Neopets
A lot of people remember Neopets from their youth, but it’s still a thing and I have a wild story about how I have lost and regained my account MULTIPLE times.
My first Neopets account was made some time before 2005. We didn’t have internet access at home, but I went to the library every day after school to do homework and I could get online for a few minutes there before we went home. A friend had an account and showed me the games you could play. I was really interested, but I didn’t have my own email account, nor did I know how to make an account.
I used my parents’ email account (a Juno account if memory serves) and made up a random birthday since I was too young to officially have an account at the time. After a few weeks or months of playing fairly regularly, I got bored. I stopped playing as much and eventually forgot the login information for that account.
Some years later, I decided I wanted to play Neopets again. I tried to recover the account, but I had no way to prove I was the owner. I couldn’t remember the username, email address, or made up birthdate that I had used to register. Fortunately, I was old enough then to have my own account with my real birthdate and my own email address. I created a new account with my legitimate information and vowed to remember this one. Neo_owner2005 would stick around permanently.
Again, I played for a while (probably longer than my first account), but I eventually got bored as kids do and stopped playing. That account remained dormant for a very long time until I started reminiscing with a friend about Neopets in November 2021. I had a tentative idea about what my username was, but I couldn’t remember the exact formatting. I supplied the email address that I suspected I had used, and sure enough the username was what I remembered.
When I tried to log in with that username and password, I was informed that my account was frozen. Well, how do I unfreeze it? I looked around for some way to request access, but the support page was gated behind a login - unhelpful. Finally, I found a way to submit a bug ticket with account issues as the source. I provided details that I remembered about my account and hoped for the best.
Later that same day, I received an email from the support team that my account was unlocked. That was perhaps the fastest service I had ever received from a support team, and this was for a game that I assumed was dead. Neopets support needs to teach a masterclass on support, and the rest of you scrubs need to sign up.
I was able to log in to my account once more, and the game was mostly the same as what I remembered. The minigames to earn neopoints were more or less identical, but rates for the dubloon disaster boat game seemed severely reduced. I started making daily runs to hit all the recurring tasks for money and items. I knew I wouldn’t stick around forever, but it was a huge nostalgia hit to do those same tasks that I remembered doing way back when I first made the account.
For a few months, I played pretty regularly. This particular time, I at least played until February 2022, because I have a Neolodge checkout email. I can’t say how long it lasted after that, but anything post-Covid is pretty recent in my opinion. Because Neopets isn’t tremendously engaging and daily tasks quickly turn into a chore, I eventually put it down again.
In September 2024, the urge to play again hit me. Despite the gross negligence of leaving animals unattended for years at a time, I knew that they would certainly be happy to see me. I went to the login page, but instead of username, I was prompted for email. At this point, I didn’t recall what email I had used to create the account, and what’s more, I didn’t know if I had updated that email to the one I mainly use now.
I reached out to support again through a similar report system. I provided details about the account, and the support team graciously reset my password AND set my current email to the email address on the account. Fantastic!
I tried to log in with the provided credentials, but I received an error message: “Incorrect username in cookie. Please contact support@neopets.com with your browser type and operating system. Thanks!” Easy, I’ll just delete my cookies. I cleared my browsing data and tried again to no avail. The same error message popped up. Clearly, this was more than just a local cookie problem. I responded to the support team in the same email thread as before.
When Shawn from support responded, I felt like an idiot. My problem had nothing to do with cookies or account locks. I was just using the wrong URL.
Admittedly, it is unnecessarily confusing for Neopets to have a distinction between Classic Neopets and Neopass. As far as I can gather, Neopass is a more modern sign-in option, but Classic Neopets works just as well with username and password. I’ll stick with the tried and true Neopets standard.
With the right URL and a reset password, I was finally able to log into my account again. The first thing I did was put both of my Neopets into the Neolodge because they were obviously dying of starvation. I would also be dead if I didn’t eat for a year or two. In barely more than a moment, my pets were full to bursting and enamored with me once again. Talk about loyalty.
With my Neopets fed, I started meandering around Neopia to see if anything had changed. Oddly enough, it felt nearly identical to what I remembered from years before. Neopia Central had all the main stops and shops that a Neopet owner might need. I didn’t want to burn through all of my Neopoints before I knew I could recover them easily, so I avoided buying anything for the time being.
Reminded of the need to generate Neopoints and the existence of games, I decided to see if my old favorites were still around, and if I was any good at them. My high score of 590 in Meerca Chase II (a Snake knock-off) was beyond my reach this time, but I did manage to get 130 points and cashed out for 348 Neopoints. That was more than enough to cover my pets’ stay in the Neolodge.
