Recently I’ve gotten re-addicted to the crack that is ">Neopets. It’s free, it’s cutesy and it’s pointless (though not nearly as pointless as Gaia Online.) It’s also quicksand for Internet adventurers; once it has sucked someone in it’s very difficult for them to struggle free. How does this deadly trap work? By luring in fresh victims with adorable virtual pets to adopt and raise. Anyone with OCD would find this site more maddening than Pokemon in its array of items to collect, games to play and stats to raise. There is no end to it.

First the “user” (for this site is a drug and anyone who participates soon finds themselves addicted) selects a pet from a plethora of mythical and adorable creatures. Then a color scheme is chosen, but this can be changed later through the use of a paintbrush. Some paintbrushes are very rare and can change the look of a pet drastically, giving it wings or scales or a Halloween theme. The acquisition of specific paintbrushes is just one of the lures to ensnare users. Another is the stat-raising system whereby pets gain levels, strength, defence and the like by completing various tasks or enrolling in courses at one of two different academies. Unlike role-playing games where battles reward the player with experience which when accumulated causes a boost in level which in turn raises stats, in Neopets there are numerous ways to gain an increase in stats and not all of them are immediately obvious. Exploration could lead to a random event raising your Neopet’s level, but a more reliable way of gaining stat boosts and level increases is by visiting Coltzan's Shrine at certain times of the day. (Other good “gifts” from Coltzan: dubloons, food and battledome items.) The obvious way to raise levels and stats, however, is to take a training course at either the Swashbuckling Academy or Mystery Island Training School. Both require the use of an item as payment for a course, either a dubloon or a codestone, respectively. Also, reading a book to your Neopet will cause it to gain intelligence. There are also games that occasionally give an intelligence boost. Discovering all the ways to raise the stats of your pet will keep you busy for days on end, not to mention the time it takes to make enough money to buy a codestone or dubloon.

This leads into playing games. Lots and lots of games. The games are a great way to make neopoints, the currency of Neopia. They are also fun to a certain extent. Hassee Bounce, for instance, involves two Hassees (a type of Neopet) jumping from a tree limb onto a see-saw in order to catch flying donuts. Yes, flying donuts. It’s fun and a great way to make some extra neopoints. Another game that is a good way to make neopoints and score some battledome items is to play Cheat!, a relative of the real-life card game BS. The only problem with this game is that since you are pitted against computer-controlled opponents it’s both very easy and very stupid. Each player is dealt a certain number of cards and can then discard all of the same value (3s, 4s, Kings, whatever). The next player has to discard cards that are of a higher or lower value. If that person doesn’t have a card of a higher or lower value they have to cheat and say they do while discarding a different card. If another player suspects cheating, he or she can accuse the other person of it. If that person was cheating, they have to take the pile of discarded cards. If they weren’t cheating then the other player has to take the pile. This is an incredibly fun game to play with real people, but becomes a very boring chore when playing against opponents who can’t actually think for themselves. A lot of the strategy is lost. For instance, one player will discard four Kings, the next will discard Queens and the one after will discard Kings! This would never happen in real life because if one person has a King in his or her hand and someone else tries to discard four of them, then that person is cheating. Otherwise it’s obvious that the person who discarded a King after them is cheating. But the A.I. for this game doesn’t take things like that into account. So Cheat! can be a rewarding game in that it’s fairly easy to win at it, but it’s also a boring game. One good thing, though, is that by winning a round you move on to another round and after you win each round you get a card that can be used in the battledome to do special attacks.

What is this battledome I keep mentioning? It’s the other main payoff of playing Neopets. You can train your pet to be a lean, mean battling machine and pit it against opponents in a Mad Max style battledome. Ok so it isn’t that much like Mad Max, but it’s still pretty cool, especially when your pet gets strong enough to actually win battles. Did I mention how difficult the battledome opponents are? And of course, this being Neopets, you only start off with the option of one opponent. You have to find other opponents by exploring Neopia. They are everywhere and when you stumble across them they’ll challenge you to a fight in the battledome.

Everything in Neopets is collectable, from items and plushies to battledome opponents. Even the avatars used in the Neoforums have to be found or won. It’s enough to keep a person busy for years. Literally. I quit cold turkey about three years ago, but I’ve relapsed and now I’m hooked again. Don’t let it happen to you!