Neopian Guide To Better Living: Introduction by potebrigitte | |
It was about two weeks after I had started playing, I had my roommate hooked
on NeoPets and he was playing on his computer while I played on mine. We had
a bit of friendly competition going over who’s pet was the best and I, too poor
to buy a PetPet, had given PoteHamu5 a Green Toy Car to play with, fresh from
the Toy
Shop. All of a sudden *boom* PoteHamu threw the car to the ground where
it broke in half and sat there.
My roommate started laughing at me. "What are you going to do with a broken
toy car?" he asked.
I decided to put it in my shop, it was no good to me or PoteHamu anymore, so
why not get rid of it?
My roommate thought I was crazy. "Why would someone buy a broken toy?" he asked.
"I don’t know," I replied as I priced it at 15 NP and hit Update, "but what’s
the harm in trying?"
Five minutes later it was gone, I was surprised to say the least, but happy
to have the 15 NP. That was before I knew about the world of collectors.
The story I just related was what came to mind as I read about the debut of
two new High Score Tables in the New Features section last week. First was the
Neopian Book Award, and when it debuted I was horrified, PoteHamu5 was 168th
on the High Score Table having only read 183 books to date, including the illustrious
Pteri Pop-Up Book. The next day the "high score" had jumped from a little over
200 books read to a little over 300. The only reason these people were reading
to their pets was to get a High Score and a trophy, I began to wonder how well
people were treating their pets.
The next day Gourmet Club showed up and sent me into crisis mode, the High
Score, held by one person, jumped up to 7, then 11. At first I thought it was
strange and after thinking about it I realised why--that pet had to start at
dying to obtain a score so high in one day. Am I the only one who buys food
in the food store every day? I thought to myself. Maybe I’m an exception
in that I feed my pets Food Store food and donate my daily omelette, but I was
beginning to worry that I wasn’t.
I’ve been thinking a lot since then, and I’m just as guilty as everyone else,
I have healthy collections of PetPets, Morphing Potions, Neggs, T-shirts, and
my biggest collection of all, Plushies. It made me think that maybe I should
be doing something else with all those things, maybe I should let PoteHamu5
and her brothers and sister play with that Angel Chia Plushie. I’m still struggling
but I’m making progress toward making NeoPets about the Pets again instead of
the stuff, and I’m hoping I can get a few people to come with me. For starters
I changed my Guild into an adoption guild, severely angering several people,
and I'm going to write a series of articles to help guide my fellow Neopians
out of the darkness of greed with me. The Neopian Guild to Better Living will
cover everything from NeoHomes to the Battledome and it will start soon. Baby
steps, fellow collectors, baby steps! |