Aaaand I’m back from the nice beach and sunshine and all that good stuff. Boy, do I miss it already… Anyways, just so you guys know, I’m getting re-aquaintenced with the game since I actually forgot some of the features, but as soon as I have the kinks worked out, I’ll be back to writing. As promissed, there will be a double post in the blog, the first  about the crafting system (to tie up with my Do the MATH!!! post) and then about the infamous Item Mall. Don’t miss it.

This is Lumy-chan reporting back from summer holidays and things have started turning grey already… (no, really, it’s almost raining where I live).

As I already mentioned before, I will be leaving for holidays, so starting tomorow I will not be able to write for the blog, nor will I be able to play HKO, which means that even if I could write on the blog I would probably have little to say… I’ll be back around the 31st.

 I promisse I will deal with my view’s comments when I get back and there will be a DOUBLE post to compensate for lack of updates during all this time when I get back. As a preview, the next two entries will be about the crafting system (to tie up with my Do the MATH!!! post) and the Item Mall.

Also, special warm thanks to a very special Pixie.

Hope you have a nice summer and get out of the house once in a while; even a gigantic NERD like me needs salty water sometimes…

This is a special post because yesturday was my birthday. And I think I might have over-celebrated the god of wine last night…

Hangovers asside, let’s focus on torday’s HKO main atraction, the pet system.

*rolls over laughing*

 No, seriously, this is the worst pet system I have ever seen in an MMO. Let me put this clearly: pets in HKO don’t do anything. Well, that’s not entirely true now, is it? They follow you around like some sort of molester and sprouts emotes every five second, obscuring your vision to the exactly the precise part of the screen your clicking on so that you don’t remember if you’re shopping for some sticks, banging on an enemy or just picking an emote’s nose. As for what really does a pet do in the game, that’s it. It follows you around and acts cute. Really, do we need this? Isn’t tehre enough weird things  look around in this game (like the unique arquitecture in which all hese flurry Sanrio creations live in), you had to add an add-on that constantly follows you around and remins you of how pretty the world is and how you should be nice to debilitated children and always share and wash your hands after going to the toilet?!?! Give me a break!!!

I heard from your commentors ever since I told you I won two pet cards at the GM event about how great you all though pets were. So I equiped my first pet and then asked, “Now what?” . After noticing no formidable reaction (like the game suddenly turning black and white), I went to HKO wiki (*choir in the background*) and it says that pets give you stat bonuses. Oh really? Ok, so I unequipped my pet and took a look at my most important stat, the HP. Guess what? My pet adds a whole 7 points extra to my HP!!! WOW! Now I don’t need to worry about dying in the field! Oh wait, yes I do, because pets DON’T FIGHT!!!!

 Are you kidding me?!?!? The one thing I might actually like help with, since the resorces you need to get from monsters are always the toughest t get, and the pet doesn’t move a muscle???? And it even has the nerve of saying thinsg like “Never fear, super pet is here!!!” For Pochacco’s sake!!!

Now, if you’re like me and have little patience ofr things that have to purpose i a game, you would simply let the little creature be and concentrate on finnishing quests. But no, the thing has the BALLS of asking for food AND care EVERY TWO MINUTES!!!!!! And trust me, after spending about an hour farming resorces and decide to take a break is the only time you’ll notice that your pet is on the brink of starvation. ALso, yes you have to buy pet food. At least at my level, but I doubt you can actually make pet food yourself in the game at all…

Hold on, I think I got it. The programmers of HKO online based their entire pet system on one simgle pet: fish. I never understood fish; how can that qualify as a pet?!? Fish don’t DO anything! They’re more of a decoration, that you have to feed and maintain, but that’s it! It’s not a pet, you can’t love a fish. You can’t care and it doesn’t show you emotions. In fact, fish might be the most selfish little creatures in your house, because all they really care is that they get one meal a day and their tank is cleaned. Exactly like HKO pets- they don’t care if you’re on the brink of having your HP drop to 0, they just ant a cookie and a huggle and then you can go take a walk!!!!

