Good-Bye!

I'm writing this for the very few of you who are still logging into this blog on a regular basis in the hopes that I would update it. I know it's been over a year since I wrote my last entry. One of the reasons why I've gotten around to writing this new entry is because I was suffering from a long-lasting cold at the time when I wrote my last entry and I didn't want to leave the impression that the reason why I haven't updated this blog in a long time is because my cold was really some serious disease that killed me.

I also wanted to provide some closure to this blog since I'm no longer interested in Webkinz and I have since moved on in my life to other things that have nothing to do with Webkinz or virtual worlds.

Here is what I've been up to since last year. I did suffer from health problems (which was unrelated to the lingering cold that I suffered from last February) and last November I underwent surgery to correct those problems. It has been over six months since my surgery and I now feel much better than before.

As for this blog, I really couldn't keep up with updating it. Besides, once I reached a certain point in my gameplaying things didn't really change quite as much as in the first few weeks I logged on to the Webkinz.com site. At first I decided that I would update the blog only if major changes happened to my virtual pets. But I ended up falling out of the habit of updating it entirely.

As for Webkinz.com, I continued to log on into it for another month or so after my last entry but I eventually grew tired of it so I stopped. My membership in Webkinz.com expired back in January. I could've extended it by an extra year by purchasing another Webkinz stuffed animal but I decided not to so I let it lapse. Granted I was still in recovery from my surgery at the time but even if I was in perfect health I still would not have purchased another Webkinz just to keep my membership in Webkinz.com active.

Basically I grew tired of Webkinz.com. If you wanted to do anything for your pet, you had to procure Kinz Cash. Feeding a pet and keeping it healthy and happy required Kinz Cash to purchase the food and other necessary products. Expanding the Webkinz's home beyond the default room and bed that each pet gets required Kinz Cash. Adding an outside yard required Kinz Cash. (That's right, a Webkinz virtual pet was stuck indoors unless you forked over some Kinz Cash to buy a yard.) Purchasing toys and other things (such as a swimming pool) that had the potential to improve the pet's quality of life required Kinz Cash. Even educating a pet required Kinz Cash for tuition.

I spent the bulk of my time on Webkinz.com procuring Kinz Cash. I would get a job through the Employment Agency, play various arcade games, spin the Wheel of Wow, visit the Wishing Well, and play Wacky's Bingoz in an effort to earn Kinz Cash. All of these efforts earned low wages. The most amount of Kinz Cash I ever earned was the time that I purchased two packs of Webkinz Trading Cards and I entered the codes of some of the codes and I earned hundreds of Kinz Cash at once. I also earned more Kinz Cash when I purchased my Webkinz (Floyd the Pig). But I really hated the idea that in order to earn lots of Kinz Cash I had to go to a store to purchase a Webkinz product that I really didn't need (such as a Webkinz mouse pad or a pack of trading cards) in the hopes of being able to score lots of Kinz Cash.

After a while I realized that Webkinz.com was just like real life in that adults have to find ways of earning money in order to survive. From an adult's perspective, it was too much like real life and I grew tired of it. From a child's perspective, it's sort of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's good to teach children that if they want anything out of life, they have to work to earn money and save that money in order to afford to but it. But, on the other hand, I'm not sure if it's good to teach children that earning money in order to be good consumers is the only thing in life. I mean there is more to life than just the continuous cycle of working to earn money in order buy stuff which then makes you broke so you have to repeat the cycle. (For example, there is less of an emphasis on making and spending time with friends on Webkinz.com than earning Kinz Cash to buy stuff for your pets.)

The best part of Webkinz.com was the arcade games. Not only did I earn Kinz Cash for playing them but I did have fun playing them for a while. But, after a while, I even lost interest in playing arcade games, especially since I can play arcade-style games without having to log into Webkinz.com. (For example, I can go to iTunes and purchase arcade games for my iPod Touch. Or I can play my collection of classic arcade games--with titles like "Namco Museum--from the 1970s and 1980s on my Sony Playstation 2. Or I can play games on my Nintendo DS.)

I attempted to educate my pets in the Kinzville Academy but not only did I have to cough up the tuition but I had to do all the work for each class. And that was just for one pet. For my second pet I had to sign up for the same classes and do the same work. It got very repetitive. And I never understood why I needed to educate my pets in the first place. I finished a couple of classes for my two pets and neither one of them behaved differently from before.

I also felt frustrated with the virtual world at Webkinz.com. For example, there was this Magical Charms Forest that was locked to members unless you purchase at least 1 Webkinz charm. Once you gained access you got more rewards for your pets when you purchased more Webkinz charms. The big problem is that none of the stores in my area ever carried the Webkinz charms. They carried Webkinz lip balms, Webkinz mousepads, Webkinz bookmarks, and Webkinz clothes for the large Webkinz stuffed animals but not Webkinz charms.

The closest I ever got to being able to access the Magical Charms Forest was the one time that one of the local stores got a shipment of Webkinz charm bracelets. Of course it made sense for Webkinz to make charm bracelets so you would have a place to put your Webkinz charms. But that store didn't have the Webkinz charms--just the Webkinz charm bracelets. I purchased the bracelet thinking that I would gain access to the Magical Charms Forest.

