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My review of Pixie Hollow

lynnaralynnara Member UncommonPosts: 5

The game is definately cute. So many cute outfits and hairstyles! I like going onto the busier servers just to absorb all the cuteness from so many different fairies on the screen at the same time. Eye candy is great, but that alone doesn't make a game good.

 

When playing without membership, i quickly realized how utterly limited a player is. Gathering goodies is nearly pointless, since you can't do anything with the items you get, except hand a few over for certain quests. You can't bake cookies, can't tailor clothes, can't buy anything from any shop. Now yes you can do the "practice" baking and tailoring, but those

don't consume materials, and you dont get to keep the results. The best you can do is unlock more recipes/patterns to practice.

 

Every fairy is born with a specific "talent", and each talent comes with 3 skills. Free players cannot get these skills, since the quests to get them are member only quests. The only times a fairy can aparently use these skills is when she is in one of the memeber only maps.

 

I wanted to play this with my sister, but she doesn't want to get a membership. I can understand her perspective. She was playing free with me until she realized how little she could actually do. And about the membership, her take was this: "Disney doesn't need more money. This game should be completely free."

 

I got a one month subscription, just to see if the subscription was worthwhile.

 

Well...

 

The minigames are fun, although the difficulty seems a bit random. The quests are a combination of material gathering, message/item delivery, and minigames. After a while, the minigames get a bit old. The firefly lightup is my favorite game, and the bubble bounce is probably my least favorite. Some games, like the bubble bounce, have a much higher difficulty than they

probably should, which makes getting points for quests a bit of a hassle. Luckily though, if you play multiple times, the points add up towards the quest goal. So say you need 10,000 points in bubble bounce, if you only get to 8,000 one time, all you have to do is get 2,000 more points the next time you play and the quest will complete. Yay for that, i could never get 10,000 points in that game in a single play.

 

The member only quests are not very different from the nonmember quests, except those that send you to member-only areas and require use of the fairy's talent skills. The member-only areas are quite small, and take little time to complete solo. There is an option to go into these areas in a party, but so far i have not seen a need or even a good reason to do so. Perhaps i should mention that its difficult to find other fairies with memberships to party with. It really bites having to ask every single fairy if they have membership. I also feel bad when i have to tell a nonmember she can't go with me.

 

The main benefits from membership (for me) is the ability to get new hairstyles, clothes, shoes, accessories, house decorations, and party stuff. Putting on parties is fun, but there are only 2 different party games to play. Hopefully that will change in the future. There is a good assortment of clothes items and accessories that are available for purchasing from shops or obtainable by crafting. The crafting minigames are fun, and do not take very long to complete. Unfortunately, free players cannot purchase from shops nor can they craft their own stuff. And this brings me to my main issue with this game.

 

There is no trade function.

 

Seriously, this is a utopian land of fairies where cooperation and helping friends should be a main theme. But it isn't. It's yet another piggy bank for disney, coated in pretty pixels. Personally, i like crafting stuff for people. I got my membership and was really hoping to make clothes for my sister, bake cookies for friends, and perhaps even give away clothes i rarely wear to some of my friends who are playing for free and cannot get new clothes. But no, Disney needs that $5.95 from everyone, apparently.

 

So lets say Pixie Hollow cannot be completely freed from greed. Can they keep the shops open to members only, but still allow trade? How hard is it to tag items with "crafted" or "purchased"? How hard could it be to block "purchased" items from being traded while allowing "crafted" items to be given to friends?

 

I no longer wonder why many fairies make friend requests, and then only stick around for a day or two. After playing for a while on my membership, it seems not worth renewing.

 

----

 

Oh theres a few last minute bits of stupid i'd like to bring up. The chat censoring issue is, to put it mildly, retarded. Now i have absolutely no problems with filtering profanity and such. But lets see. I can say 'brother', but the word 'sister' is censored. Seriously? A game full of girls, many of whom would like to refer to their sisters in chat, find themselves talking about "their *****". Its really annoying and utterly stupid. Oh, and numbers. All numbers are censored, whether you type '2' or spell out 'two'. Its totally rediculous.

 

Comments

  • Elitekill4Elitekill4 Member Posts: 99

    A small note regarding the end paragraph of your post:

    Pixie Hollow is a childrens' game, no matter how high or low you rate it. Disney's attempt to protect children from Paedophiles is my guess.

  • junzo316junzo316 Member UncommonPosts: 1,712

    The numbers thing is to prevent children from giving out their ages.  It's the same in other children's games as well.

  • lynnaralynnara Member UncommonPosts: 5
    Originally posted by Elitekill4


    A small note regarding the end paragraph of your post:
    Pixie Hollow is a childrens' game, no matter how high or low you rate it. Disney's attempt to protect children from Paedophiles is my guess.



     Originally posted by junzo316

    The numbers thing is to prevent children from giving out their ages. It's the same in other children's games as well.

     

    -------------------------

    First of all, of course its aimed at children, but that has never stopped older people from playing.  Disney's attempt at protecting children is called 'SpeedChat'. If someone were to ask a child what their age was, they would see "*** *** *** ****?". For those who have no clue whatsoever, SpeedChat is menu based, and people who dont have SpeedChatPlus unlocked cannot see anything that anyone types at all, they can only see canned menu-based questions, statements and responses. Parental Controls can keep a child from upgrading to SpeedChatPlus, which allows typed messages to be seen, although the censorship is extreme.

    It seems that SpeedChat alone is quite enough to stop any predetory anything. At the same time, SpeedChatPlus has so many odd restrictions that those who are old enough and able to upgrade find it difficult to carry on any meaningful conversations. If disney wants to keep nasty men from asking a girl her age, Disney could simply stop at censoring 'age', 'old', 'years', 'birth', which they already do and makes it virtually impossible to ask for an age anyway.

    Anyway, a quote from Disney tech support in response to my direct questioning about the chat filter in SpeedChatPlus: "it is often because of the way guests have used them in a 'combination' which has become disruptive."

     

     

     

     

     

  • weblinkz2002weblinkz2002 Member Posts: 112

    I understand the chat can be a bit annoying but I fully agree with them being overly possesive and almost down-right nazis. They want to protect your children from internet predators. They also want to avoid lawsuits that I am sure many parents would love to pin Disney with to get their $5.95 back.

    When increasing saftey, there are a certain number of self-freedoms that one must give up.

    ~Webby "This MMO needs more dead bird."
    image

  • AkulasAkulas Member RarePosts: 3,004

    ate one for too there number given. But seriously it's a kids game so I wouldn't want my little girl to give a number out to some 40 y/o man perv.

    This isn't a signature, you just think it is.

  • mech4ngelmech4ngel Member Posts: 1

    I know this is an old thread, but your argument is completely invalid. This game is NOT made by Disney! It's made by a small independant company in PA named Silvertree and it uses a Disney IP which they have to liscence.

    This is how game development works, Disney itself does not make any games nor Marvel, Pixar etc. catch my drift?

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