Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

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Skitty
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Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by Skitty »

Aywas! I'm not really sure how to describe this site, but it's cool. It's been around for close to a year now and still going strong. Until now, it's been in Alpha/Beta and has had a looot of stuff changed around. It is, as of now, in its final version, and is currently in the process of implementing a bunch of cool features and revamping some of the older pet art.

Image Image Image Image

Here are some of the pets. There are a LOT of them. It's more like Pokemon than your traditional pet site--you get to have pretty much unlimited pet slots (though you do have to hunt out items to exchange for more slots, but it's not terribly hard) and you've got hundreds of different pet colorations on over 20 pet species bases. You're not expected to catch 'em all, though of course, getting as many as you can is one of the possible ways to play the site. Most pet colors are based off of real animals, though there are quite a few fantasy colors as well. Above are the Civit Melo, Honey Pot Ant Insi, Dracula's Kiss Vyne, and Toxic Phanto.

One of the main features of the site is "Exploring." You get a pet and run around the world map, fighting through areas one at a time by doing some (admittedly rather repetitive) monster-killing quests. It takes a long time--it's not meant to be something done in a day--but you slowly gain access to towns, each of which has a mini-game/feature located in it, such as fishing, mining, etc. And by opening up new areas, you gain access to new pets to catch. Completing the explore quests aren't mandatory, though, since many other site features can still be accessed without doing so.

Other than that, there are human avatars, though they were introduced recently and haven't gotten many clothing items. There's also a version of petpets. There are also petpages, like Neo, though they're down for maintenance right now. By far, the coolest and most innovative feature of the site, however, is the ability for anyone to make new pet colors. The pet PSDs are available for free download, and anyone can edit them with custom colors/markings or even custom lineart edits. All the site colorations are user-made, resulting in quite a lot of variation:
Image Image Image Image Image Image
There are cute pets, sparkly pets, natural pets, mutant monster pets, robotic pets, and everything in between. If you want more of a certain type of pet, all you have to do is design some, and if they're good enough, they'll be accepted and added to the site.

You can also have your own custom pets. They do require the site's cash currency to make, but it can be traded or bought from other users, so you don't *have* to spend cash if you don't want to. It's just faster. These are some of my custom pets:
Image Image Image Image Image
You can tell that my taste tends a bit toward the monstery. Regardless of what kind of aesthetic you have, you can make it happen with customs. That last one is a completely custom pet not based on any existing species. It's super expensive, but possible to make your own original species as a pets here and breed/distribute them to other people. Oh yeah, there's breeding too. Did I mention that?

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough about this, so if that sounds interesting to you, why not sign up? (or click the banner in my sig, that's cool too) The site is slightly chaotic now with a lot of changes being implemented, but it's coming up on its first birthday AND on Halloween, and it's likely there will be fun events handing out easier-than-usual-to-obtain Custom Pets for both. It's a good time to join.
AngharadTy
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Re: Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by AngharadTy »

I realize you said there's a ton of pets/colors, but is there a list anywhere of them? That's usually what convinces me to sign up or not, although I'm interested.
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Alecko
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Re: Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by Alecko »

I've looked at this site once or twice before but never gotten round to registering (or rather, applying to join). I just tried but I got this error message:
PAGE_NOTICE has been defined more than once in the template object. This is not allowed.
Sounds like a problem their end, but the last sentence throws me off. Anybody else have this trouble?
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Re: Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by mellaka »

I heard about this site from one of my friends, though she was mainly into the pet-color-designing aspect. It sounds interesting but I barely have time for all the sites I play already. It's tempting though ...
Tiki
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Re: Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by Tiki »

Not to be a downer, and I certainly don't want to imply that Encyclopedia Dramatica is a reliable source of information, but I do want to (gently) warn people about getting too involved with this site. The staff and many prominent players were active on Tygras and Wajas during 2005-2008 when I was active on those sites, and they can be troublesome. Your own personal redraw colors are expensive and you will often be expected to repay for the same design if they redraw the critter later on. As in paying for something you've already paid for. Not to mention that unless you can find the same artist to exactly recreate your custom markings on the new lineart it can be difficult/impossible to have your pets updated each time they are redrawn- which has been multiple times already for some species. Shady practices like that and the drama surrounding this site has made me stay away, which is a shame because the idea itself is very cute.

Now if you just want to play for free and not bother with the custom designs then I'd say there's probably no trouble in store for you. ;)
Skitty
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Re: Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by Skitty »

Unfortunately, the pet list is not visible unless you have an account, currently. It used to be, but that must have gotten lost in the code overhaul. o.o I would offer to cap them, but there are hundreds.

Alecko, are you using Internet Explorer? I believe the recently-overhauled site coding not yet fully compatible with IE.

Tiki, do you mean BJ? Because she's not on staff anymore. Even back when she was, I never had an issue with her. It mostly seems to be her rep from previous sites following her. *shrug*

Also, I really wouldn't take statements from ED as fact. xD The entire point of the site is to make mountains out of molehills and use choice out of context quotes to misdirect and deceive. Remember when Subeta was involved in that idiotic Longcat wank and zillions of free Longcats were in the donation center? When that happened, ED was updated to say that the Longcats were donation items, and that they were things people had to pay cash for. That's about the level of truth the Aywas article has.

Just to clear up misinformation: None of the pets have been revamped more than once, the only ones that have been revamped at all were some of the really old uglyish ones that didn't match any of the new art. Additionally, you're not expected to "repay" to revamp a custom. If the pet art is revamped, you're free to keep any custom pets you have on the previous art and there's no pressure to update them. Not only that, but you can request to have any normal non-custom pet colors changed back to the old lineart for free if you hate the revamp (or at least, they're free if you do them within a month or so after the revamp. If you want to wait six months and then decide "eh, I liked the old one better" you will require an item to do so, but it's not very expensive or hard to get). Unlike on Subeta or Neopets, where if a pet is revamped and you hate it, too bad. This is, as far as I know, the only site that lets you choose like that. And if you do want to revamp your custom pet to the updated art, revamps aren't that picky, especially now that BJ is no longer handling them.

I won't disagree with you that custom pets are rather pricey--they're meant to be pretty rare. However, if you stick around long enough it's quite likely that a custom crystal or two will simply fall into your hands for free. Just recently for the anniversary on October 1st, everybody got a free custom making item as a celebration.

Anyway, although I can't post a list, here are a some of the newer pet colors (mostly from the Halloween event):
Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image
(why yes, that pixely ghost pet is a Missingno reference.)
AngharadTy
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Re: Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by AngharadTy »

Bones! Zombie! Automatically attractive. If I had more free time, I'd try it out right now. Hopefully I'll remember to check it out later.

I like that you can "revert" your revamp, that's a nice idea.
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Faun
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Re: Aywas - A somewhat new take on the whole petsite thing

Post by Faun »

The pets are so pretty. *_* Especially the missingno one and the blue one next to it.
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