Hi everyone! It’s your last chance to send in your entries for the last two events of Founders’ Beta! You only have one hour left to submit your entries for the "Blog For Thought" and "A Day With Hello Kitty And Friends" contests. Please remember that you will need to e-mail your entries for the “Blog For Thought” event to “hkoevent(at)hellokitty.com” with the subject line “Blog For Thought.” All of the entries for “A Day With Hello Kitty And Friends” must be uploaded to DreamStudio with the tag: “HKOKittyFriend” in order to qualify.

The deadline for submissions for both events is on November 17, 2008 at 23:59 EST.

Please visit the HKO Event Blog for more details.

Good luck!

Thank you to all those who’ve participated in Founders’ Beta! We’re very happy that you enjoyed playing the game, and we hope to see more of you here on Sanriotown!

Now, just because Founders’ Beta has ended doesn’t mean the fun will: in fact, more things are happening at its closing, and it’s not just in anticipation of the Open Beta!

Crop Circles

Show off the precision of your landscaping skills!  Nothing is more refreshing than a day in a beautifully landscaped garden.  Use your farm to arrange your crops to grow into shapes or patterns, make colorful combinations, or draw a picture made of crops! Click here to see more details on the HKO Event blog.

Blog For Thought

Share your Hello Kitty Online story!  Use your SanrioTown account blog to write about your experiences in the game, your best or funniest moments, the friends you met in the game, or anything related to HKO.  Creativity is king here!  Add photos, videos or music to make your blog post better. Read more about that on the HKO Event blog.

A Day With Hello Kitty and Friends

Got a talent for art?  This one is for you!  Draw your avatar together with Hello Kitty and her friends. Your drawing must be about something you have done in Sanrio Land – for example, planting your farm, cooking for charity, running back and forth on quests, or anything else you enjoyed doing in Sanrio Land! Click here to see more details about this event!

Finally! All those keys you’ve been holding to for the longest time will finally realize their potential! First of all, this is a GUILD EVENT so you better start getting to know people in your neighborhood.

At around 10pm EST, GM-Neverender will make an announcement asking for 1 representative for each guild. Once they reach the designated place, he will give each representative these items:

• Statue of Liberty House Certificate
• Empire State House Certificate
• Grand Central House Certificate

In exchange, they will have to give me:

• Liberty Key
• Empire Key
• Grand Central Ticket

Once that’s over and done with, each guild will now have now have to start building the house in a farm. To use the certificate:

1. Go to a farm, right-click on the certificate. So basically, each guild will need three farms because one farm can only support one structure.
2. Collect required materials
3. START BUILDING

Once you’re done with send an email containing:

1. A screenshot of the finished structure (Empire/Liberty/Grand Central) with members of the guild (doesn’t have to be all of them) standing in front of it.
2. Do the same for the other structures as well. In total, you must send a total of three emails.
3. THE GUILD REPRESENTATIVE SHOULD BE THE ONE SENDING THE EMAIL AND NO ONE ELSE.
   

Send screenshots to hkoevent[at]hellokitty.com.

Remember: Only the FIRST 2 emails will be entertained for each structure and will be declared the winner for that building. For example, “Neverender Guild” and “Abby Guild” were the first two guilds who finished the Liberty House but “Bacon Guild” and “AVA Guild” were the first two guilds to finish the Empire House.

If your guild is one of the first two guilds who has finished a New York Monument, we will contact your guild leader and ask for the THE NAMES OF ALL THE ACTIVE GUILD MEMBERS ALONG WITH THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES. Let the Guild Members decide who’s active or not based on member activity.

For the rest of the players who have collected the keys, hold on to your keys for they will be reimbursed. We just have to get this event done

Got it? Good. Open Beta glory is at stake Good luck, guys!

The recently-concluded “Be Nice, Guys!” event was a success! Players worked hard to give GM-Salvador his request for newbie items (the complete wardrobe, no less!) before the time ended. The “social experiment” had a mix of results: from a sudden change in the bartering system to the shift in economy in Sanrio land. The result: numerous leopard glasses were handed out, while new members of Hello Kitty Online were pleasantly pleased with the exchanges they made.

Here’s a screenshot of the players lining up to trade their items with GM-Salvador:

Server Status. The unexpectedly high player response and the high log in attempts since the start of the Founders’ Beta have caused some unexpected problems in Hello Kitty Online, including inability to log in and server crashes. We apologize for these issues and for any inconvenience caused to players. Most of the server problems have now been resolved and we are working to prevent future difficulties.

