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GAMES ROOM - "Earn Neopoints by playing Meerca Chase!" "PLAY MEERCA CHASE."
"If you want any money, you need to play Meerca Chase." Meerca Chase, if you
didn't know, is the most popular game in Neopia. Right now, at four o' clock
on a Saturday afternoon, nearly 300,000 games of it have been played today alone.
Now, if you didn't know, Meerca Chase is a game on this site where you try
to catch Neggs with your Meerca friend, who's tail grows with every negg you
eat. However, if you eat the evil red neggs, your game is over. It has been
a wildly popular game for the past two years and is always the #1 game played
on Neopets. However, it confused me how people obsess over playing this game
and not ones with bigger payouts, which I will discuss later on in this article.
But why is that so? It's a puzzling question for me, so I decided to go ask
the Neopian public about it.
First, to the Neochat boards. I head to the general chat first, expecting
at least some people to reply there. To my luck, they did. Too bad that
place was so full or I could've got more response.. Anyway, to sum up the response
in two words: Easy Neopoints.
lenchen3000: "Easy way to earn Neopoints. Before I played it because
I wanted the magical plushies."
1neoguy: "I play cause it's easy, it's fun, and on a good day I earn
a good amount of Neopoints."
tigger_girl3232: "I play Meerca Chase because I like the idea of the
game. You move around, collecting stuff and adding it to your tail, but if it
breaks, or you hit an bad egg or hit the wall, game over... It's VERY addictive."
People play it all for pretty much the same reason--Neopoints. Five minutes
and presto-- a bag of 200 Neopoints have fallen into your lap. It's that reason,
I believe, that makes Meerca Chase the most popular game in Neopia.
I'm still not convinced, however. I look at my High Scores and it appears
that there are still several games that have the same (or possible higher) rate
of giving Neopoints. So I decide to go ask my guild for help on answering the
question further. They helped me out quite a bit too.
star_of_paradise: "I play it because I like to (4 some obscure reason)
see the tail go around and around and make funny patterns..."
muddle_of_pudd: "I play Meerca Chase because I'm kinda addicted to
the game... even though I don't play it often :-/ and I just love to challenge
myself and see how far I can get in the game."
hilarypaiged: "I do enjoy watching the little Meerca pop around the
screen like nobody's business on the hard mode, its rather funny."
intentions14: "I play Meerca Chase for the NP. I must admit it is addictive,
I must play it everyday."
bittersnowflake: "I play Meerca Chase because it's one of the few games
I don't get bored of (don't ask me why), it's easy to play, it loads quickly
on my computer, and that's about all."
With more reasons given I'm feeling slightly better about the idea of the
moving Meerca and his obsession with neggs. However, I still have something
in the back of my head telling me otherwise; telling me that there is still
a better option for the many Neopoint-hungry people.
So I decide to test my theory. First I played Meerca Chase. With my slower
computer I got a score of 800 something a few years back, so I'm seeing if I
can beat that. I tried the Medium mode. I played this level three times, and
my scores were as follows:
Game 1: 5 (Those walls...)
Game 2: 105
Game 3: 95
Total: 205 NP
I thought my scores were OK, just not enough reason to love this game. Now,
to my 2nd experiment, Extreme Herder. This game is somewhat like Meerca Chase,
only with you running around trying to put petpets in their cage without running
into Balthazar, who wants to eat them (and will eat you). This game multiplies
your score by three to determine your winnings. This time my scores were as
shown:
Game 1: 117 (x3)
Game 2: 113 (x3)
Game 3: 130 (x3) Woohoo! New high score!
Total: 360 (x3) = 720 NP
Wow... 720 NP from just one game? It was too bad that I'd used my 3 plays
already by that third one, but now you can see how there is a difference between
the payouts earned in games. The last game for the test, Ultimate Bullseye,
I'm not very good at. It's a game where you attempt to hit the Bullseye with
an arrow, like archery. However, the payout is your score multiplied by 6, so
how could you lose?
Game 1: 35 (x6)
Game 2: 47 (x6)
Game 3: 44 (x6)
Total: 126 (x6) = 756 NP
Wow! Combined, you could gain over 1400 Neopoints from these two games alone!
Now look at Meerca Chase. A little over 200? Forget it. Remember, your abilities
could be better or worse than mine for the games listed, so try to find games
that work well for you and your computer.
There are also many other games you can get Neopoints from, even if the Neopoints
earned are less than your score. Games like Korbats Lab, Volcano Run and Usuki
Frenzy are great alternative games to earning NP as well. Just remember where
your skills are!
Just one last note: Please do not cheat on games. Every single day (don't
think I'm exaggerating) I see scores for Usuki Frenzy that are impossibly high
(Hmm... how do you get 4000 when the highest humanly possible is 219?) and are
just ridiculous. Please do not cheat, when others who did deserve the top prize
are moved down to 6th or something awful like that. Thanks.
Note: All usernames given were actual Neopians and permission was given
to reveal names. Please do not bug these people or anything that would irritate
them. Thank you once again.
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