I think after reading my last entry in this Online World Atlas you might think that I hate Neopets, and that isn't exactly true. The most striking thing for any user of Neopets is that it is, at least initially, very complex to get to grips with for a online space aimed at children. Each screen is full of a mass of information and images, much of which is redundant or advertising (which isn't always obvious).

Navigation is poor—there is a navigation bar at the top of the screen, but the meaning of each section isn't clear to a new user, particularly when each section splits up into even more choices.

Despite all that, there is a reason that so many users clearly find Neopets captivating—and that's as simple as there are a near never-ending amount of things to do. By simply stumbling about the site (as I have been doing) you can find any number of unique and interesting games to play. For example, the last time I logged in, I clicked about for a while and found myself playing KeyQuest, a detailed, Mario-Party-esque virtual board-game that contained live chat and interaction with other players. There are tons of games, some of which are good and some of which aren't so great, but there's a lot of them.

In addition, Neopets also has a very strong and consistent theme. There's clearly as much depth and backstory to the Neopets world as there is to World of Warcraft (really!) and although the cutesy pet animals look like a barely acceptable rip-off of Pokemon to someone like me, they're enjoyed by the intended audience.

People get very attached to their pets and their experience in the world, though, and that's not only due to the consistency of the theme. They're very clever to ensure you keep logging back in by making sure that your pet gets hungry and lonely if you don't, and make sure you spend a lot of time there by requiring you play it for long periods of time in order to raise the required Neopoints to buy food, toys, or other things for your pet.

Gamers who have money, of course, can shortcut this by visiting the cash shop.

But taking all that into account, none of that makes me particularly like the world. I can absolutely respect the work put into Neopets across the years, but what the've chosen to engineer is (to an adult, at least) absolutely and transparently a timesink. Everything seems geared to keep you surfing their pages and seeing the adverts (and there are a lot) or spending money in their cash shop (or on any of the real world items that you can buy which gain you some advantage in the world).

Were the experience of using it more streamlined, better designed or just more pleasant I think we could overlook that, but Neopets sinks your time into doing something that isn't even especially fun.

It's an interesting world, one worth looking at, but as much to see success despite glaring problems as it is to see its positive aspects.