ..eh..its too SUPER ELITIST, what with their deal of having to APPLY to join, just because they want to have a tiny community.


Haha, Ive been on Subeta for 5 years, nearing 6, joined on July 1st. (Though I had an account prior to the one I have now, I remember getting a Kora, but I forgot all about it, so it got purged eons ago), and been on Neopets 10 1/2 years, 11 on July 2nd. I never noticed that I joined both sides around the same month and day. Neat.

[FaerieInGrey]

I miss old Neopets so, so much. My real life was really shitty when I joined Neopets, and it gave me this whole world and friends and just an escape. I ran a big, amazing guild and had an awesome account, and a somewhat known presence on the boards.

I met my husband there (awwww) and a bunch of friends that I still talk to now, 6 or more years since the last time we talked on Neopets. One came to my wedding all the way from Quebec, one goes to college nearby, and I'm plotting with one in California for us to finally meet in person. I also met everyone on this site, and you guys were seriously my best and closest friends. Because of Neopets.

I don't play anymore -- the one-two punch of my accounts getting chain frozen and then customization ruining by hopes of rebuilding made me lose any desire to start over. But I wish I had a time machine, sometimes.

[Fjorab_Teke]

I've been on Neopets for over 10 years now, and i haven't gotten bored of it. I can still spend a few minutes doing dailies during quiet times, occasionally finding a game i'm in the mood to play, and get excited with challenges and events. I have some far-flung "goals" that i'm not really serious about, but i'm OK with that. The one thing that bothers me about Neopets is that although many awesome people work there, it still feels like those in a position of power (both for freezing/thawing accounts and the corporate aspect) don't really care about their userbase except as a disposable and exploitable source of money.

Subeta never really caught on for me. I like the HA customization, but once i designed one i like, i haven't bothered changing it around. The art is generally really nice, but TWO pets that i joined the site for and worked toward got changed enough to really turn me off - the Experiment #893 was the worst and final straw. I spent MANY tokens on getting one, and right after i achieved him - poof, no longer the pet i had worked so long and spent so much toward. The site generally holds my interest less. It's not as much fun for me, there aren't many games that i enjoy playing (and my two favorites are often glitchy), and some of the other "fun" things are too cumbersome to bother with.

They both have their pros and cons compared to each other, but i play Neopets daily and only occasionally check in at Subeta.

[zebru]

I've been in hiatus mode on subeta for the past year or two. At one point I was very invested in both subeta and neopets, but once I stared working there just wasn't enough hours in the day for both and one had to drop. Now I feel so far behind with subeta, that it seams like it would be this huge effort to resume where I left with my closet and released items. I visit there occasionally to ogle my pets and galleries, but usually leave without doing anything much.

I think the thing that tipped the scales and made me give more time to neopets and less to subeta, was its items and pets being constantly redrawn. Very expensive one too. Customization on Neopets hit me really hard and for a time I was sure I was done with the site - but it passed and I adjusted, but subeta kept doing this to me all the time - bang, you wake up and your favourite pet looks completely different, and bang, there's another gallery item that's suddenly recognizable, and bang, what is this item in my treasure chest - where is that gorgeous thing that was in its place before... I couldn't deal with that well.
I like items on neopets having a stamp of when they were made and of the artist who made them. Yes, some look crappy - but they were drawn over 10 years ago, and there's nice nostalgia aura that goes along with that. I get attached not to the idea of item or what it represents, but the exact art of it. You change that, and it's suddenly a completely different thing to me and emotional attachment I had to it is gone, replaced by the feeling of being robbed of something. /rant

Things that keep me going back to neopets are my pets, site events (even game ones), dressing up (yep, NC addiction, I has it) and training my battle pet.
There's a good number of things annoying me there too. Threat of cookie grabbers, coding changing all the time and leaving my profiles and a giant mess, staff being sparse, slow to reply and not really giving a hoot, boards being filled with some very very odd people,; newly released pets and wearables being blurry on profile images... I could go on. But for the time the good outweights the bad and I'm still having fun so I stay.

[AngharadTy]

The revamp thing is a really good point, zebru. I check the revamp forum (the only forum I regularly check) out of dread, just wondering if there's anything of mine that's been ruined today. But I've gotten pretty comfortable with creating overlays. I can overlay pet images, minions, even treasure chest items if that becomes necessary. It's still really depressing sometimes, but that's how I cope. It used to bug me to "lie" about the things that I own, but I did own them in that form once, so it's not as bad as completely fake things like leopets.

[Usul_Princess]

The novelty has worn off for both sites.

I was actively playing Neo for almost an entire decade, and side-by-side with my friend for a good 6 1/2 years. I joined NC because I was very pleased that a website integrated art aesthetics with my favorite pastime. Painting all 20 of my pets attainable colors was an unrealistic, but a big enough goal to keep me playing. In addition, their plots were meticulous and worthwhile to participate in (Plus, you get that cute sidebar/site theme at the end). I loved 1 player BD, and I played over 1,000 games. I only trusted 1-player BD ever since chia flour and the like.

That said, somewhere along the line, Neo became a very unhealthy obsession in college. I actually prayed that something would change to wain my interest. Customization came along, and here we are! Post-customization ruined painting for me, and changing the age demographic from bored college kids to children under 12 with their parents credit cards made the game next to unplayable for adults unless you had Charter. Food Club and Charter were the only things that kept me playing until the erratic odds came along, and the intense drama that started to ensue on Charter. Once my premium subscription ran out, I didn't play Neo.

I, too agree that Subeta is decidedly inferior to Neo. In 2006, I loved it because it was so easy to amass a fortune, and I could paint all of my pets. (I could also throw money at the site and get whatever the hell I wanted ASAP if I chose to). The plots and artwork were nice, and I find all of the Steamworks characters to be fascinating. I can't pinpoint one thing in particular that ultimately didn't hold my interest up, but I do play every once in a while.

Getting a life helped me stay away from both sites, and I haven't missed either one much.

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.