ACCOUNT UPGRADES
We have finished our work on the Account Upgrades system and if you haven't already noticed, there has been a lot of changes. We have changed from US dollars to UK Pounds because we are a UK website and its easier and cheaper for us to us UK Pounds. We have also changed to Google Checkout! You can make an account there in 2 quick and very easy stages which will take only a few minutes and then buying Account Upgrades will be much easier than it was with Paypal.
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We have currently disabled Paypal payments for improvements. However, when Paypal returns, you will not get the 20% extra credit you receive with Google Checkout. Paypal is also a lot slower to process than Google, so we hope you will choose Google Checkout instead, because it is much much better in our opinion!

Google Checkout Promotion!
With every Google Checkout payment you make, you will receive 20% extra credit FREE until Sep 07!

Also, get a free Billy minipet with your first ever purchase with Google Checkout!

MAINTENANCE COMPLETED!!!
We have been going through major maintenance and upgrades to the site for nearly 8 months now and today we have finally finished. We would like to say a huge thank you to all of you that have continued to stayed with us through all of the lag, downtime and random server errors and glitches and to all of the account upgraders that have helped us to pay for it all! We are hoping that by the end of this month, every known glitch on our list is fixed, including Marasites, and we will also be contiuning to revamp, reorganise and improve all of the major sections of the site. Then in June, we will be back to normal with tons of great new updates, including new flash games, pets, worlds, items and lots of other things we are going to keep secret!

Here is another sneak preview of the new Mission that will be released soon! The Voodoo Costume will be the costume avaliable, and here are 3 of the freakiest looking pets on the site wearing the costume! Definately from Eleka's Castle...

The Fasoro has finally been revamped. We will be revamping a few more pets soon, but the Fasoro was one of the only pets that hasn't changed since we first opened and is becoming more and more difficult to do new and interesting costumes for. We hope you like the change, and if not, theres 40 other pets to choose from!


Can you find this Light Hidden Avatar?

• The Lottery has been drawn for this week. flamepower112 is the winner of the 510,200MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 14, 17, 20, 23, 25 and 11! Congratulations!
  
  
• Last Week's Raffle has now ended. coolcutecats is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 25616! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
  

NEW PET
Our 41st marapet is called Yuni and is a limited edition unicorn-gone-wrong pet from Eleka's Castle. It will be a mission pet, part of a new mission soon to be released in Eleka's Castle! Here is a sneak preview of the pet:



We have completed all of our maintenance to the Forums and to Galleries. You may of noticed lots of new features on both of them, such as quick links on forums, online status on forums and galleries and the new divide feature on galleries, which allows you to seperate your items aswell as ordering them, so that certain items can move onto the next row!

Can you find this Grouchy avatar?

NEW FEATURE
We are pleased to announce the return of MaraJournals! The new Blogs have been released in a basic version on your profiles. The blogs link is at the top of every page near the online count and you can post new diary entries on your profile to let the rest of Marada know your latest news! Found a new avatar? Acheieved a new goal? Won a competition offline? Selling something new? Post a blog entry! Soon your Marapals will also be able to comment on them and many more features will be released over the next few weeks. We hope you like this new feature. Many of you have been gaining more entry space with your account upgrade purchases for over a year now, so you can finally use them!

If you haven't already noticed, Profiles have been changed to make room for the new Blogs. We hope you like the changes, they are a lot more organised now. You will soon be able to edit the colour scheme with your unlocked fonts in your glowing egg nest!

Account Upgrades are still down for maintenance. We are going through a major upgrade with their system, switching both payments methods and the currency we process payments in. We will no longer have USD$ as the main currency, but will switch to GBP . Those in the US will still be able to purchase Account Upgrades, just like how people in the rest of the world has bought them in their currency, because Google Checkout will charge you in your own currency. It will be no different for you, but it will save us a whole week at the end of the year when we have to work out the taxes!

We have re-released the Stock Market. It is now working properly, glitch-free and has a brand new look and artwork!

The Devil Avatar has been renamed to Impossible and we have hidden a new Valentine Avatar for you to find!

• The Lottery has been drawn for this week. ChokolateShake is the winner of the 875,800MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 5, 14, 10, 25, 15 and 18! Congratulations!
  
