It was a very big comfort game for me, too. I used to spend hours upon hours as a kid just playing all of the games and getting things to decorate my den. I remember being a non member for so long. And back when spiked collars were so huge. People would literally sit on your character and you would be so popular, even if you had just a wristband.
I remember first getting into the game, I saw a video on YouTube and I looked for the game after ignoring the YouTube video recommended for me. I had NO idea about the servers and such, since they never had the option to switch your server, or I was just dumb and never found it. I always knew that one place was more popular than all of the others, which usually was Appondale. I didn't know that it was only on Aldan, so I would go back to my den and come back, only to find an empty room again.
I remember using my sister's friends account to play because her mom had gotten her membership. I got into trouble for it a few days into playing because my sisters friend finally logged in.
I remember having to beg my guardians to get me membership, which was extremely hard because they never really liked to buy my sister and I things online and had never used anything like Amazon, etc. I wrote a LITERAL essay on Google slides, and an email, listing all of the membership benefits and all of the cool items. I FINALLY got them to and I remember going back inside and RACING to my computer while my uncle went to get his credit card.
Then I remember the arctic wolf avatar coming out for the first time. Everyone was ramping and raving about a "wolf" and I was like "Okay, that's lame, you guys already know what the wolves in this game look like." But as soon as I saw the arctic wolf, I HAD to have it.
Over the years, I've been scammed, hacked, quit, came back, made friends, lost friends, gotten myself banned for using my credit card on a friend's account, etc. The customer support was always horrible. I quickly realized that they didn't care about the game, if they did, even at all.
Either way, this whole thing with WildWorks and Fer.al breaks my heart.
I gave a friend literally ALL of the items I had on Animal Jam, which was A LOT that I worked my tired butt off for months and months on end for, playing the game almost 24 hours a day, even missing sleep to get everything I wanted, which was a green and black headdress, almost every spiked collar, including 2 black longs, and wristbands, the WHOLE big epic plush set which I traded a DECENT (yellow and pink) long collar for EACH of those (THEN THEY RELEASED THEM RECENTLY????? like, dude. people paid ACTUAL money for those years ago and you're going to ruin it by releasing them and putting the stupid rare tag on the originals. what abot the people who bought them years ago and still had them?). Multiple den betas, and clothing items like Skullys and the good top hats. I gave her ALL of my things for the beta invite account she got. I joined in Wave 2 under the user GriffTufts and later Diesel. I could feel that the game was taking a weird turn, so I lost interest in it about a year in and gave away most of my stuff, including the items I spent HOURS grinding 2 season passes for and the kitsune items I had from levels 100+ on Dizzywing. I'm glad that I decided to leave before I got my heart completely smashed, but I forgot all about it until people were telling me about everything that was going on.
I forgot about the date that Fer.al was shutting down, so I forgot to log in. I feel bad about it, but most of the friends I had made lost interest in the first year like I did. Fer.al was getting too expensive for me to play... now I understand why. Because they were trying to squeeze us all out of money. They knew all of us would protest if we knew what they were up to...
So, now, I'm just sitting here trying to calm my depression.
I asked for my things back awhile after I quit, (only to get word that my friend had quit AJ and SOLD the HOURS of hard work I had given to her specifically because she was my friend and I knew her IRL when we went to school together for actual cash).
I bought a membership last week and tried my hand at the forgotten desert, only to have people tell me that they removed spiked collars from the prize pools of every adventure right before they released Lucky Clovers this year. I'm completely taken aback. The Animal Jam community is also getting ridiculous with the headdress worths. Light Pink being about like, 200 or even more black long spiked collars.
This whole thing just makes my head spin. I filed for a refund earlier today and cancelled the recurring. Once I get my money back, I'm shutting down my account and deleting my parent dashboard. WildWorks is greedy and they won't ever have my support again. I hope Cinder fails and they don't make any other attempts at making other games. As much as I hate to say it, I hope they take AJ and AJPW with them. Some of the community is amazing, but the other part is scammers and hackers, bullies and greedy people, just like WildWorks themselves. WW was never in it for us, they were in it for them. And they used us for their own selfishness.
reminds me of The Hunger Games.
"if we burn, you burn with us."
you're going down... hardcore, ww, so you'd better bask in your short-lived glory.
I hope all of you rot, especially Clark Stacey.
Rest in Peace the wonderful memories I've had with amazing people on Animal Jam, Animal Jam Play Wild and Fer.al. You all are good people. I love you guys. You've helped in shaping me to become the person that I am today, and I am eternally grateful.
