My 3rd day ended, I had a lot of fun playing that day, I talked to less people than before, probably the “cool” hardcore fans are already in London and in Paris.

I’ll repeat: I am having fun, or else I wouldn’t be playing, again, I’m evil, that’s my job

Yet again, some grinding. But that time, it was much harder. The problem is a balancing act, I did all the quests I could find from the Harbor, I only took 7 crab claws from someone, everything else I grinded myself, and even there, I had problems killing the first mobs from Florapolis. I took all the quests from Florapolis, I purchased everything I could, but since I had no Florapolis reputation, I couldn’t purchase wands or clothes. This is why I wrote my previous post, where I was constantly getting killed.

I finally ended up that quest, it helped, but then, I was required to do spiders. I could kill 3 or maybe 4 spiders before having to wait 3 minutes for my health to return. Once I got that quest, I had new clothes everywhere.

Now I only have one quest to do, the princess quest, and I need to go to some high level place to do that one. I have nothing else to do, quest-wise.

Let me rephrase everyhting.

Balancing problems, meaning I need to do all quests to be able to hapazardly perform adequately, where some quests are incredibly easy, and other ones are over the top hard, but where I need to do them all.

Casualness problem. For me, Hello Kitty is the personification of casual gaming. I would’ve thought the game to allow leniency, to have so many things to do I could simply have fun, and not care whether I need to get something or something else. To me, it’s something I can give to a 5 year old and not have to explain anything, to be able to play with that kid, to guide and help that 5 year old, and help with chatting. On that game, you need all the hard core reflexes to be able to continue.

The idea is there, but again, it’s only the beta. And again, I’m having fun nonetheless.

I’m nearly level 9, and been trying to get Ivory Wood for the past 20 minutes. Having 4 quests to do , it was interesting that I was barely able to kill two or three Boars before they get me. Some problems with the game included the first time I went to South Dream Forest, I got immediately aggroed by a Boar, didn’t know what was happening and got killed in 5 seconds. I also got a nasty bout of game-server desynchronization, where a Boar was attacking be at least 1/4 screen from where I was sitting.

Since these foes aggro, it’s much less forgiving to position problems than simply not being able to click.

I am also left sitting alone for long bouts of time, as my energy goes back up. If I thought it was long in WoW, this is excruciatingly long, and since the food is relatively expensive at my level, I prefer to sit here waiting for my energy and health to renew than to spend all my money on temporary items.

To give you an idea, I had time to write all the previous paragraphs before my energy got back to its full state. That’s long!

Howdy people!

As usual, real life interfering, so I couldn’t really play yesterday. And I decided to update my hard disk on my Mac and install again Windoze so that I can play HKO (Yes, only for that !!! Well, that and I might play Warhammer if it’s still interesting after a few months. Age of Conan died drastically in a few months, so I’m not expecting much from Warhammer). Meaning a full reinstall of my Mac, a restore from the previous HDD, and so on. But now, my geekiness is showing, No Good Doctor Jones!

I was finally able to play a few more hours, meaning I finally reached Florapolis, and I got no more quests to do in the Harbor. Level 8 too!

What have I found? Well, the HKO staff are pretty friendly, and the programmers and designers are very hard at work correcting all the bugs of the game. While on the first day, the settings were still in Chinese, on the second day, the settings were correctly translated in English. A few texts are still showing in Chinese, but with the responsiveness of their team, I am certain everything will be fine very soon.

But now, I’m not paid (metaphorically) to only say nice things. Even if I enjoy the game enough to play hours, there are things that could be better, and this blog is all about that.

On the game itself, it is finally showing its true nature. Grinding, grinding, grinding and more grinding. Get 30 of these, get 10 of these, get 30 of these, show these to the other character, and repeat.

One player was constantly following me and “stealing” my trees (when there were many available). When I pointed it in normal chat, he could only mutter “lol”. Typical from some unsocialized kid.

But hey, I’m having a nice time so far, most people are friendly, the game in itself is cute (at least they got that right ) and fun to play. It’s a time hugger but I can stop whenever I want, as it’s really meant for kids to play a one hour, and then leave the game. As such, since I’m really busy, I almost fit that mould.

