i got access to the internet for the first time at the end of 2008 and spent a lot of my early time online looking at videos of puppies and being Hooked on the concept of children's mmo's / Virtual Worlds. once i went to build a bear at the time they had one and couldn't get the signup to work and had such a bad meltdown about it that my parents just took me out of the build a bear without actually buying anything. here's some silly rambling about what i remember of the ones i played.
webkinz
i regularly played webkinz between 2011 (my first pet was the lil' chihuahua :]) and 2014. i remember being really obsessed with spree and the one hamster game you needed a hamster webkinz to see the full extent of (?).
i used to have a huge collection of the plushies but i don't know where any of them are anymore :( i still have access to my classic account to see who i did have, though! mouse over for names.
a Dark Secret for this page. before this webkinz account i was bought a webkinz that i registered on a separate account i forgot the password to immediately, so sweetie was registered on a new account and poor rampa the key lime dino was left to rot on the old one. hope youre doing okay in there buddy.
didn't they deactivate all the old accounts a while back? he's probably dead actually. o7.
here's a video i really liked when i was little i still think about sometimes
shining stars
i don't actually remember much about this one aside from that i have played it before, had a white dog i think? if you look through youtube you can find ancient youtube videos and comments of young webkinz fans getting Very Mad about its existence because they thought it was copying webkinz and these are really funny to me.
littlest pet shop virtual worlds
there were actually two LPS "pet code on plush tag" type virtual worlds, Virtual Interactive Pets (VIP) from 2007 to 2010 and then LPS Online from 2009 to 2011. i'm pretty sure the one i played was VIP through this pet:
i just really liked LPS bunnies as a child i think.. one of my other favorite toys around this time was the deco pets rabbit.
club penguin
club penguin...
pretty sure i was a member for at least a little bit or played when there was more member free stuff. i last remember playing in around 2013. as i type this i immediately forget anything i ever did on club penguin >_< had a bunch of the puffle plushies. i had the ds game but never finished it because i am not good at puzzle games and was worse as a tiny one
barbiegirls
in the ancient times of 2010 when toy brand websites had flash games on them there was a barbie mmo linked on the barbie website. barbiegirls.com was ran from 2007 to 2011. you could barely do anything without a membership which i did not have. i was Very young when i played this and constantly made new accounts because i forgot the details of the previous ones. for some reason i thought the report button was??? a friendly gesture of sorts??? so i would just report any other players i interacted with whatever they did.
roblox
yes i know roblox is still around i still play it sometimes. look at how cute my avatar is :]
i first played roblox in 2010 and until i dug up the details to my account on an old hard drive i hadn't played since 2014. modern roblox feels like a fully different place and all but one or two of my childhood favorite places are nonexistent so this is a bit on Old Roblox if that makes sense.
my usual ones were epic mining 2 (still kickin!) , welcome to the town of robloxia, a swimming pool hangout game that i can't find anything left from to name and a nightclub one that's the same. i had a friend at the time who didn't have a computer (this was the olden days before roblox was on mobile) and we would sit at my computer together and watch the other play for a bit before swapping over and letting the other log in. i haven't heard from my old roblox buddy in a while i've heard he has a baby and maybe a cocaine addiction these days.
here's a screenshot dated 2011 from the same hard drive! no idea what game this is though.
8 year old me's place (or experience whatever they're called these days) is still on this account. it is a barely functional mess of randomly scattered free or tix (tix.. i miss them) placeable assets. most of the animations and scripts are fully broken with time. it is an ancient relic.
mcworld
from 2008-2014 mcdonalds had a virtual world site. there is very little information on it around these days...
there was a minigame sponsored by a dog food brand that gave you a free pet for your character if you completed it and i just did that over and over and over until i ran out of pets to unlock. small char had a one track mind (animals).
moshi monsters
do you remember the Horses Covered In Blood On The Streets Of London incident? here's my next "sounds bullshit but bear with me" story about old friends i played virtual worlds with. one of the soldiers who had been riding the horses was apparently an old friend of mine. once when we were children he handed me a list of moshi monsters item codes.
moshi monsters had a death grip on me for a while even if i kept making new accounts because i couldn't decide whether or not i wanted a katsuma or a poppet. i was a member for a while and had a bunch of the choose your own adventure books.
shout out to the lady goo goo lawsuit. they fucking erased that baby from existence huh.
2010s childrens mmos