Having said all of this, I see way of enjoying the pet system at all in this game. SO I made up my own. As with preatty much any game tat lets me rename stuff, I often abuse the system and this time is no exception. So once I discoveredthat you could rename your pets anything you like, I thought about the one thing that hadf furry little creatures in it and was tons of fun. POKEMON! And by that, I mean the 150 (+1) pokemon, whish is tosay, THE ONLY POKEMON THERE IS!!!! Yes, I belong to the first Poke-generation and I’m horribly pround of it!!! To me, tehre are 150 (+1) pokemon and no more. Seriously, when the thing came around parents were stunned, STUNNED, that their little 6-year-olds could memorize the name, looks and even attacks of 150 diffenrent creatures. And parents got intothe grove too; heck, my on will sing out loud the pokemon opening in anime conventions (because she rocks).

So, I’m asking everyone that reads the blog to join in on the movement: get your pets out and look at them. Rename then to the pokemon that looks the most like your pet! Currently, I have a Starmie, a Beedrill and a Jigglypuff. And I’m out to get’em all!!!

 Gotta card’em all!!! Pokepets!!!!

I’m writting this at the spur of the moment. Now, I haven’t been playing HKO that much lately, not because I haven’t got time or anything (->has been dedicating her free time to finnishing Ressonance of Fate), but because I got rather frustrated with the all the farming I had to do! No, not the farming in your actual farm, which has so far rendered absolutely useless in this stage, I mean all the gathering resorces. Now, as I mentioned in my last few posts, I like to go out into the field and collect everything I need for a bunch of quests and THEN come back to town and gather the massive amounts of exp in one go! So imagine my surprise when I got a quest for 6 sweat-free handles. I though it was the flimsiest thing ever, until I went down and calculated how many resorced I actually had to gather. Take a look:

Now, I don’t know if you can read my horrible handwritting, but can sure look at the numbers!!! And take a look at the two new quests I’m making now; just in case you can’t read the bottom part, I’ll give you a hand:

In total I need:

-55 cobbwebs

-22 fragmented branches

-28 honey

-14 clay

-56 shells

-60 boxpig comfort

-30 frills

Whan did KHO become such a grinder?!?! This is the kind of stuff I have to collect to complete a quest back at FlyFF and most recently Aika Online. Are they mad? I think one person asked me if the amount of grinding in the game was suitable for the target audience, which is younger kids. My answer is yes, if they plan of finnishing their game when they reach puberty!!!!! No 10 year-old kid is going to sit through this!!! Though, truth be told, at the time I was already clearing dungeons and finding mystical objects, slaying dragons and my first pimpul didn’t even bust out yet. But I’m an exception, a very rare exception, I might add, and we’re look at the massive multiplayer online comunity here. This is NOT child material questing, people!!! If you’re going to force little kids to grind for days to get materials you can’t expect them doing on the thought that they’ll get to read the next pink-frammed textbox. You need to give them more motivation, particularly inthe form of plot. I know I’m asking too much here from the developers (I have seen where their imagination goes) but I have woken up the two sleeping princesses in Florapolis and do I get any advancement on the mystery of why they were asleep? Any dream sequence, any premonition, any memory before falling asleep that might serve as a clue to find out who the real perpetrator of the crime is???? No. Of course not. As said before, KHO never ceases to dissapoint.

As promissed and long awaited, I come today to talk to you about the the (in)famous GM events. So far I’ve been to two, both of them in Sanrio Harbor and frankly, I was quite unimpressed at first. So, there I was, looking for four-leaf clovers (though, I never seen clovers grow near a beach, but maybe they do in japan, who know?!), when all of a sudden a big red message from GM-Moonlight pops up at the top of the screen saying “GM EVENT STARTING IN 15 MINITES; GE’ TO THA HARBOR, QUICK!!!” I think thing to myself, Holly kitty, stuff’s just got real!!! Yeah, this is what I’m talking about! Let0’s do this!!!

After waiting for the late party-goes to get to the harbor, the GM finallly beggins to explain how the evnt works. Ok, guys are you ready for this? Pay attention: it’s a race to find a monster in the map that has a scrambled name on it. The objective?! To unscramble the word, which is the name of a Sanrio character on the map, and be the first to speak it out loud on the map.

….Really?! REALLY?!?!?!? This is the best your imagination could milk out of those brain cells? I like the race bit but… why the whole unscrambling thing? People don’t like to have to unscramble stuff, we want to READ it! Why did they have to make this into a minigame?!?! WHY??!?!?