Dubloon Disaster was another game I remember playing an enormous amount in my youth, but the controls felt different. I played a few times to see if I picked it back up, but I didn’t come anywhere near my listed high score of 2,255. Still, the nostalgia was palpable from playing these Flash games that I first experienced nearly two decades before.
I continued poking around in my account and stumbled across my friends list. Hilariously, the friends were mostly different accounts of the same three people I knew in person. I suppose I’m not the only one to have a few accounts because I forgot my previous login credentials. It would be neat to see when those accounts were last active, but I couldn’t find that information anywhere.
Curious what else had been added, I checked Reddit. There are subreddits dedicated to all kinds of obscure games and hobbies, and Neopets was no different. Clearly, I wasn’t alone. There were several posts asking what a recently returned player should do, and the experts of Reddit delivered.
One thing in particular that several Reddit users mentioned was the quest system. I investigated and found that the rewards for questing were decently lucrative. In about 5 minutes, I worked through the daily quests and got a reward of 20,000 Neopoints, plus a few items and Neopoints for each individual quest. This was way more profitable that a similar amount of time playing the games, so I decided it would be worth checking the daily quests any time I think about it.
To satisfy one particular daily quest, I had to purchase any two items. Easy, let me go to Neopia Central real quick and find a shop. I went to the bookstore and picked a cheap book. It was then that I remembered how weird the shop system is in Neopets. An item starts with a listed price, and you haggle with the shopkeeper by offering some number of Neopoints until they agree. I offered about half of the listed price first, then I offered the nearest hundred below the current price, and finally I offered exactly what the shopkeeper asked for. This worked twice, but I’m not sure how that system works under the hood. I’m sure there’s some optimization method to get the best price, but I just wanted to buy my two items and finish the quest.
After a few minutes, my itch to experience Neopets again was properly satisfied. I’m sure my interest will wax and wane over time, but it’s nice to know that my account is still active and accessible. The quest system is a fantastic addition to reward a short amount of daily play. Eventually, that may turn into a chore, much the same way that Runescape has before. With Neopets being free, I’m not on the hook to maximize how much I play or risk wasting money. I’ll play when I want and ignore it when I don’t, and I think that’s a really refreshing way to experience an online game.
My first Neopets account was made some time before 2005. We didn’t have internet access at home, but I went to the library every day after school to do homework and I could get online for a few minutes there before we went home. A friend had an account and showed me the games you could play. I was really interested, but I didn’t have my own email account, nor did I know how to make an account.
I used my parents’ email account (a Juno account if memory serves) and made up a random birthday since I was too young to officially have an account at the time. After a few weeks or months of playing fairly regularly, I got bored. I stopped playing as much and eventually forgot the login information for that account.
Some years later, I decided I wanted to play Neopets again. I tried to recover the account, but I had no way to prove I was the owner. I couldn’t remember the username, email address, or made up birthdate that I had used to register. Fortunately, I was old enough then to have my own account with my real birthdate and my own email address. I created a new account with my legitimate information and vowed to remember this one. Neo_owner2005 would stick around permanently.
Again, I played for a while (probably longer than my first account), but I eventually got bored as kids do and stopped playing. That account remained dormant for a very long time until I started reminiscing with a friend about Neopets in November 2021. I had a tentative idea about what my username was, but I couldn’t remember the exact formatting. I supplied the email address that I suspected I had used, and sure enough the username was what I remembered.
When I tried to log in with that username and password, I was informed that my account was frozen. Well, how do I unfreeze it? I looked around for some way to request access, but the support page was gated behind a login - unhelpful. Finally, I found a way to submit a bug ticket with account issues as the source. I provided details that I remembered about my account and hoped for the best.
Later that same day, I received an email from the support team that my account was unlocked. That was perhaps the fastest service I had ever received from a support team, and this was for a game that I assumed was dead. Neopets support needs to teach a masterclass on support, and the rest of you scrubs need to sign up.
I was able to log in to my account once more, and the game was mostly the same as what I remembered. The minigames to earn neopoints were more or less identical, but rates for the dubloon disaster boat game seemed severely reduced. I started making daily runs to hit all the recurring tasks for money and items. I knew I wouldn’t stick around forever, but it was a huge nostalgia hit to do those same tasks that I remembered doing way back when I first made the account.
For a few months, I played pretty regularly. This particular time, I at least played until February 2022, because I have a Neolodge checkout email. I can’t say how long it lasted after that, but anything post-Covid is pretty recent in my opinion. Because Neopets isn’t tremendously engaging and daily tasks quickly turn into a chore, I eventually put it down again.
