I was talking to Micchi last night and we had a good laugh over a time we’d been on when someone had caused a bit of a scene by the farm entrance.  I actually had screencapped and transcribed a lot of the incident because it was making me laugh… here it is, Micchi! 

The scene: Florapolis, late night (EST).  Two players, and one very helpful GM, try to assist a newbie who seems to have taken a wrong term somewhere around Stormwind City.  He was very concerned about the lizards.  Italicized lines were private messages.

After trying to help him for a while, the GM, Micchi, and I realized he was trolling riiiiight about… here:

Troll: Well I think that we need some sort of defense against those. There were a lot of monsters. They chased me around.
Micchi: That’s because they are a “reactive” monster.
Katie: Yeah, but luckily their battle plan seems to be chase you for a little bit and then run off in a sulk. So I think we’ll be ok.
Troll: Well if they invade the town, it’s not my fault. Fair warning.
Katie: No, your warning is noted.
Troll: I petitioned for Area Effect fire spells.
Katie: In the event of the Lizardpocalypse, no one will blame you.
Micchi: AOE Fire spells? I think he has high hopes for HKO.
Me: Maybe it’ll be on the PvP server.
Micchi: HKO PvP, you take 25 lollipop damage?
Troll: Wow a monster just chased me into the town and killed me.
Katie: Micchi launches projectile gumdrops. Critical hit!
GM: =.=
Micchi: LoL!
Me: Wow, you must be of special interest to their general.
(Somewhere around here, Micchi goes to bed.)
Troll: I’m scared to go back out there now.
Katie: Try the harbor. The starfish are much less aggressive. And you get mucus as a party favor.
Troll: Ew. That’s gross.
Katie: I think that’s what they drop… Yup, sticky mucus from starfish. But in their defense, they don’t really have arms, so not much to be done about it.
Troll: I don’t want to kill starfish. They didn’t do anything to me.
Katie: You could just play with them.
Troll: These monsters up here are hostile.
Katie: Tag, maybe.
Troll: I want them to die.
Katie: I think you’ll have to settle for making them vaguely dizzy.
Troll: Maybe… until my area effect fire spells are added.
Katie: I’m sure you’ll get by ’till then.
Troll: I’m just not going to go out there again without a healer.
Katie: You’ll be waiting a while.
Troll: Oh well! Goodnight friends.
(Exunt Troll)
Katie: Wow.

The last few days I’ve been waiting anxiously for the reopening of HKO… I can’t believe it’s almost here! I’m so excited to get in-game again and see all the new changes, the cities they’ve opened, to visit my farm, to see all my CB friends and make some new ones, to get chased around by lunatic scorpions….

I’m a little apprehensive, though - not about the game itself, of course, but because this will be my test run of running a Windows program on a Mac; this morning I booted up my family’s XP disc and installed it onto my computer with VMfusion. Visually it’s pretty cool, especially because of the unity feature that hides the Windows interface and just leaves me with the Windows application screens floating around with all my usual programs. I’ve never done it before, though, and I have no idea how fast or well it’s going to run. The installation seems to be going by veeeeeerry sloooooooowly, but I’m not sure if that’s normal, or because I should close some other programs, or maybe because I glossed over some configuration steps in my excitement to get the client up and moving which, not gonna lie, is totally possible. But even being able to get in and play tonight slowly rather than not at all is great, so I’ll take it any which way!

And of course, I’m worried someone will snatch up my name from CB, which would make me so sad. I can’t imagine getting used to going by something new, let alone forever and ever and ever. (Ok… at least for FB.) So I hope at the very least everything will run quickly enough to let me hop on and at least secure my name. If I can do that, even if it’s slow, I’ll be very happy… I can always figure out how to speed things up later.

But, of course… even in the worst case scenario, with a super slow client and a new name, I’ll still be getting to play HKO again! So no matter what, it’ll be a fun next couple days.

While of course it was very sad to have to be away from HKO over the summer (although it did give me time in August to work on The Silliest Project Imaginable which I’ll be debuting…whenever I can figure out how to make it work), I got to do some stuff over the summer that was okay in comparison I guess: travel to Europe!

I sing in a choir that went and competed in this big competition in the Czech Republic; we won all sorts of awards and got to see Vienna and Prague. Vienna and Prague pretty, pretty cities, so I figured instead of writing about it, I’d just post pictures! Read the rest of this entry »

 Of course, I knew closed beta was going to come to an end and we all wouldn’t be able to play for a while, but now that it’s almost here, I don’t wanna go!  But if saying farewell to Florapolis and my friends for a while mean next time we get to explore all over and check out new places, new cities, (new monsters, eeeeek!) then I certainly can’t complain for the delay.

So instead, I went through and sorted out some of my good memories to post, to remember all the fun of closed beta and to remind me to be patient for open.

 Here’s one very good memory: finally finishing my house!  Which I then used to sunbathe on, naturally.

Then there was the time I found a GM up a tree.  Alas, poor Bacon!

 And who could forget the great Tadakatsu and his super fun events?  Here’s Angelsky and me, posing with our cool new threads and umbrellas that we won in the detective game.

And here’s a whole BUNCH of us gathered at the cafe for the music lyrics minigame:

I even got to help  run one of the events!  We had a top secret planning session at my house with Tadakatsu, Flowerfall, Bucket, sqolive, Bella, and later Tom and Akio-kun.  (If you ever want to run a game or take over the world, these are definitely the folks to call.  Go Pika Construction Co.!)

Our event was a TON of fun, and people were running all over trying to find us and save Tadakatsu from the ninja invaders.  At the very end, it came down to the wire for who would get the very last quest item for Tada and win the game.  A photo finish!

Of course, lots of other fun things happen.  I remember chasing Tadakatsu and Akio-kun all around with my umbrella sword, and the great watermelon invasions at the farms of all my guildmates, and building building building to get everyone’s house done in time, and the Area Effect fire spell guy who was definitely a troll but made me laugh (will post the log of that conversation sometime), and all sorts of good times.

I just can’t wait for open beta!

I’ve only been playing HKO for three days now, but I’m already having so much fun. It’s been great running around and exploring, trying all the quests, finding fun little surprises… I can’t wait until later versions, when more areas are updated! And it looks like I came just in time, too… building my house is going to be hard work, but hopefully I’ll be able to get it done in time for the 25th.

Thankfully, I’ve made some very nice friends who are helping me. Maybe if I finish my house in time I’ll see if anyone would like a helping hand in building theirs up. It’ll be so fun in the Open Beta, when we have more time, to see how everyone decorates!