Whyville
2.1
RATE IT:
.: Style
Okay, now before I begin, please understand that I personally did not have a pleasant experience at Whyville for the 3-4 hours I spent reviewing the site. Many others will not share my opinions. That's fine. Don't be mad if you are in disagreement with me. But then again, I can't stop you. Here we go.
I thought the style was dreadful. 50% or more of the screen had a solid black border in 98% of the pages I visited throughout the site. I couldn't help but feel depressed. I felt like I was stuck in a BBS from '93 for my entire stay. Only back then it was acceptable. Heck, in '93 Whyville would have been sensational! Nowadays, well....take a look at the other sites on BBMMO.com and compare for yourself. Comparison is after all, a large basis for these reviews.
Also (and I'm sorry this is going to sound nitpicky), your avatar is a half torso and a head. No legs. I may have been spoiled from reviewing the Club Penguin site, but I really felt as though my character in the game was second rate.
With all of the endorsements and a user base of almost 3.5 million, I really would have expected much, much more in terms of visual appeal from this site. Bottom of my heart.
.: Plot
Now this is a tricky one. You see, Whyville is passionately promoted as an educational site. Its roots are good. The intent (and I will let this pass for plot in this case) is to educate youth, ages 8-14, about matters such as banking, getting a job, and even eating right. There are in fact many areas of the site that are aimed at teaching kids about technology and physics. This is good.
"That sounds great!" you might say. "So why the 4 rating?!" you may ask. Well, here's why:
It seemed to me that no one on the site during my time there was interested in the slightest about the educational nature of it. In my trekking through it, I noticed that a comparative very few users were to be found in any of the educational areas, yet many users were in the recreational chat areas whispering and shooting the breeze about things that I'll get in to later. In one specific case, I actually found some cruel irony in this site aimed toward strengthening the youth's love for education. I took it upon myself to screen cap it for you. Take a look at the first screen cap and see if you can spot what I'm talking about. Let's just say if education is the plot in Whyville, most of the users I encountered don't care about the plot. And in that, I believe someone, somehow, dropped the ball.
.: Safety
Hmmmm... Bear with me. I'm thinking about this one and I really do want to treat this category with the respect it deserves....OK here's the deal:
A GREAT deal of text is given in Whyville to parents and users about the safety of the site. I even vaguely remember having to answer some questions on safety in order to get a "Chat Licence" in order to let me speak to others. There are also tools that can be utilized to silence users from speaking to you, or even seeing you. These are great tools to have. But, following in standard Whyville review form, the negatives are up next. Trust me, they're worth it. You're not going to believe this.
There is a crackhead running loose. That's right. There's evidently a 16 year old crackhead on the site that is open about himself. Don't believe me? Look at the 3 screen caps of the beach setting. In it, you will find a user with a red bandana. He asks someone if they are on crack. Then he is asked by someone if he is "on anything", to which he openly replies "I'm on crack". He then floats off of the screen shouting, and I quote: "I don't know why my 16 year old self is on this gay site". Simply unique. Don't stop there though. There are other interesting things to be found in the screen caps. In one of them, a user directly below said crackhead actually tells a girl that his "baals" itch. It's true Go find some more. It'll be like the hidden item pages in Highlights for Children.
.: Gameplay
With sites like Addicting Games, Kabillion, and other game sites out there, the bar has been raised considerably for this category. Therefore, it is very easy for me to hand out a low score for Whyville's games.
I only played a couple, but they were all in my opinion equally boring. *I'm interjecting because again, I only had about 4 hours to review the site and was stricken by what could be argued as an "uneducated string of choices" on my part in terms of chosen games. None the less, the review must go on.* Nobody wanted to play checkers with me. The spin game teaching center of gravity/centrifugal force was just monotonous. The game on zero gravity was....wait a minute....I couldn't even figure that one out. My fault I guess.
There was one game in particular that struck me as "interesting". It was a spin-off of a kind of "letter de-scrambler" in which a group of people huddle around a colosseum-esque area in an attempt to uncover various words, based on category, from a jumble of letters given. In most cases this would have been considered quite ordinary. This case, however, was a timeless classic. The first category to arise was "synonyms for the color green". The second category to come up was "synonyms for the word point". The last category I will not address verbally, but rather direct you to the screen cap I took of the game. Remember that this site is aimed to ages 8-14.
.: Community
Ahhhh, lastly we come to the community category. I must say that Whyville has truly flipped me upside down in terms of how to score this stuff! In this case, I pose myself the question: Does a community score entail how much the site consists of community based events? Or does it question the overall appeal of the community itself ? Well, I went ahead and combined those two.