In September 2024, the urge to play again hit me. Despite the gross negligence of leaving animals unattended for years at a time, I knew that they would certainly be happy to see me. I went to the login page, but instead of username, I was prompted for email. At this point, I didn’t recall what email I had used to create the account, and what’s more, I didn’t know if I had updated that email to the one I mainly use now.
I reached out to support again through a similar report system. I provided details about the account, and the support team graciously reset my password AND set my current email to the email address on the account. Fantastic!
I tried to log in with the provided credentials, but I received an error message: “Incorrect username in cookie. Please contact support@neopets.com with your browser type and operating system. Thanks!” Easy, I’ll just delete my cookies. I cleared my browsing data and tried again to no avail. The same error message popped up. Clearly, this was more than just a local cookie problem. I responded to the support team in the same email thread as before.
When Shawn from support responded, I felt like an idiot. My problem had nothing to do with cookies or account locks. I was just using the wrong URL.
Kindly login using the Classic Neopets link below instead of the Neopass login:
https://www.neopets.com/login/?destination=/settings/account/
Admittedly, it is unnecessarily confusing for Neopets to have a distinction between Classic Neopets and Neopass. As far as I can gather, Neopass is a more modern sign-in option, but Classic Neopets works just as well with username and password. I’ll stick with the tried and true Neopets standard.
With the right URL and a reset password, I was finally able to log into my account again. The first thing I did was put both of my Neopets into the Neolodge because they were obviously dying of starvation. I would also be dead if I didn’t eat for a year or two. In barely more than a moment, my pets were full to bursting and enamored with me once again. Talk about loyalty.
With my Neopets fed, I started meandering around Neopia to see if anything had changed. Oddly enough, it felt nearly identical to what I remembered from years before. Neopia Central had all the main stops and shops that a Neopet owner might need. I didn’t want to burn through all of my Neopoints before I knew I could recover them easily, so I avoided buying anything for the time being.
Reminded of the need to generate Neopoints and the existence of games, I decided to see if my old favorites were still around, and if I was any good at them. My high score of 590 in Meerca Chase II (a Snake knock-off) was beyond my reach this time, but I did manage to get 130 points and cashed out for 348 Neopoints. That was more than enough to cover my pets’ stay in the Neolodge.
Dubloon Disaster was another game I remember playing an enormous amount in my youth, but the controls felt different. I played a few times to see if I picked it back up, but I didn’t come anywhere near my listed high score of 2,255. Still, the nostalgia was palpable from playing these Flash games that I first experienced nearly two decades before.
I continued poking around in my account and stumbled across my friends list. Hilariously, the friends were mostly different accounts of the same three people I knew in person. I suppose I’m not the only one to have a few accounts because I forgot my previous login credentials. It would be neat to see when those accounts were last active, but I couldn’t find that information anywhere.
Curious what else had been added, I checked Reddit. There are subreddits dedicated to all kinds of obscure games and hobbies, and Neopets was no different. Clearly, I wasn’t alone. There were several posts asking what a recently returned player should do, and the experts of Reddit delivered.
One thing in particular that several Reddit users mentioned was the quest system. I investigated and found that the rewards for questing were decently lucrative. In about 5 minutes, I worked through the daily quests and got a reward of 20,000 Neopoints, plus a few items and Neopoints for each individual quest. This was way more profitable that a similar amount of time playing the games, so I decided it would be worth checking the daily quests any time I think about it.
To satisfy one particular daily quest, I had to purchase any two items. Easy, let me go to Neopia Central real quick and find a shop. I went to the bookstore and picked a cheap book. It was then that I remembered how weird the shop system is in Neopets. An item starts with a listed price, and you haggle with the shopkeeper by offering some number of Neopoints until they agree. I offered about half of the listed price first, then I offered the nearest hundred below the current price, and finally I offered exactly what the shopkeeper asked for. This worked twice, but I’m not sure how that system works under the hood. I’m sure there’s some optimization method to get the best price, but I just wanted to buy my two items and finish the quest.
After a few minutes, my itch to experience Neopets again was properly satisfied. I’m sure my interest will wax and wane over time, but it’s nice to know that my account is still active and accessible. The quest system is a fantastic addition to reward a short amount of daily play. Eventually, that may turn into a chore, much the same way that Runescape has before. With Neopets being free, I’m not on the hook to maximize how much I play or risk wasting money. I’ll play when I want and ignore it when I don’t, and I think that’s a really refreshing way to experience an online game.
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