Virtual pet site

A virtual pet site, VPS, or bbmmo (Browser Based MMO) is a website where people can adopt and take care of virtual pets, buy items, play games, earn virtual money and explore lands. Many have clubs, as well as forums, mailing systems and adding friends. Bigger sites have auctions, trading and battling arenas.

Characters

A few sites feature human characters as an avatar, who can be dressed up in various clothing items from the site. They represent the player during activities such as posting in the forums.

Virtual World

Most sites have a browser based map (often referred to as cities), where users can visit multiple themed regions in the pet site's world. It also acts as a way to navigate different areas of the site, and to interact with NPCs. Events in the site storyline can result in changes in the world and NPCs.In late 2007, Powerpets was the first virtual pet site to create maps with realistic day/night shifts based on the location of that city on the planet.

To properly access most maps, you will need the latest version of Adobe Flash Player, found on the Adobe.com website.For players with slower Internet connections or older computers, most sites also offer Site Maps featuring text based links.

Some classic maps are merely pictures with clickable sections on them.

Community

Many virtual pet sites offer a community of forums/chatrooms/groups to their users. Forums provide different official topics to post threads under. Chatrooms, similar to forums, provide topics to post under but many also provide the user's own creation of their topics to post. Groups are created by users to provide specific activities for users of the same interests.There are also some Virtual Pet Discussion Communities and forums where users may discuss of their ventures into the Virtual Pet Community.

Games

Games with virtual petsites are usually used to earn points in the game or to entertain the users of the petsite. Games can be programmed in Flash, Shockwave, or they can be programmed in PHP. Various petsites often offer template based flash games. These games are purchased, graphics are altered and placed online. Larger petsites such as Neopets and Powerpets develop their flash games in-house, often resulting in a more unique game play.

New incarnations of pet sites have began changing to focus on multiplayer game elements, often utilizing Flash.

Forums

Virtual Pet Site forums allow you to chat, advertise pets or items you may be selling, hold contests and more.

External links

* [http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Simulation/Virtual_Pets/ Virtual pets] at the Open Directory Project