…Despite my outburst, I did end up winning one time and really, it’s all about the race aspect: if you’re the first one to find the little furry beast, you basically win. But truth be told, I have help. As I always say, when in doubt, GOOGLE IT!!!!! So yes, I did go to the almighty “HK wiki” (*choir in teh background) but only because I didn’t know the names of the NPC. Really? You expect me to memorize and even CARE for these characters, who Iwill probably never seen again beyond this map?!?! The only characters I know are miss Kitty herself and My Melody (only because I happened to stumble upon an anime about her and recognised the artwork as being Sanrio’s… One day I’ll let you know what happened after I saw that anime…). So, yes, I confess, I kinda cheated. But name me one person who knows every name of every NPC in Sanrio Harbor: I will give you a lifetime supply of …pillows.

So, after that fun adventure (I admit, the racing part was kinda exciting), I went along my merry  life (or not so merry, IRL), when anotehr blazing red message popped out when I was in the middle of another boring quest: “COME QUICK EVRYONE!!! IT’S THE AWSOME GM EVENT!!!!!!!” So I said to myself, “Oh no, we have to hurry! We can’t go missing anotehr fun hour of word scrambling puzzles, can we? There’s probably a death sentence if you don’t go begging the GMs for more!!!! So I rushed my cute, little bum there, joined the crowd that also showed up, the sad bunch, and waited. And in that wait I was constantly thinking to myself, “No. No, no, no, they can’t do this. I’m sure, in fact, I’m POSITIVE that this event has nothing to do about word scrambling. I can feel it!!!” Unfortunately what I was feeling was my lunch; HKO sure enough never fails to dissapoint. ANOTHER SCRAMBLING GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!

And this time, it doesn’t even have the race factor to hipe it up! It’s just a bunch of bored people, sitting on their chairs in from of the PCs, watching with mild intertest as the GM proudly announces words like “inasl” …

But like they say, for every sport in the world there will be a team of enthusiastic fans cheering crazy for their lives, so I best just announce this right off the bat: MINIGAMES HAVE OFFICIALLY BEEN PROMOTED TO SPORT STATUS IN HKO!!!! Yes, tehre were people actually competing in this treppid competition, dissapointed that they only made second place and EVEN arguing, yes, arguing with the referee (the GM) about the validation of the winner’s status!!! I was almost expectiong a cat fight!!!! Or at least a plastic chair being thrown to the GM (that would have been mildly amusing). And guess what?! I WON AGAIN. And I wasn’t even trying: I just managed to casually unscramble a word and write it down and by luck I was the first. Whoopedy-doo…. Seriously, people you have to make something productive out of this. You managed to put together maps, NPCs, quests and dialogue, monsters and items and gathering spots. You CAN do better than this!!! I know you can! Here’s an idea, free of charge: how about next time you want to host a GM event, you have a scavenger hunt? First one to collect all of Hello Kitty’s lost items wins?!?! How’s that? Not too hard to come up with stuff, now is it? Or am I too inventive for you? Look, if you can’t do it, just hire Peter Moleneux.

So, what did I win after my HARD, adventurous work of epic unscrambling???? Two pet cards………….. No comments……….. (save it for latter)

My, I have been slacking off, haven’t I? Well, the reason why you haven’t heard from me it’s because it’s frekin’ 36º out!!! Only today has the temperature finally dropped enough for me to get out of my automatic game-playing coma and get some productive work done.

Now, let’s see, where were we? Ah, yes. When we last left our heroes, we had just conquered the sandy hazards of resorce gathering and minigame frustration and finally reached the city of Florapolis!

…And it’s booooooring!!!!!