  
• Last Week's Raffle has now ended. swimboy3266 is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 7522! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
  

The Candyland map has had a revamp. Its much bigger now, like most of the other maps, using the new labelling system. We hope you like the cleaner map, it has a lot more room for us to add new places soon!

We have completed a lot of upgrades to sections of the site today. Usershops are finished now and so are Trades. We hope you like the changes, they are a lot faster and work without any problems. Trades search has also been improved.

Can you find these two Avatars we have just hidden?

NEW LAYOUT
You probably already noticed, but we have a new Spring Layout. Although the war is still on, we wanted to release the new layout early, as the site is finally back to normal. We have completed all of the major maintenance around the site now and you should notice that the site is running much better because of it. We will still have the ocasional upgrades in certain areas of the site but it won't be longer than a couple of hours. You may of also noticed that we have added a few new links to the layout. We are working all week to improve the navigation around the site, introducing the new Currency and Pets sections, which will soon be information and quicklinks to places like the Pet Exchange, the Pound, Create a Pet, the Bank & ATM, etc. Thanks for your patience all of this month while we took our major upgrades to the site. We are back to normal now and stay tuned for some great new updates to the site in May.

A little later than planned, the April Account Upgrade has been released. We have had the Dark theme before, so this time it has a Light theme! Here are some of the items you can get from supporting the site this month:

You can use this new Light Costume on these four pets:



You can get this cute new Napoleon minipet.

And these other Light themed items are also part of the new upgrade.

Lots of the Account Upgrades items have been retired. We have also just released a new Bronze Account and a new Silver Account that you can upgrade to. The April Gold Account will be released in a few days.

The Easter Egg Hunt will be until Sunday, when noone else will be able to start it. After Sunday, those who have already started the hunt will have another week to complete it. Then all items and avatars from the hunt will be retired.

Our annual Easter Egg Hunt has just started! Although two weeks later than usual this year, the war and site maintenance delayed it. Both the war and the maintenance will be finished by the end of the month. This year's Easter Egg Hunt has 40 levels for you to complete. There are 40 new easter eggs hidden around the site and you have to follow the clues to find them. These will be hidden for atleast a week, maybe longer if we have to, so everyone should be able to take part. There is an Easter Egg Hunt Forum where you can all work together to solve each clue.

There is one IMPORTANT RULE - you cannot list answers or give out answers on the Forums or Club Boards, ONLY via Maramail. Anyone caught giving answers on the Forums or Club Boards, or linking to websites with the answers listed on the Forums or Club Boards will be banned from taking part, will have their prizes taken away from them and will be fined up to 100,000MP.

There are some great prizes to be won from this event. You will win all 40 Easter Eggs if you complete the whole event, MP and these items below, which will all retire after this event.


Can you also find this Easter 07 avatar that we have hidden? It'll retire at the end of the event!

Clue : 'This Murfin can run, catch him if you can!'

• The Lottery has been drawn for this week. tommer1994 is the winner of the 612,900MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 23, 12, 17, 6, 4 and 9! Congratulations!
  
  
• Last Week's Raffle has now ended. nadav6811 is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 1456! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
  

We are almost complete with our quick Maintenance work on some of the busiest sections of the site. User Shops have finally been fixed so they can only allow the correct numbers of items in them - you will need to upgrade your shop size to hold more items. Your shop items have been moved to your Attic, but you can now easily and quickly move and price the items in your shop. Galleries will be back in a few hours, along with the Forums and News Commenting.

The second attack is on! Head over to the Battle Arena now to fight either a Kevadra or a Wizadrip.

These two new cute Chibs pet colours have been released - in Snow and Furry costumes!

Because of the ongoing War, it is too unsafe for Easter Eggs to be hidden around Marada - the Easter Bunny was even kidnapped! The war should be finished by next weekend, so we can start the Easter Egg Hunt then.

We are sorry to announce that we have a small technical hitch with this years easter hunt :/

The Easter Bunny appears to have been kidnapped by newths. His egg basket was deserted this morning, there was only a note saying:
We hAvE THE BUnNy. GiVe uS 10,000 SALmoN fLaVOuReD eGGs oR hE gEtS iT

The MBI (Maradan Bureau of Investigation) are currently hard at work trying to trace the kidnappers and rescue the bunny. The Easter hunt WILL happen once we get him back, there just might be a slight delay.

