I put off trying Neopets again for a long time because the way people talked about it made it seem not worth trying, but I think either I got the wrong impression or the change of ownership actually had a big effect for the better.

People made it sound like the Neopets site was all broken (due to Flash no longer being supported) and you had to have been grinding for years and years to be able to afford items you want to get, and that there was a lot of stuff you needed to do every day or else you'd fall behind, or something.

But most of the site isn't Flash anymore except for the games (and the Ruffle browser extension helps for the stuff that's still Flash), you get a lot of free Neopoints and items from just doing basic stuff, and not only do daily things barely take any time to do, but a lot of them are very skippable in the first place. Maybe some very rare items are hard to get, but for the Faerie Paint Brush I was hoping for, someone just gave me one for free within the first week of playing because they had a spare one just sitting around from a giveaway. If they hadn't, I would've been able to afford one by now, and I've only been playing for a few months.

And I'm realizing I kind of like this? I wasn't sure if I would, but playing Animal Crossing: Wild World again recently made me realize I kind of like poking into a world and doing daily stuff, and checking in with cute virtual critters. And maybe playing Flash games or solving the Mysterious Negg Cave is more fun than pulling virtual weeds or shaking all my trees and selling all the fruit, when I'm treating a game as a nice daily thing.