The first thing to do upon joining the website is make your human avatar. There are hundreds of possible combinations of hair style, hair color, eye style, skin color… the list goes on. Even without considering the diversity that clothing brings, the avatars themselves allow for a ton of diversity. After you create your human avatar, you get to choose a pet. There are many pets to choose from, from cute to creepy to everything in-between, so there is bound to be something that you like. After you have chosen a pet and made your avatar, you are ready to go!

When it comes to a tutorial, there isn’t really much of one, though there are help pages to get you started if you need it. It’s best to go free-reign and explore the site on your own, though this may put some users off at first. It’s a large site and a little confusing until you get the hang of it, so visiting the help pages or turning to the community forums may be a good idea. As far as features are concerned, there are numerous pet colors to collect, as well as a plethora of human avatar clothes, and an astounding number of items. Collectors definitely have a place on Subeta! To get to buying items, though, you’ll need to earn Subeta Points, which you can do mainly through playing games. The site has a variety of flash-based and non-flash games, but they are not really organized and users who are used to being able to choose based on their own interests may find it a tad irritating until they learn the different games.

The artwork of the site is generally very attractive. There is a definite style for most pets, items, and other artwork, and the art that does break free of this style does so only to a very small degree, making it very cohesive and enjoyable. You will be hard-put to find something on the site that doesn’t match the style at all, and to find something that isn’t beautifully drawn would raise the following question: do you need new glasses?

The community on Subeta is large and close-knit, which makes it easy for you to make friends and be social. The users of Subeta are generally kind and the admins and staff are fun and easy to talk to, which is a welcome change from many other virtual pet websites. Those who play Subeta are helpful and inclusive provided you are respectful, friendly, and honest. Besides, with hundreds of active users online at a time, how can you go wrong?

If there is anything negative to be said about Subeta, it would be that it can be difficult to enjoy the site without much social interaction. Unlike other virtual pet websites, not spending a lot of time getting to know the community will significantly decrease your enjoyment of the site, because a lot of the fun to be had is on the forums with other users. The site does not offer enough features to keep you busy without the community interaction, so if you are a loner, it may not be the site for you.

Overall, Subeta is a very attractive virtual pet website that offers a great social community and a fun place to hang out and enjoy collecting items, playing games, and dressing up your human avatar. The community provides a lot of the fun of the site, so less social gamers may not find it to be their cup of tea, but the artwork is gorgeous and the community is friendly and very close-knit. It’s a huge site with lots to collect and do, provided you aren’t afraid to get out there and make new friends.

Upon entering the website you are immediately given a lot of information to look at, including the latest news, a notable neopet, and some of the newest items in the game. All of the images and navigation bars that are thrown to you at the beginning can seem rather overwhelming to an initial player, and for good reason… this site has a lot to do! Once you decide to sign up, you are asked to provide some basic information, and then you get to pick your Neopet, its colour, its name, and a few other things.

After you create your pet you are offered to view the tutorial, which helps teach you how to navigate the website and what there is to do. You learn about the basic navigation, where to go to play games to earn points, where to shop to get items for your pet, about cash shop items, how to care for your pet… all the basics are in the tutorial.

Once you are done with the tutorial and getting your free gifts, you can go ahead and explore the site. Neopets has a lot to do as far as games, trading, shopping, and socializing is concerned. Some of the most popular activities include completing the game challenges, battling with your pet in the battledome, and talking on the forums. You can also join a guild, or club, with people who have similar interests with you, and if you are the artistic type you can submit pictures of your pet into the beauty contest or write an article for the Neopian Times, the Neopets online newspaper. Playing games is the primary way of earning Neopoints which can be used to buy items for your pets, though you can also trade and watch the market to earn points through restocking items.

The site is also filled with tons of artwork, animated and non-animated, and text often falls second-place to large images that take up a lot of the space. This makes the site feel very lively and fun but is not friendly to users who have slower internet connections, so be warned. The artwork, overall, also appears to lack consistency; the pets retain their general appearance across the site but the style changes between items and pets quite frequently, which will upset you if you are a stickler for consistency.

While there is a lot to do, you sometimes end up feeling rather socially distant on Neopets, and the rules are adhered to very strictly, often unfairly. Users are keen to report anything that is even remotely similar to something that is against the rules, including acronyms such as “wtf” (swearing) and offering to look at people’s beauty contest (drawing contest) entries if they will look at yours (vote trading.) Even if the intentions were not to swear or to trade votes, and were to say “what the flip” and to just get an idea of what entries were out there, staff will often consider it to be the worst-case scenario and act accordingly. Staff members do not seem to be active players on the site, either, which doesn’t bring a lot of community feel, and the emphasis on the cash shop and real-life merchandise further detracts from the social feeling. Players are often rather unfriendly to each other, as well, and while this is understandable considering the website is targeted at younger players, it can be a nuisance.

Overall, Neopets is the biggest virtual pet website out there and provides a lot for players who are looking for a lot of games to play or things to do, but a lot of the content costs real-life money, which is somewhat limiting. There are lots of games to play, but due to the huge volume of players, it can be difficult to get ahead in the game and stand out as an individual. Being social on Neopets can sometimes be tricky, and you have to step on eggshells to make sure you are not in any way breaking the rules, but if you’re willing to take the time and effort to go out and spend time meeting other players then you may be lucky enough to make a few friends as well.