Neopets is a game site started by a couple, Adam and Donna, way back in the late nineties, which they sold to Viacom less than six years later for about 160 million. It was originally developed for college age students as a game site where you could have and care for virtual pets, but the site itself was quite complex, with different worlds, each world having its own set of pets and virtual shops, which sold items you could use on your pets, or to battle other pets, such as weapons, magic items, food, etc... The items were bought with Neopoints which were earned through playing games and selling items in your virtual shop.
Viacom introduced items for real cash, though there had always been merchandise in the form of plush toys that looked like the site pets (your dragons look a little like Scorchios). The items you bought with Neocash were virtual items for your pets, or tokens to play one of the most popular player to player games (called Key Quest). Eventually Neopets was sold again, and it is now owned by Knowledge Adventure, though the members know it as being owned by Jumpstart. When Jumpstart took over three years ago, and they eventually had to change servers, most of the site broke, and they lost a lot of players, because it took so long to fix some things, and other aspects of the site were simply removed or disabled or remained broken.