Apparently, a HUGE percentage of Whyville's play is community or chat based. The amount of community/chat based user interest versus other areas of the site would give it an easy 5 rating.
On the other hand, as the reviewer, and based purely off of my admittedly short time on Whyville, I would not like to be a part of the Whyville community. A score of 1. So I combined them, and you see how I got the number there to the left.
As a parting note, please please understand that I barely scratched the surface of what Whyville has to offer. And I don't mean that in a snide way. It seemed like there were many, many things to see regarding making money (clams), buying accessories and "Face Parts", meeting good people, and genuinely learning wholesome information. There is a chance our paths just crossed inconveniently.
2.00
I thought the style was dreadful. 50% or more of the screen had a solid black border in 98% of the pages I visited throughout the site. I couldn't help but feel depressed. I felt like I was stuck in a BBS from '93 for my entire stay. Only back then it was acceptable. Heck, in '93 Whyville would have been sensational! Nowadays, well....take a look at the other sites on BBMMO.com and compare for yourself. Comparison is after all, a large basis for these reviews.
Also (and I'm sorry this is going to sound nitpicky), your avatar is a half torso and a head. No legs. I may have been spoiled from reviewing the Club Penguin site, but I really felt as though my character in the game was second rate.
With all of the endorsements and a user base of almost 3.5 million, I really would have expected much, much more in terms of visual appeal from this site. Bottom of my heart.
.: Plot
4.00
"That sounds great!" you might say. "So why the 4 rating?!" you may ask. Well, here's why:
It seemed to me that no one on the site during my time there was interested in the slightest about the educational nature of it. In my trekking through it, I noticed that a comparative very few users were to be found in any of the educational areas, yet many users were in the recreational chat areas whispering and shooting the breeze about things that I'll get in to later. In one specific case, I actually found some cruel irony in this site aimed toward strengthening the youth's love for education. I took it upon myself to screen cap it for you. Take a look at the first screen cap and see if you can spot what I'm talking about. Let's just say if education is the plot in Whyville, most of the users I encountered don't care about the plot. And in that, I believe someone, somehow, dropped the ball.
.: Safety
3.00
A GREAT deal of text is given in Whyville to parents and users about the safety of the site. I even vaguely remember having to answer some questions on safety in order to get a "Chat Licence" in order to let me speak to others. There are also tools that can be utilized to silence users from speaking to you, or even seeing you. These are great tools to have. But, following in standard Whyville review form, the negatives are up next. Trust me, they're worth it. You're not going to believe this.
There is a crackhead running loose. That's right. There's evidently a 16 year old crackhead on the site that is open about himself. Don't believe me? Look at the 3 screen caps of the beach setting. In it, you will find a user with a red bandana. He asks someone if they are on crack. Then he is asked by someone if he is "on anything", to which he openly replies "I'm on crack". He then floats off of the screen shouting, and I quote: "I don't know why my 16 year old self is on this gay site". Simply unique. Don't stop there though. There are other interesting things to be found in the screen caps. In one of them, a user directly below said crackhead actually tells a girl that his "baals" itch. It's true Go find some more. It'll be like the hidden item pages in Highlights for Children.
.: Gameplay
2.00
I only played a couple, but they were all in my opinion equally boring. *I'm interjecting because again, I only had about 4 hours to review the site and was stricken by what could be argued as an "uneducated string of choices" on my part in terms of chosen games. None the less, the review must go on.* Nobody wanted to play checkers with me. The spin game teaching center of gravity/centrifugal force was just monotonous. The game on zero gravity was....wait a minute....I couldn't even figure that one out. My fault I guess.
There was one game in particular that struck me as "interesting". It was a spin-off of a kind of "letter de-scrambler" in which a group of people huddle around a colosseum-esque area in an attempt to uncover various words, based on category, from a jumble of letters given. In most cases this would have been considered quite ordinary. This case, however, was a timeless classic. The first category to arise was "synonyms for the color green". The second category to come up was "synonyms for the word point". The last category I will not address verbally, but rather direct you to the screen cap I took of the game. Remember that this site is aimed to ages 8-14.
.: Community
3.00
Apparently, a HUGE percentage of Whyville's play is community or chat based. The amount of community/chat based user interest versus other areas of the site would give it an easy 5 rating.
On the other hand, as the reviewer, and based purely off of my admittedly short time on Whyville, I would not like to be a part of the Whyville community. A score of 1. So I combined them, and you see how I got the number there to the left.
As a parting note, please please understand that I barely scratched the surface of what Whyville has to offer. And I don't mean that in a snide way. It seemed like there were many, many things to see regarding making money (clams), buying accessories and "Face Parts", meeting good people, and genuinely learning wholesome information. There is a chance our paths just crossed inconveniently.
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