Marapets is a free virtual pet site, similar to Neopets.
It started out as a 'guild' created by 14-year-old Ian, called "Maraqua" within Neopets. When he made it, he had no intentions of creating a pet site. Soon after the guild was made, Ian created a Web site called Maraqua.com. Almost all the members of said guild joined the website, which had forums, game hints, and pet release news. However, the guild was frozen by the administrators of Neopets shortly after it was made.
Ian, now 15, and his co-founder, Laimay, (who was 19) had lost hope to bring back the Maraqua guild. Working together, they founded Marapets in 2005. Today, Ian still serves as the owner and Laimay is the artist.
The basic pet site formula that exists in Neopets is present here, too: Users create pets, raise and care for them, train them for battles, or even give them jobs. The site has many, many users who play it.
Marapets and its elements contain examples of the following tropes:
- Anyone Can Die: Unlike Neopets, Marapets can die.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes:
- Completing missions will award you with t-shirts, which can't be put into your wardrobe.
- Completing entire mission chains awards you with costumes, which you can either sell for profit or put on your pet, which makes it look pretty badass.
- Artificial Stupidity: Characters who give quests asking you to buy certain items from stores, (NOT USER STORES) will sometimes not be in the store, forcing you to wait until they restock again. (Which, usually never happens.)
- Battle Trophy: Players who rank having won the most battles get these trophies. They appear in your profile.
- Brain Food: You can feed your pets brain cakes, brain cookies, and even an entire brain.
- Build Like an Egyptian: The slate pyramid and the Kamilah pyramid in Kamilah Desert.
- Destroyable Items: Toys can break if you let your pets play with them too much.
- Game Within a Game: Flash games can be played along with the main questing/doing missions, etc.
- Global Currency Exception: The items in the stores in Dukka Town can only be bought with Dukka Coins. The same applies to the Pirate Ship as well.
- RP is earned by buying items in the shops, and can only be spent at Eleka's Castle.
- BP is earned by defeating opponents in the arena. BP can only be spent at Baspinar's Castle.
- Gloomy Gray: The Sad costume.
- Institutional Apparel: Most pets wearing the Prison costume have black and white striped shirts, sometimes with a matching hat and/or a ball and chain.
- Play Every Day: Doing the daily activities in the virtual world will reward you with MP (the currency) or items.
- Retraux: The Pixel costume turns your pets into... well, pixelated versions of themselves that sort of evoke this trope.
- Stylistic Suck: The Bootleg costume, which turns all pets wearing it into doodle versions of themselves.
- The Unfought: If you take part in the War, either it's Queen Eleka if you're on the Light Side, or King Baspinar if you are on the Dark Side. Actually, you can get trading cards of them, which, upon use, allow users to fight them in the arena. However, it's not required to do so.
- Unlockable Content: Giftboxes, which can be bought with Account Upgrade credits, extend the use of dailies, or grant access to things normal users can't use.
- Wallet of Holding: Players can hold up a lot of MP (one player has more money then he knows what to do with), without their virtual wallets exploding.