Daily Maintenance ChecksWe will be performing a daily server maintenance check every 4am Eastern Standard Time (4pm GMT +8). During that time, we will take down the game server to apply fixes, patches, and maintain optimal performance. Server maintenance will take at least 30 minutes depending on the fixes and updates required.

Updates to Guild and Farm Systems, Game Balance

We have listened to your comments and made it our top priority to fix the current issues with guilds and farms, both in terms of requirements as well as game balance. We understand that playing with your friends is the best way to experience the game, and that guilds are the best avenue for you to do that. We are addressing the problems with guild creation and we are working hard to reduce guild requirements to a reasonable level. This may require a few patch updates to get right, so please bear with us.

Farms are being adjusted to make for a more enjoyable and rewarding experience. Several changes are in the works, among them adjustments to fertilizer consumption rates, drop rates, and the value of your harvest. As with the changes to the Guild system, updates to Farms may require multiple updates and will be an ongoing work.

For this and more changes please see today’s change log.

Coming Soon: Return of the Housing SystemAfter explosive popular demand, we are now working double time to get houses ready for everyone. Houses will return to the game just as soon as we finish balancing house building requirements and we finish checking the home decoration system. Expect to see Housing make its comeback before the last week of October.

Coming Soon: Build New York!

The Big Apple is coming to Sanrio Land and you can help to build it! Players who participate in this momentous in-game event will have a chance to be immortalized in Hello Kitty Online’s super-cute version of the city that never sleeps, New York ! Stay tuned for more details. Warning: this event is imminent! Do not miss it!

Even a few days into the launch, there is still a huge demand for Founders’ Beta accounts on a daily basis. So now to make room for more gamers, we’ve tied up with the very popular game site, FilePlanet! Through their newly-launched event, members can get exclusive Beta Keys that can allow them to participate in our very own Founders’ Beta! Click here to check out that promo, and spread the word to your friends!

Still don’t have a Founder account? Want to know how the Beta Key works? Then don’t miss out on the event! Hurry, while the doors to Hello Kitty Online are still open! Good luck!

Greetings to all our Founders! Our servers have encountered a minor problem, and our team is working hard to fully resolve the issue before the launch of the game to ensure that you all enjoy smooth gameplay once Founders’ Beta begins. Please be assured that the issue will be resolved soon, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused to our Founders. Thank you for your continuing patience, and we can’t wait to see you in-game!

Sanriotown is offering an exclusive discount for its members if they avail of “Hello Kitty: Big City Dreams”, available on Autumn 2008 exclusively on the Nintendo DS. Simply spend 1,000 of your Kitty Points and you get 15% discount when you purchase the game! You’ll even automatically get an open beta account for the much-anticipated MMORPG, Hello Kitty Online!

For more information about this great deal, please click here.

After months of going over player comments and suggestions, and working hard to deliver an even better game to all our supporters, it’s time for the big news. The wait has been long, but we’ve toiled to make sure it’s all worth it! So without further ado, we are pleased to announce the next phase — The Hello Kitty Online Founders’ Beta!

October 8, 2008 is the big day, and the this next stage will allow a limited number of users to play Hello Kitty Online ahead as Founders ahead of launch, while earning benefits and participating in special in-game events.

And now, here’s how you can be one of the Founders of the official Hello Kitty Online launch!

1. Sign up for an account at SanrioTown.com,
2. Using the SanrioTown account, send a BLANK email to hkofounder@hellokitty.com.

Remember, you need a SanrioTown account in order to qualify to be a Founder, and the email account you use will be the one we grant access to for the Founders’ Beta. Also, questions, comments and suggestions should be sent to onlinegame@hellokitty.com.

What’s to look forward to? The new version of HKO will feature an improved interface, new monsters, new maps, new items, and the opening of London and Paris. The Founders’ Beta will also introduce gameplay changes such as an improved skill system, pet systems and team-play oriented enhancements.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t miss out, because we’ll only be allowing a limited number into this stage! More details to come in the following days, so stay tuned!

Hello Kitty and her Sanrio friends are definitely all over the cyberspace to promote HKO! The recently-released Hello Kitty Online trailer can now be viewed on YouTube. The video’s gotten more than 10,000 views and has received numerous positive reviews from people, so be sure to take a look at it and leave comments to show your support of the most-anticipated MMORPG of the year!

Stay tuned for more Hello Kitty Online news!