I will thanks of all of the marvelous people who have commented on previous posts about how Florapolis can be horrible. They were’t even close… Let me get things straight: I know HKO is cutusy and fun-for-all and possibly enviromentelly friendly in some way, but tehre’s just so much pansying around a person can take!!!!! First thing’s first: music. I never complained about this before because the music in this game suits it just fine. And I kinda liked it at the beggining; each map had a nice, catchy little tune that puts you in the HK mood and horribly stays inside your mind, looping even as you go to sleep until you pound your head with a brick and listen to silence for about an hour. But hey, it serves its purpose and that’s what music should do, no problem. But here’s the problem with Florapolis: it’s too LONG! After realising I was going to get stucked in this place for a couple of days, I did what any normal individual would do: shut the music off and play something refreshing like… Metallica. And wouldn’t you know it?! It seemed like the gathering process kicked into high gear and stuff simply got done faster. Seriously this is myfirst real advice if yuou want to conserve some brain cells after being done with this MMO: change the music. For that matter, turn off the sound efftects as well!

But hey, I’m forgetting about Sanrio Harbor. What did I think about that, you ask? Ihave to admit, after Dream Carnival (that false beggining of a game that served absolutely little purpose other than to waste your time), this is refreshing. The map is small and opened, there’s a few resorces to gather, some basic quests that are actually not bad to do since the map is small and not cluttered and I should also remind you that I think this is the main stage for the GM events. More on that latter.

Now, after you’re done, you’re sent to the next map, typical RPG style and HOLY KITTY WHAT IS THIS?!?!?! It’s like someone threw a bunch of lively collers into a pallet and then vagelly molded something out of that monstrocity… I don’t even know where to walk or what I can touch… scratch that, I don’t think I want to touch anything… Oh, tehre are little paths for you to follow, thank godness, we wouldn’t want you to get LOST AND CONFUSED now, do we?

Ok, so after you got a new pair of glasses to deal with the spewed rainbow of collors and the claustrophobic design of the buildings, you finally get some more challenging quests, and by that I mean that the good-for-nothing NPCs (because they always are), that are too busy standing around in one spot thinking about how the heck did they mess up the town this badly, can’t do anything for themselves. And so, you will be sent to go through very long, very tedious maps that are needlessly maze-like and needlessly long for the quests that you are going to be given. Seriously, what’s the point of having an East/West normal field and then have the Misty field as well? Not to mention that, say if you needed to gather up one resorce from the end of the East path up to the last map, only to then realise, afther you’ve gather it and look up in the quest entry, that the other item you need to gather is on the final map of the WEAST AREA!!!! Are you serious?!?! Look, can’t I just collect all quests from everyone and then just get over with it? There are MMOs that do this: when you take a quest, even before completion, three more quests then pop up. You can take as many as your menu can carry and then you don’t have to travel back and forth so many times!!!!

Oh, but the fun is just getting started; I haven’t even talked about the features of the game yet!!!

(Based on the popular video “A day in the life of a Turret”)

8:06 AM

Minima: Owned

goza: So what were you saying?

Minima: Oh, did you see Onegai My Melody yesterday? There was a huge plot twist regarding Baku.

goza: Is he still getting pwned by Kuromi?

Minima: Well, yes. I think he’s the comic relief, so-

goza: Lame. I was playing Sanrio Bubbles II. High score awesome.

Minima: Are you kidding me? Rescue Kuroppi pwns Sanrio Bubbles II.

goza: Rescue Kuroppi is Sanrio Bubble’s pet.

Minima: You are a pet! I think you’re more annoying every day.

goza: Good, my work here is done.

9:34 AM

Minima: Another loss. How boring…

goza: A strange minigame: the only way to win is not to move. How about a nice game of Sudoku?

Minima: OMG, sudoku’s for geeks.

11:00 AM

goza: You know who I ran into last day?

Minima: Who?

goza: The GM-Red.

Minima: OMG, I hate that guy. What a happy douche.

goza: Yeah, he was talking flowers. He is almost as bad as Artholus.

Minima: Where is Artholus? I haven’t seen him for a while.

goza: He was banned for spamming on the chat.

Minima: Oh, how sad.

goza: Not really.

12:22 PM

Minima: My basic cake is dry. Dammit.

goza: Mine too. Sometimes I wasn’t to tear the whole crafting system apart.

Minima: Did you see that girl that just passed us? Nice shoes on that one.

goza: Yes, I’d like to have her tailoring skills.

Minima: Hi fives!

1:41 PM

Minima: Did you see that? Someone is there. Tell them you see them.

Goza:  Why? I only see a big cloud.

Minima: It scares the hell out of people.

goza: ROFL. Ok. I see you.

