Showing posts with label Virtual worlds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virtual worlds. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Adventures in Webkinz #1: Building a Treasure Island Inspired Room


Hi everyone,  

I did some posts on Pixie Hollow in the past. So, I thought I'd do a post on Webkinz, which is another virtual world I really enjoy. Webkinz recently came out with a 3D version of the game (which I have not yet played), in this post I will be talking about Webkinz Classic rather than Webkinz Next. 

Here is the video I made about it. I thought it would be neat to make a room based on a book so I chose Treasure Island. I hope you enjoy it: 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Have you played Webkinz before? If so, what is your favorite part about the game? 
-Quinley 

Sunday, June 6, 2021

Pixie Hollow Rewrites (Part Three)


Click here to read part one and part two

Hello everyone,  

I thought I'd do another post about FairyABC, given that I haven't done one in a while:  

You can also watch it here

People on the FairyABC forums have been doing cosplays for a while, so around that time I thought I would join in the fun. I ended up doing cosplays of characters from Star Trek and The Hobbit

You can also watch it here

                                       I also ended up doing a drawing of my water fairy, Amethyst
                        and talking about the new updates to version 2 of the Pixie Hollow rewrite. 

In other updates FairyABC got version 1 of their rewrite to work again for new players, so I decided to check it out, and I made a new fairy for that version: 

Newt the animal talent fairy. 😉

I'm still figuring that version of the game, so I'm not going to talk about how many fairies you can create in that version. (That is one thing I am still figuring it out.) But the game itself runs on servers, meaning people have to open a server on their own. So, if you want to join the game when a server isn't open, just press "open server" and join the game in a different tab. 

One thing that is different about the versions is that you can't really preview anything that your fairy is wearing, so you have to click "get" in order to see it. Also the dye shop in general is different. Instead of getting the clothes from your fairy's wardrobe, you dye the clothes that your fairy is currently wearing.  

Also, in terms of things to do in the rewrite there are more places to visit than in 2.0. 
The ones listed in this picture were not part of the original game, but they are really amazing
and have a lot to explore within them. One (The Realm) is even high Fantasy themed.  


Also one thing that they have taken out of 2.0 that was in 1.0 is  animations of leaves and snow falling in the different season areas. So in 1.0 your fairy can be standing in the middle of it, and it's so cool looking. Though it is hard to capture in a screen shot, I will show it when I make a video on my YouTube channel about 1.0. 

There are also so many more things I have yet to explore in version 1.0 that I haven't yet. In the video I will cover more of that. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which version of Fairy ABC's rewrite do you prefer: v. 1 or v. 2? And why? 

-Quinley 

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Pixie Hollow Rewrites (Part one)



                  Pixie Hollow was a virtual world that was up until 2013. It was a beautiful and amazing I loved the fairy creating portion of it. However it closed and I was very upset for a little while...

One thing I loved about the game was the character creation part of it, where you could create your character or remake them over and over again. I always created a new fairy when I played the game. And just enjoyed changing the talent around. There about three slots you could fill for the fairies so I always ended up deleting a fairy in order to create a new one.  The only thing I didn't like was that you and to pay to get certain things, it was a game that helped the company earn money so it was not surprising but still I didn't like that aspect. I took a break from the game for a little and then when I came back I was sad to find out that Disney had removed it.

What you see when you enter the site 
And then in 2020 four years later from the time that Fairy ABC had decided to create their own rewrite of the game, I found it. I was looking through articles about Pixie Hollow when a "fan community, FairyABC, has created a "rewrite" of the game, as of 2016. Users there can join a virtual world similar to Pixie Hollow, but without many features of the original games." - Wikipedia.
I was both surprised and intrigued, so I decided to check it out and created an account and entered the magical world of Pixie Hollow...
I created a fairy to begin with, and loved how the opening and choosing of talents felt like the old game. Even if it was more limited in some ways. 

My original goal when I entered was to recreate one of my old fairies, who had been extremely tall for a fairy and had long black hair that was tied back in a braid. But in the end I decided to create a new fairy. Though I may end up making her looking that fairy in the future. I started exploring the game and soon found out you could change your fairy's wings... 

I ended up giving my fairy dragon wings. Which was something I couldn't do in the old game, and if I could I am pretty sure Disney would have made it a premium option.

I began playing around with what my character wore, and it felt like a paper doll game, except where your paper doll will blink and sit if you want them to. I also love that I can give my fairy Bobble's glasses. 
I was never able to create a sparrowman in the old game because it closed before I actually wanted to, it was an option when I played but I just wasn't interested. So now I realized I wanted to make one, so I did. 



This game also allows you to have six slots for the amount of fairies or sparrowman you can create which is double what you had in the old Pixie Hollow, So I'm saving my others for later and currently just building these two characters and their houses. 
The game does glitch and overload from time to time causing you to go in and out of the game and bugs will happen, but it doesn't make me annoyed I'm just glad this exists. 

One of the funniest bugs has to be my water talent changing into a tea making talent. 🤣
The tea making talent is a talent you can choose, but it was one that my fairy isn't. 

There a lot of pros in this game, which outweigh any cons, because the community in the game is usually pretty active, and users are generally welcoming and are willing to help you figure out how to do something or tell you if they know about a bug and which stores are and aren't working at the moment and if you click a button it may cause you to reload the page. 
And one of the bonuses of this game, is that they have other talents that didn't appear in the original game, a fast flying talent, a performing talent, a writing talent, a tea making talent. 

(Image from Disney Fairies wiki, https://disneyfairies.fandom.com/wiki/Rani) 

Because of this I intend to have more of the talents that weren't in the (original) game than the talents that were, though I chose to pick one of my favorites of the original game's talents. Which is Water talent partly because of Rani from the original story books.  Also I love the irony that my Water fairy has red hair and dragon wings which is something you would usually attribute to fire. 

If what you are missing is the game playing part of Pixie Hollow, then there is a version of it called We The Pixies (or WTP) where they are recreating some of the old games. However, it doesn't save the fairies you create like Fairy ABC, so you have to restart every time. If you like just restarting every time and not building your fairy over time, then this version of it you may be okay with. Given that it focuses more on the gaming of it, rather than the fairy building. Though it doesn't have the sort of community that Fairy ABC has which has been growing for years. 


Their version of creating the fairy is somewhat similar to what I remember to what one of the first Pixie Hollow games was like, it doesn't allow you to create a sparrowman (yet), but they say it will come in the future. And perhaps in the future you will be able to save your fairies too. 

They only have one meadow in it, but that meadow has one of the games I remember playing in it. 
Which was the fish game that Silvermist had in the old game: you are rescuing fish and over time it steadily gets harder. 

One thing it has is more than one way to sit down, you can sit or kneel down. While in Fairy ABC you can only sit down. 

At the moment, I feel this rewrite is in its early stages, it may end up getting much more complex over time. But I would say WTP is mostly something I would go to, if I wanted to play some of the games from Pixie Hollow rather than building my character and traveling around the game. 

So in the end the choices between which rewrite you want to play is up to, your interests. I love character creation and developing a character over time so I would play Fairy ABC's, however if you like playing games where there is a challenge to complete I suggest We the Pixies, and if you are alright with having to create a new character every time you play too. I generally like being able to keep my characters and have it remember them instead of starting it like I have never played it before, so that's just my preferences. 

Since I have only played the game for a short period of time, and there are still discoveries I am making this is going to be made into a series exploring the different areas and things one can do in ABC Fairy's Pixie Hollow. 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have any of you played the old Pixie Hollow? Are you interested in the rewrites? And if so, which is your favorite? 
-Quinley