Welcome (Back) to Neopia!

     If you’ve been away for a while, I know how you might be feeling right now… a deep sense of comfort as you stare at your long-lost childhood Pixel Pets’ colourful little faces that you haven’t seen in years and intense nostalgia when clicking the links on that iconic yellow toolbar to navigate to the games room (which recently became available again, yippee!), the “Explore” tab, and to your empty, abandoned shop where the last item in your log shows that it was sold in 2012. Don’t worry, not judging because I was there myself not very long ago, too. If the last time you were around was when you found a Pink Poogle in your kids’ meal that led you to Neopia, welcome to the club! I am sure that you have probably realized even just with a brief scan through the site that A LOT has changed since then, but a lot has also remained the good old Neopets you remember.

     Personally, I played a lot during my early pre-teen and teenage years. Back then, you could only have four Neopets. We’re up to 20 now with Premium and Extra Pet Slots, did you know that?! I still need more, though, so I can have them all on one account someday... You also couldn’t trade your Pets or customize them back then, either. What we now call “UC art” is all there was, and it was actually pretty cool. I will forever miss the UC Faerie Bori and Mutant Draik… two of my favourites. But hey, after that recent TNT live stream, I have some hope that they might be coming back.

     I was obsessed with drawing pictures and writing stories about my Pets back in the day. My Petpages were absolutely filled with them. My sister and I were also young enough when we first became Neopians that we still played make-believe. Sometimes we sat next to each other playing Neopets while making up stories and having our Pets “talk” to each other as we explored Neopia. Don’t laugh at me, okay!? It was great! Shortly after that, I stumbled upon the roleplaying boards and then that became my new obsession because who doesn’t want to immerse themselves in what their life would be like if they were their Neopet or a wolf, cat, or character in some other book or movie they love so much?

     I’ll never forget my first account. I had a Red Kougra, Green Lenny, Blue Zafara, and Blue Uni. I lost access to that account many years ago, but still actually have two out of my four original Pets today… almost 20 years later, which is absurd to think. They are older than all of my friends’ kids. One of my biggest goals at the time was to save up for a Draik Transmogrification Potion. Back then I believe they were about 10 million neopoints, which seemed like an unfathomable amount to ever achieve for a 10-year-old. I saved for years and probably never got to over 1 million Neopoints. It was tough back then… Trudy’s wasn’t even around to help!

     Anyway, one of my fondest memories was when several of my guildmates and I pooled all of our Neopoints together so that I could get a Pirate Draik Egg since we had already concluded that we would never be able to afford the Transmogrification Potion at that point.This was such a huge, huge achievement and incredibly special to me. I will never forget that moment… how it felt to hatch my first Draik after all of us had put so much work into it, and I still have Alarkai today. He was painted Blue shortly after being hatched and will probably always remain that way. For those of you who are curious, I did eventually get a Mutant Draik roughly twelve or so years later through a very lucky trade on Christmas Eve. Best gift ever!

     I have so many other great memories of rushing home from school to spend all afternoon playing Turmac Roll, Kass Basher, Ice Cream Machine, Escape from Meridell Castle, Hasee Bounce, Meepit vs. Feepit (often against my sister), Volcano Run, Jelly Blobs of Doom, and many others. Those were definitely some of my favourites, though, and I am so happy they are available again. I also had several friends who played Neopets and I remember going to their houses and all of us taking turns logging into our accounts at the family computer to play the mini-games. I recently collected my 300th avatar for being in the Top 50 High Scores for Escape from Meridell Castle, which seemed very fitting because of how much I always loved that game as a kid.

     There is so much more that I could go on about… Remember when you would only leave a basic Pet as your active if you had any painted Pets because you were scared that Boochi would randomly show up and zap their expensive colour into Baby instead? Or maybe you were like me and left a certain Pet active all the time hoping that Boochi would come around and zap them. Well, Boochi always misses now, and I think most of us can breathe a sigh of relief…

     Or do you remember the excitement of logging in to learn that there was a brand new land in Neopia called Altador and you had to find all these constellations to unlock it? Except it was almost too much for your early 2000s computer to handle at the time and you didn’t know if you would ever get through it! And don’t even get me started on how much the Altador Cup would freeze initially… I’m pretty sure we were still on dial-up when that all started. The same goes for Habitarium and KeyQuest. They were genuinely good fun and great times, though.

     And how about the changes in popularity regarding NeoPet names? Everyone’s Pet was named something along the lines of cute_uni_star1234 or something along those lines and we absolutely loved them! I don’t think I ever even saw a Pet with what we now call a “VWN” (very good name) until several years later… Now four-letter names, real names, and real words are all the rage.

     How could I forget to mention the excitement of being a kid and getting something from the Advent Calendar every day in December? It was magical (and still is). All month, my sister, friends, and I would try to guess what would be given out on Christmas Eve or Day because we knew it was going to be something AWESOME!

     What a great time it was to be in Neopia…

     But guess what? Now is a really awesome time to be here, too! I have personally been back and playing consistently for about 2-3 years now after being away for over a decade. I was finally able to get Premium and NC now that I’m an adult with a real job and stuff. My parents would never ever let me spend money on an online game! I have also been able to attain quite a few Dreamies that I could never have gotten when I was younger. I have had so much fun expanding my Neo-family by saving up to customize them myself or through trading. I have also been collecting avvies, stamps, Neodeck cards, trying for trophies, attempting to feed Kadoaties, and finally actually playing through NeoQuest I and II. It was actually pretty fun and nostalgic. I highly recommend it! A lot of people are really into Food Club now, which is too hard for me to truly grasp, but that might be one of the next things I try to tackle… apparently, you can make a lot of Neopoints off of it, but maybe I’m just not destined to be Neo-rich. Truly, there is so much to do… just hop on the boards and ask around if you need some pointers!

     Above all, though, being back I have been able to see how dedicated the people at TNT are and how passionate the new leadership seems to be. Some people say the golden age was the one I just described, but I don’t think so. I think we are currently moving into it! So, if you’re just coming back, you’ve arrived at the right time to witness all of the amazing transitions that are happening in Neopia and I am so excited to be here to go through them with you all! Here’s to another 20 years in Neopia… or more!