The Average Neopian by stormydreamer |  |
THE WORLD NEWS - According to Neopets, there are over 60 Millions users and just
over 90 million Neopets. The most popular pet is the Shoyru -- 7.59% of us have
one and the least popular is the Krawk -- out of 60 million, only 1,735 of us
will have one. In total, the 'average' Neopian will have 1.491 pets. But is that
right? I decided to pick 20 people randomly from the general chat board and ask
them a series of 7 questions to try and figure out what is the 'average Neopian.'
The 7 questions asked were:
1. How old are you?
2. How long have you been playing NeoPets?
3. How many pets do you have?
4. How many of them are painted?
5. Do you train any (or all) of your pets?
6. Do you own any petpets? If so, how many?
7. Do you own a gallery? If so, how much do you think you've spent on it, as
a rough estimation? (To the nearest 1000 NP)
8. To you, what is the Average Neopian?
Some of the answers were quite surprising.
1. How old are you?
As you can see, the majority of the people I asked are 15 - 8 were in total,
which was over double the second highest (13.) I found this quite surprising,
most people assume Neopets is a children's site, and yet, none of the people
I surveyed were under the age of 12 and one person I asked was almost 21!
2. How long have you been playing Neopets?
Neopets has been around since the 15th November 1999 (That's 45 months now!)
but very few actually remember Neopets when it started. According to the results,
the majority of people have been playing for 19-24 months and only 2 have been
playing longer than 3 years. I've been playing for almost 30 months though,
but then, I've only been playing Neopets seriously (Training my pets, earning
money etc.) for around one year. In the last 2 years though, prices have boomed
tremendously (Remember when you could buy a yellow/green/blue/red paintbrush
for a mere 999 NPs?) With rates booming as they are, I believe it'll soon mean
that it'll be too expensive to play Neopets.
Dragonmist82 has been playing Neopets for around 2 years now. She commented,
"'I joined around 2 years ago, and its become a lot more complicated then
it was when I joined -- it's become much harder for young kids to play, and
is now more played by teenagers and adults."
3. How many pets do you own?
This was probably the first time my results seriously contradicted Neopets
-- according to them, Neopians have on average 1.491 pets, but my results conclusively
show most people have 4 pets. In fact, 75% of those surveyed had 4 or more pets.
Meowth1982, when asked, said "I have 4 pets -- all happy and loved." I personally
wasn't overly surprised by these results: most of the active players of Neopets
have 4 pets, myself included.
4. How many of your pets are painted?
Surprisingly over almost half surveyed had either 0 or 1 pet painted, despite
the majority of players having 4 or more pets. Half had painted either 3 or
4 of their pets, but many of the people questioned labbed one of their pets,
and therefore placed their answer as 3. Only one person surveyed had painted
over 4 pets, Kacheeky_3k. She believes she has around 25 pets and about 75%
of these are painted -- many are painted through the lab or friends, however.
Gaship, who has 3 painted pets, commented: "In the last year or so paintbrush
prices have rocketed through the roof and the price just to make your pet a
different colour is just not worth it, even though some people still do. For
example, the baby paintbrush its gone from around 150k to 600k in a very small
amount of time and why should people spend so much time just to buy a paintbrush?"
5. Do you train any (or all) of your pets?
Again, most people couldn't afford to train their pets, or chose not to. Many
said they only trained their pets when they found a codestone or from time to
time -- basically when they could afford it. I myself train all 4 of my pets,
3 by codestones and 1 by lab. However, the price of codestones, despite dropping
from almost 5000 NPs to 3000 NPs, still mounts up -- it can cost up to 30,000
NPs to train your pet to level 10 before you can even start to work on the stats
itself.
6. Do you own a petpet, if so, how many?
Over half of the Neopians surveyed own 4 or more petpets -- one person owned
12! In a way, petpets are cheaper than Codestones with prices starting at less
than 1000 NPs It's possible to buy 4 petpets for less than 5,000 NPs where as
codestones usually start at 3000. But then, petpets rapidly become more expensive
with prices easily reaching over 150,000 for some petpets. Sugar6248 commented:
"I like petpets. They're cute, you can paint them, and it's cool that you
can have your pet talk to them, and they respond back."
7. Do you own a gallery? If so, how much do you think you've spent on it?
Galleries are quite a big part of some player's enjoyment -- many players
have one (I myself have a dung gallery) but I was quite surprised by the results
-- 9 people didn't have a gallery, or had to sell their gallery for various
reasons. However, 11 people did have a gallery. The prices of the gallery changed
rapidly, quickly reaching 200k+ for some -- one person had estimated they'd
spent over a million on their plushie gallery! On average, the people surveyed
(Who had a gallery) spent 108,636.4 Neopoints on their gallery(s) -- quite a
lot in consideration!
8. In your opinion, what is the "average Neopian"?
So far, we have found out the majority of people surveyed have spent 108,
636.4 Neopoints on a gallery, have 4 petpets, has 4 petpets, paints and trains
their pets and has been playing NeoPets for around 2 years. But does that make
an average? I mean, everyone on Neopets has a different agenda -- writing, Neopoints,
petpages, Battledome… not one person will do the same thing as another. So can
you create an Average Neopian? When asked, "what, in your opinion, is the 'average
Neopian'?" the 20 people surveyed responded differently.
Meowth1982 responded: Hmm, the average Neopian is kind, caring and love
their pets. They play with and for their pets doing anything they can to please
them. They aren't concerned with having to get rich fast, as long as they have
enough to take care of their pets, they have enough money.
But then Dragonmist82 responded in the opposite:
Average Neopian is someone with under 100k begs for things and have non painted
pets. To me, I always imagine the average Neopian with around 2 trophies, one
for cheat, around 100-150,000 in their bank and maybe a codestone lying in their
inventory. They might have painted a pet, trained one or two if they're lucky
and usually spends about an hour on Neopets every night.
But then, can I really say what the average Neopian is? Perhaps Trixicat08012
summed it up the best when she said:
It's hard to describe the average Neopian. Neopets has such a diverse audience,
people of all ages and from all over the world. Neopians take interest in different
things from the site, whether it be the Battledome, galleries, their guild,
Neochat, collecting cards or stamps for their album, their NeoHome, their pets,
etc. He/she could have just started playing or been on since it first came out.
Such variety makes it difficult for me to describe the average Neopian.
So maybe there isn't an 'Average Neopian' -- but one things for sure -- they
all play NeoPets. And enjoy it for what it is.
Authors note: Thank you to everyone who filled in the survey:
Meowth1982, garageflower, pyro_the_dragon182, kitty2003kat, penguin_dude380,
li_xiao_lang, Gaship, kacheeky_3k, Clour, Dweias, dragonmist82, Trixicat08012,
Sugar6248, darkswirlz, Alicewalters, Marco281, Alilya, SilentParade, cal_jbk910
and Angelbear1320.
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