Except when I got home and entered the code, I didn't gain access to the Magical Charms Forest. Instead I got this piece of furniture where I could store my virtual charms. I placed the furniture in the main room of my pets' home but I never found any Webkinz charms so it was moot. At one point I even searched some of the authorized Webkinz stores in New York City while I was on a trip to visit relatives and the ones I visited didn't have the charms in stock. They had everything else marked "Webkinz" but the charms.

I think the fact that I was unable to find any store that sold Webkinz charms so I could access the Magical Charms Forest online was another reason why I lost interest in Webkinz.com.

I never got a chance to visit the Magical Charms Forest so it's useless to speculate whether I would've stayed longer as a member of Webkinz.com if I had gained access to it or if it would've been another part of Webkinz.com that I would've grown bored with quickly.

The biggest frustration was that I purchased a second pet only because I thought it would be cool to see my two pets interact together--just like the characters in The Sims did if you ordered them to do so with a few keystrokes. (The Sims was a videogame that I played with for a while a few years back but I quickly grew bored with it and haven't touched it since.) But Magic the Unicorn and Floyd the Pig never interacted together--even if they were in the same room facing each other. They both only cared to interact with me and they ignored each other even if they stood face to face with each other.

Then there were the frequent bugs on Webkinz.com that would sometimes log you off while you're in the middle of doing something or the times when you tried to log on but the screen would just freeze before you successfully logged on or it would crash your browser.

So I basically stopped logging into Webkinz.com after last March and I never looked back. I don't regret letting my membership laspe. To be honest, I don't think Webkinz is quite as big a deal as it once was, especially since the economy started tanking last fall. In recent months I've seen more stores having clearance sales on Webkinz along the lines of "Buy 2 for $25!" or "Buy 1 Get 1 Free!"

Besides, there have been other companies that have copied the Webkinz concept. Ty, the manufacturer of Beanie Babies, have come out with Beanie Babies 2.0 where the purchaser can join a special virtual world with these new and improved Beanie Babies. Ty has also come out with a line of female bean bag dolls called Ty Girls that have their own virtual world made just for girls. Build-A-Bear Workshop also has a virtual world that one can join with a purchase of any stuffed animal from that chain.

Then there's Disney with its Disney Fairies.com. This one is unique in that membership is free (that's right, you don't even need to purchase any real life products to become a member) and you even get to create three virtual fairies with this free membership. If you want to create more fairies, then you have to pay a fee.

But there's a catch. Even if you choose to stick with the maximum free three fairies, you can purchase stuff for your fairies only if you go shopping in the real world and buy specially-marked Disney products that contain codes that you can enter so your fairies can get a nice gift from you.

Now you know why I haven't been in a big rush to get a free account with Disney Fairies.com.

I know there are other virtual worlds geared more towards adults like Second Life and Wizard of Warcraft. But I've been leery about trying either one of them because I figured that I would grow tired of those worlds just like I grew tired of Webkinz.com. Or I would become totally addicted to the point where other things in my life would suffer (like doing housecleaning on a regular basis).

It doesn't help that I was unnerved by a film that I saw at a local film festival last fall called Second Skin. It was a documentary that focused on people who became totally hooked on World of Warcraft and it was scary. There were relationships and marriages that broke up over that game and people who got fired from a job because their obsession with the game interferred with their on-the-job performance. There was even a mother who tearfully talked about her son who took his life over a similar game called EverQuest. There were independent programmers who made money by doing things (like searching through a virtual world finding virtual cash or weapons for a player) or making things (like a special weapon) on behalf of World of Warcraft players in that virtual world. In other words, these players paid others people for virtual services or virtual products that were only used in that virtual world. The players spent a lot of money on Wizard of Warcraft and, in some cases, it led to financial problems.

I was grossed out by the scene when some guys had just purchased an add-on software for World of Warcraft and they were so engrossed in it that they chose to pee into empty bottles rather than take a short break to make a trek to the toilet. They even decided to forgo sleeping because they were too engrossed in that game to go to bed. There was footage of guys sitting in front of computer screens in the middle of the night who were nodding off while they were fighting the urge to go to sleep.

I'm glad that I never got THAT hooked on Webkinz.com. In fact, my time in that virtual world has made me decide that I would rather spend more of my time in the real world in a virtual one.

I still have my two stuffed Webkinz animals lying somewhere around my home. I may eventually donate them to Goodwill but right now I'm too busy doing other things in my life to look for them. I know that one day they will turn up when I least expect it so I'm not too worried about not having seen nor held them in a long time.

It has been over a year since I last logged into Webkinz.com but I don't miss it. I've moved on in my life. I've had my experiment with spending time in a virtual world but I would rather experience real life than spend the bulk of my life in a virtual world.

This marks the last entry in this blog. I'm going to leave it online as a review for anyone else who's thinking about joining Webkinz.com or a similar virtual world. My final verdict on Webkinz.com is this: It was cute, colorful, and fun at first but it became time-consuming and repetitive as time went on--especially when it came to earning Kinz Cash--and it eventually led to my boredom and I ended up quitting.

I'm going to close this entry and this blog by putting up the last few screenshots I ever made of my pets and their home before I lost interest in Webkinz. The yard was taken last February soon after the virtual snow melted and I purchased a new swimming pool. The screenshots of the main room (which was a combination living room, dining room, playroom, and kitchen) were taken last March, just a few weeks before I grew bored with Webkinz.com and stopped playing.

Good-bye!