One first mention would be maybe the game is a little bit too balanced, as you are really expected to do all the quests before moving on to the next place. There’s no exploration, to be able to lose yourself and see the wonders of the world. Maybe I don’t want to do the Crab quest, as it’s freakishly long and the drop rate is abyssimal, well tough luck, I need to do it.

And a second dishonorable mention, this time about the lag. Because of the lag, hitting something that moves is a piece of luck, and sometimes moving from one map to the other will take an eternity, likewise when talking to NPCs. I know it will get better, but for now, it’s annoying.

Tomorrow evening, I might be able to play some more, hopefully But now, it’s nearly 2AM, time to hit the sack, especially since I have a full day of house cleanup tomorrow. Yay! *cheer*

O yasumi nassai, minna san!

Hey everyone, last night, after Sanrio’s Mea Culpa, I was able to play the game for a few hours. Here is my experience so far on the game.

We have a few characters available, and a few choices (and a few crashes) for skin color, hair (2 coloured mullets and one Tintin-like crew cut for the boys), and a few info to fill in. Then we are catapulted in a world, where if we speak to the proper character, we are told we can either go to the Harbor directly, or go through the tutorial.

I did the tutorial, and frankly, it’s very static. Some of the feature aren’t working either (like the character telling us we should see an icon for a shop, well there wasn’t an icon to be seen). Nothing a good beta cure can correct, though!

Then, we are sent to the Harbor, where we either explore, or start talking to one of the characters. Doing quests is interesting, they are the typical grinding stuff, where you will gain money, experience, reputation and special items. The quest page is complicated and unintuitive, but it gets the job done.

The game itself is cute… Okay, very cute… Okay, incredibly cute! It’s in pseudo 3D, and instead of relying on heavy 3D to render all elements, they did what most casual games are doing: beautifully rendered 2D scenery. I am only saddened I cannot change the resolution for the screen. And even if the options is there, the settings, as well as some other strings, are not translated from Chinese. Again, it’s a beta! Grain of salt required!

There have been a few skirmishes between a few people, some people where downright rude, but it was to be expected with more than a hundred people trying to do starting quests late at night. I feel almost relieved the game got too many people for their servers, I cannot imagine the freak show it would’ve been if everyone were to be able to connect!

But that are clearly exceptions, as people started to familiarize to the game, everyone tried to stay on friendly side… although it was funny to see so many old people, a “poor” 17 years old was feeling young while playing HKO! That was hilarious! In my 30s, I was in the high end of the curve, but not the highest end either.

I am sad I cannot play today, but I’ll play during the long week-end, that’s for sure!

On that, I need to go to sleep.

Fun!

I tell everyone I’m an old geezer, and now we’re starting a Geezers guild! We aren’t even connected to the game and I already have friends.

That’s what I call a cool group! Not people who want to bash on everything, people who want to have fun and make friends. Even if with the technical glitches, I find this promising.

Obviously, this is a “F.B.I.” (in French: Fausse Bonne Idée, or in English a False Good Idea):

To tell 10,000 dedicated Hello Kitty fans to pre-download everything, prepare everything in advance, make certain they are ready to play, and at a precise hour, tell them all to connect at once.

Seriously, I feel bad for the kids who stayed out late to try this out. For us the “old geezers”, it’s nothing, but for some, it meant asking permission to stay up late.

52 minutes and not able to connect as of yet.

At least, the parents are right for once: try out tomorrow, it should work.

Bonjour! Ce carnet est écrit principalement en anglais, mais n’hésitez pas à me répondre en français! Je vais peut-être passer complètement en français s’il y a une assez grande communauté francophone qui s’intéresse à mes balbutiements.

So far, what I have determined through the forums for the closed beta I need to enter my full e-mail address as login. That’s a start! It should’ve been better described, though… maybe as “full e-mail” instead of the generic “username”.

So it’s in slippers and sipping chamomille tea with lime blossom honey that I’m waiting to play a few minutes of this game. Being in Eastern Time, I won’t play that long, I need to work tomorrow, but I will at least start!

So I raise my cup to all you players who are waiting to play the game! Cheers!