Minima: Ask her if she’s AFK.

goza: Are you AFK? … She didn’t say anything…

Minima: Oh, really?!?!

goza: What should I say now?

Minima: …Come out, avi!

2:23 PM

goza: I’m frustrated!

Minima: About the last boss we had to run away from?

goza: No. I just tried to access my Sanrio blog. It said the website was blocked.

Minima: You didn’t see the memo? Blogs and forums are down for maintenance.

goza: WTF. I wanted to post my latest adventures on it.

Minima: I miss all my comments.

goza: This would never happen at Aeria Games.

3:09 PM

Minima: Shururushuru… shururushu-shushu-shushu…

Minima and goza: Shururushuru! Shururushu-shushu-shushu!

4:12 PM

GM-Red: Owned, lazy players! Dominated!

goza: Go take a walk, GM-Red!

Mininma: Get off me!

GM-Red Yeah, you guys like to take a good nap near the sea, eh? Pwned!

Minima: Oh yeah, wait till you get called to give another event.

GM-Red: What are you talking about?!

*everyone spans*

GM-Red: Oh no, this is so confusing! I’m sorry for everything, OMG!!!!

Minima: I’ll see you in another dream, GM-Red.

5:16 PM

OMG

Damm

Ow

Son of a Kitty!

What the game?!

Balls

NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO

6:20 PM

goza: Do you ever wonder what happens when our HP reaches zero?

Minima: What?

goza: You know, if we’ll ever wake up from being put to sleep.

Minima: Not this again.

goza: Will there really be… candy?

Minima: God, this day can’t get any worse.

goza: You had to open your big mouth. I wonder there will be candy.

Minima: Log out!

Taking a quick break to post this.

First of all, thnak you to all of thse who actually took the time, effort and necessary rain cells to read whatever I feel like writting about HKO. Now, as a critic I have a duty to take in consideration all of the comments, a.k.a., never look at them again and give absolutely no regard to however writes me back. But as myself, I really want to take the time to explain some things.

Just got passed Sanrio Harbor and I’m now in Floriapolis. I have been in two GM events and I promisse to write all about them. In response to some comments about me not being able to take it in the HKO universe I say, “Step aside, noob; this stuff won’t beat me.” Also, I neitehr own a Wii (god forbid!) and neither am I in WoW, because quite frankly, tehre’s better stuff out there and I find ridiculous the fact that I have to PAY every month to play a feekin’ game! I also don’t like Nintendo in general because it thinks far too highly of itself, catering to children and familes in general and contantly letting down old friend of sucessful franshises by just remaking the same games from the N64 games and renaming it (or in some cases NOT). I also blame Barrak Obama for not taking more iniciatives against BP…

I can keep rambling about other gaming/political issues, but getting back to subject: Is HKO a bad MMO? Not, certanly not. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s quite nice and dare I say much better than some other stuff I had to it through and play like… “that MMO that shall not be named”… It has a bundle of little features and I think this maybe the best crafting system I ever encountered, because it’s simple.

 Finally, I’ll address once for all the minigame aspect. What I ment to say is that a cult has been growing around them and those types of games have literally flooded the market. Now, when you go buy games the genres you’re most likely to encounter are FPSs and Family Fun minigames. That’s what I’m against. Gaming should not be a bunch of activities that make you feel tired and unfullfilled in the end. When you come down to it, Guitar Hero is a minigame, but at least when you’re done you feel like you’ve acomplished something (the same could be said for DDR), because at least you can show off to your friends at a party or throw in some lingo to into a conversation. In most wii minigames… Eh, I’ll let you bunch decide…

Now I’d like to end on a happy note by saying this: I write because I like to entertain. And finding things to make fun of about anything is always hard work. I do tend to write what comes to mind, but if you were at all entertained by knowing what happens when a 20 year old opinionated WOMAN (yes, so I like to play hard-core men’s games, so what?) decided to play an MMo entitles Hello Kitty Online.

 Have fun everyone.

PS: Working on getting an entry done for the blog competition. It’s going to be both incredebly original and a complete rip-off. Stay tuned.

