If youРІР‚в„ўre passionate about horses and the great outdoors, youРІР‚в„ўre going to love this game. Another among the best virtual pet sites, Howrse lets you breed virtual horses, train them, enter competitions and so much more. Manage your own equestrian center when playing Howrse. You can then groom them, play with them, show them off, win competitions and more! Whether you want a pure breed Golden Retriever or even if youРІР‚в„ўre more of a Husky lover, youРІР‚в„ўll find it here. You get to pick from hundreds of different dog breeds. Among one of the best virtual pet sites online, Dog Dayzz lets you adopt a virtual puppy. If youРІР‚в„ўre a dog person, youРІР‚в„ўre going to fall in love with Dog Dayzz. You can create your own custom dragon, have it evolve, shop for all sorts of goodies and interact with other users. So if you love dragons, this is definitely the place to hang out. However, rather than focusing on all sorts of different animals, Flight Rising focuses mainly on dragons. The authoritative record of NPRРІР‚в„ўs programming is the audio record.Flight Rising is another one of the excellent sites like Neopets online. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. KURTZLEBEN: That was Dana Hill and Alex Piscatelli.Р”В¬opyright Р’В© 2021 NPR. And I'm just playing this game that I love. PISCATELLI: Sometimes, I really crave when things were more simple, when I was younger, when I didn't have to worry so much about the day-to-day. But when she's having a rough time, she logs in. She has a new job and doesn't go on every day anymore. Alex is one of those people who stuck around. KURTZLEBEN: Neopets says that the number of daily users jumped around 30% at the start of the pandemic and has since tapered off, but remains about 5 to 10% percent higher than pre-pandemic times. I just got my account back, and I'm back. HILL: People would show up, and I would see usernames that I hadn't seen in, you know, a decade or more. KURTZLEBEN: She says it's been nice to see more people drifting back to the site over the past few years. And nostalgia is a pretty powerful thing. HILL: I think Neopets as a whole is just a place where people can go, where things will always be familiar, and the world will always be sort of the same vibe that it always has been. It's a refuge from the stressors of the real world. KURTZLEBEN: Dana thinks a large part of the site's appeal is the sense of nostalgia and safety people get from it. They have, you know, flat, almost humanlike faces with a short, little muzzle. KURTZLEBEN: She says the site gave her a chance to develop and sharpen her artistic skills, in part by rendering the pets themselves. She's been a regular since she was 17 and is now in her 30s.Р”ВANA HILL: Neopets, to me, is a creative outlet of sorts. KURTZLEBEN: Dana Hill (ph) is an artist from Seattle and, unlike Alex, never took a break from Neopets. But Neopets is kind of the opposite of that for me. PISCATELLI: The internet feels like such a place where you can kind of get lost in negativity. But on Neopets, there's no pressure to be anything other than how you are. It's easy to feel judged on Instagram or to feel like you have to put on a persona. KURTZLEBEN: Alex says that other forms of social media can be fraught. And I knew it would be a comforting thing that can kind of calm me down. PISCATELLI: If I felt myself having a panic attack or starting to feel really anxious, I would kind of just open my computer, log on and have Neopets there for me.

So like she said, she had a lot of time to kill, and she was also struggling with a lot more anxiety.

When the pandemic first started, she got furloughed from her job. KURTZLEBEN: That's Alex Piscatelli (ph), who used to play Neopets in elementary school. And we reached out to some users to ask what has kept them there or brought them back after so long.Р”Р„LEX PISCATELLI: I found myself with literally all the time in the world because I couldn't hang out with friends. A story in The New York Times about the longevity of the website caught our eye. And, apparently, it's having a resurgence during the pandemic. Sound familiar? Well, back in the early 2000s, it was extremely popular. KURTZLEBEN: It's a website where users create and care for their own digital pets, take them on adventures and engage on message boards with other users. Those are the sorts of things that populate the virtual magical world of Neopets. DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Pets, pirates, fairies and a magic money tree.

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