Well, Whyville, it's just Pearls galore isn't it? Right before Pearls came out, I wrote an article on changes in Whyville. I talked about how I didn't think Pearls were a good value, how they taught bad habits, and how Whyville was sliding down the hill of decay towards rock bottom where Club Penguin and Neopets lie. I thought it was going to be small, but now I've come to think that the small slide I had envisioned has turned into a walloping, raging mudslide with nothing in it's way that can stop it.
Look around Whyville. You can see evidence of the mess that Pearls have made. The sign-in page littered with advertisements for Whypets and gift cards for Pearls. It makes it hard to sign-in even, or just makes you want to puke after you've seen it for the 1,000th time. You see the glittering dots on citizen's faces and all these new destinations, but then find that you can't go there because you don't have Pearls. You want a Whypet, so you go and spend your time creating one not knowing that at the end there is only a spot to pay with Pearls . . . no clams. That's like going to you're local supermarket and being told that your currency no longer is valid. Everything you've spent your time for is worthless, but if you give them foreign currency it's okay.
For years we've had Whypasses. Whyville has made it seems that there are no real changes between Whypasses and Pearls, but if you look closely, and not with a magnifying glass mind you, just a little bit closer you can see the real changes that are behind the colorful smokescreen.
Both entitled you to FFVs right? Yes they did, but a Whypass entitled you to unlimited FFVs for $5.00/ month while you now have to spend Pearls to buy your FFVs. You get your on-the-grass seating at the Greek Theater with both. You get to keep your face parts . . . they don't expire! But with a Whypass, you kept them as long as you had a Whypass, now you have to pay Pearls to keep each part. Whypets and Candy your Chat (the version of Kajeet Chat Factory that you now have to have Pearls to use) are in a class of there own.
You may be thinking, "How is this different than Clans for Cash?" The difference is is that with CFC you just bought more of what other people had. There was nothing special, you got no special privileges, just more clams. I didn't think it was a great idea, I thought it taught bad habits, but I had no idea that it could really get worse,but apparently it could and it did.
I think it teaches kids that money can buy you anything, including happiness. That's obviously not the encouragement Whyville wants to give, I know that.
Whyville has always been in a class of it's own when it came to competing websites. It was educational, it was fun, but most of all, it was FREE. You didn't have to pay to play like Club Penguin or Neopets where play was extremely limited unless you paid. Sure, if you wanted some extra perks like being able to keep your face parts from expiring, you needed to, but there was nothing that others had that you couldn't. You could go to the Greek Theater, but you couldn't sit on the grass, but you weren't excluded from the activities either. Starting to see my point?
In my opinion, Whyville is no longer in a class of it's own. It has become roommates with Club Penguin and Neopets. If you look at it, Whyville is getting to the point where you are going to need to pay to play. It's sad. I know that Whyville needs money to support it's servers and pay it's staff but that's why CFC and Whypasses were invented, along with sponsorships and ads.
People always talk about why they left Neopets and Club Penguin to come here. They realized the absurdity of paying extremely high rates for something that just wasn't worth it. What's next, me having to pay to be a Times Writer?
I'm not sure that Whyville is really worth it anymore. Do you?
Signing off, but not forever . . . not yet, this is
Eric5675