• The Lottery has been drawn for this week. wolf0 is the winner of the 476,100MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 16, 11, 25, 21, 13 and 7! Congratulations!
  
  
• Last Week's Raffle has now ended. sexiipolar is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 15499! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
  

Queen Eleka and King Baspinars first child has been born! Introducing... Princess Laimay III

But as its not April Fools Day anymore, we can actually tell you that this is the 40th Marapet and is non-limited edition, so you can go and create one now! This is actually a Crindol. The war is still on and there will be more war related news soon!

Minipet Island Land War - Part 4

Happy News!

We bring good news today, on a rather unexpected outcome to a secret peace conference that has being occuring to discuss the war. During their attendance at the conference, it is rumoured that King Baspinar XIII and Queen Eleka had been conducting private talks on the future of Maradas ecology in respect to the large number of Muskits and Swondors that have been killed as a result of the war.

It was announced today that during these talks the two rivals fell in love and were married in a secret ceremony several days ago! We also bring you the happy news that Queen Eleka is already expecting their heir to the throne. The happy couple have revealed that they intend to name their first-born Princess Laimay III (we just hope that it turns out to be a girl!) The Laimay will be our 40th species of Marapet, and will be the rarest of all the limited edition pets. We are not quite sure when it will arrive, as Eleka has declined to comment on the due date.

Obviously, the ongoing war is now cancelled, but there will still be plenty of changes happening to the site as Elekas castle is to be immadiately vacated, and work is commencing on Baspinars Castle to "bring it out of the dark ages and make it fit to live in" as Eleka tactfully puts it. War points will soon also be spendable in a new nursery shop that is opening soon.

• The Lottery has been drawn for this week. soccerplaya4lyfe is the winner of the 380,700MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 17, 22, 12, 14, 9 and 3! Congratulations!
  
  
• Last Week's Raffle has now ended. tanlenus is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 21729! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
  

The War is on! Queen Eleka foolishly thought she could win just by shutting her shops to the light side, but as that didnt work, shes sent 100,000 Swondors to attack the light side! The King has responded, sending 100,000 of his Muskit troops to fight the dark side! You can go to the Battle Arena now to fight for your side. You will gain War Points for each battle, which is a random amount between 1 and the difficulty of the opponent. There will be lots more opponents in the war, with more on the way this week.



The Restocking stage of the war is now over.

There are lots more items in the War Redemption Shop and even more items will be added over the next two weeks - including some more real prizes! Remember there is limited numbers of each one, and there is no guarentee it will restock again!

• The Lottery has been drawn for this week. luv1another is the winner of the 436,800MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 2, 9, 11, 21, 22 and 15! Congratulations!
  
  
• Last Week's Raffle has now ended. amphoria is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 13238! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!
  

There have been a few problems over the last few days all related to the new Maramail server maintenance. It was stopping Auctions from processing and Account Upgrades from being automatic. These problems have both been fixed now and we would like to apologise to anyone who has bought credit over the past few days and not received it. Buying credit now should work, but for those missing credit, if you have already emailed marapets@gmail.com we will have it fixed within the next 24 hours. If you have not emailed us yet, please do so and then we can get it processed within 24 hours for you emailing us. It would of been fixed right after you emailed us, but we could not while the Maramail server was still broken. We have delayed the Retiring of the account upgrade items for another week to allow those who did not get their credit in time a chance to now.

The Queen randomly decided today to allow the Light Side to shop in her shops. The King also did the same for the Dark Side. Little does the King know, that Queen Eleka will attack tomorrow.... be prepared for the battling stage tomorrow! The Mini Pet Island shops have also reopen.

• The Lottery has been drawn for this week. celtic3 is the winner of the 637,600MP Jackpot with the winning numbers of 4, 5, 9, 11, 16 and 19! Congratulations!
  
  
• Last Week's Raffle has now ended. Aingel is the winner of the Red DNA and 100,000MP prize with the winning raffle ticket number 33205! Congratulations! Make sure you buy your tickets for today's raffle - only 10MP per ticket!