Casual Gamers… No, I don’t have anything against them, personally; most of my female friends are casual gamers… insfact, onlyy two or three like to spends hours trying to clear a dungeon or get the best weapon in the game or write blogs about their poor, uninteresting lives…

But if there’s one thing that I will gladly blame them for was building a whole market around games that serve absolutely no purpose, also knows as mini-games. As a proper gamer, I have to say that I don’t mind “quick-time events” (QTEs) if they’re ocasionally a part of gameplay but when you make entire games out of correctly mashing set combiationof buttons or performing the same action over and over again, with variations and increase difficulty each time. Of course, I blame the Wii, because I always blame the Wii for everything that goes wrong in the gaming industry…

Where am I going with this? Glad you ask because I feel I cannot delay this any longer. HKO has minigames. Mind you, they’re not bad… wish Wii Sports Resort had at least the minimal amount of story that the HKO minigames have. But why minigames? Out of all things, why?!? Are you low on ideas? here’s one: how about in every end-map there’s a particular monster that you must defeat, but cannot be “put to sleep” like normal. Instead, you have to find a way to make it happy; wither by crafting a nice cup of chocolate milk or maybe by giving him a teddy bear. And for course, you find clues on what to do by talking to characters and figuring out the mystery. How’s that for a boss character?

But no, instead every so often, we have to play a minigame to finnish a quest and I only do this once, get the score needed and then run from them. I have to say, until now there was only one minigame that I liked and only because it beared a stricking similarity to Dance Dance Revolution. And then there’s the score. Good, grief, someone actually got more than 300000 points in a minigame?!?! Everyone hail the casual gamer greek!!!

Finally, after a couple of quests, I managed to get to the so-called “adventure area” where there are monsters. Yes, it will certainly be an adventure f I manage to figure this out… What part of this is supposed to be a monster? Oh, right, this is the HK universe, so I suppose cuddly sheet and friendly cactus are a menace… We can’t leave My Melody to fend off from a pack of hungry sheep by herself, now can we?

Now, I have to stop ere and mention something. To my knowladge, the only way to play this game is by mause control and I think there’s no control configuration. So this is the point where you’re going to realise how awfully broken, horrible and unresponsive the controls can be.

Ok, get this: you move around by left clocking where you want to go. Why don’t they use the keyboard directional pad, I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s because the maps are all 2-D. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a fierce 2-D fan, but when the cutely, fluffly menace that you’re trying to put to sleep with a stick and your personal character are covered out of sight by a giant cotton-candy cloud floating in the air, then you have some graphical problems!!!!

You preform actions by right clicking. That’s it. Item use? Right-click. Talk to character? Right-click. Gather resorces? Right-click. Tell Pochacco to go take a nice dip in the water after he has given you riduculus quests for the upteeth time? …You wished…

 Of course, all of this happen only when the controls FEEL like regestering your actions. And this always, ALWAYS happens against monsters. To attack, you right-click, obviously. By doing this you go near the monster and… well, suposely you start hitting it. That is when the game is in a good mood, because most of the times it just has your character move close enought to the monster until it sees you, starts attacking and no matter how many times you right-click, your character will not move an inch towards any sort of agressive stance. You are then left with two options: stand there, picking your nose, until all your HP drops to 0, or you can run away and progressively continue to right-click the monster until FINALLY the game gets the basic idea that you don’t actually want to give the cactus a nive big hug but rather hit it with a stick until it’s dead.

Dead, you say?!?! OMG, HKO is a game where you can kill cute little animals!!! What’s wrong eith the world?!?!

Well, apart from the internet culture, obesity several political-religious subjects, I’d say that HKO is preatty… weird. In a way that it’s totally safe and harmless. I really have to congratulate the people who designed the mechanics fo thsis game because to make an MMO where you dn’t actually kill anything is itself a preatty difficult concept to make. So no, you don’t kill anything, rather you put them to sleep by wacking them with a weapon, and I use the term loosely.

I quote from a HKO FAQ: “HKO is a Sanrio game, and therefore try to keep the atmosphere as peaceful, joyful, and non-violent as possible. This does not mean there will be absolutely no conflict or weaponry. HKO will not have traditional lethal weapons like swords or guns popular in other MMORPGs, but there will be plenty of non-lethal objects such as umbrellas, magic lollipops, etc. that will be used to clobber the forces of evil.” When did Sauron employ an army of sheep to take over middle earth?