Hey guys.  Sorry for the long delay of posts.  With work, my healing back (which has gotten better now), and the lack of much stuff going on on here, there hasn’t really been much to say.  But now, there is…

Remember when I  found out that I was chosen for being a Blogger of the Week (and “HKO” player) who also happens to be a guy?  (Here’s my post in case you didn’t. hehe)  Well I just found out that we now have another male blogger/player who has been recognized for his hard work:  azog of the Misfits guild.  ^_^  The announcement said that beisides his experiences on “HKO”, he also shared his life’s story with his readers as well as some funny stuff he found, like videos and anecdotes and stuff like that.  Compared to that description, my blog’s description seems to be kinda limited to “HKO” though it probably shouldn’t.  But I shouldn’t feel bad, right?  ^_^

Anyway, way to go, azog!  You da man!  ;)  *gives thumbs up*

Sorry for the delay on this installment. *sweatdrop*  With the problems going onto the Sanriotown website and me having a back pain that started a few days ago (owwww), along with me going to work for a few more days, I wasn’t able to get the next installment up until today.  No hard feelings, right?

But anyway,  like they say:  “On with the show!”

Previously on this blog, I was able to explain much of the stuff that had happened on the Happy Hearts Reunion up until the 17th, including the series of quests.  And I was about to say farewell to the event that night, until I found out the following:

  And to make it even more interesting, they’ve added another charitable event.  And what were we supposed to do this time?  Make T-shirts and bags for an orphanage.  And, like the Food for Friends event in the regular Open Beta event, this event awarded the winners with interviews in the game’s official website.

To my surprise, the members of Sailoria actually wanted me to be one of their reps.  I was sooo honored!  XD  But, sadly, I had to turn them done ’cause at the time I thought that I wasn’t gonna be on for the Reunion’s last few days, which would’ve definitely hurt the guild’s chances.  But thankfully, a nice group of reps was chosen:  Sailoria (the guild’s leader), KaseyZoey (KZ), deadrose, Tree, and shesroyaltee.

However, as it turned out, whatever plans I had at the time were cancelled ,and I was able to stay on for the last few days after all.  Although I was still a little down about not being a rep, I still did my very best to help out the guild.  And besides, there’s always the next guild event, right? ^_^

Later, the Sailoria guild decided to form an alliance with some of the smaller guilds like Twilight, the Twin Starrs, and the Vampire Kittens.  I thought about having the Pirate Guild to join us, but that guild declined the offer ’cause they didn’t want the competition to ruin their gaming experience.  I didn’t want to have them do something they didn’t want to do, so I just wished them the best of luck.

[I normally don’t like competition either.  But that doesn’t mean that I’m not still loyal to my guildies.]

I later found out that in order for the alliance to remain active for the event, all of its guilds had to forfeit their chances at winning the prize.  At first, I was kinda sad :_(, but I guess I understood why they did it.  After all, the only true winners of this event are the kids getting all of those T-shirts and bags.

During the event, I did several chores for the guild, mainly gathering sorosis and cotton and digging for clay and stone fragments.  I really had a problem getting the sorosis and cotton ’cause I had to deal with the infamous “Ghost Users” inhabiting the trees.

(Pardon my language.  I was just really ticked off at this problem.  And I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one.  Hopefully, this will be fixed.)

To make matters worse, the cotton trees usually didn’t de-evolve when I was done with them, so I didn’t know when they were ready for picking again.

But at least the sea rock and clay digging ran more smoothly. ^_^

While the event was going on, I noticed that the “process meters” for many of the different skills had changed.

However, I wasn’t able to see all of the skills’/process’ different meters or even if the “House Building” process meter changed as well.  Oh well.

To help pass the time (and to avoid dealing with the ear-piercing necklace sound effects  -.-), I turned off the sound and music of the game and played music from my iTunes collection, which mainly included JPOP/JROCK music and music from anime and movies as well as regular Pop/Rock/etc. music.  I even listened to the tracks for the “Hello Kitty:  Hello World” soundtrack (since it kinda fit the mood for the game hehe).

On the next to last day of the Reunion, serenitycat told me about a party that ripplecloud was having for the bloggers that were listed on her blog.  Despite having to do some work for the charity thing, I was able to squeeze in a visit to where Cupid was.  There I met my friends ripplecloud (obviously), serenitycat, tigerlyly, and Bi “face-to-face”.  serenitycat found out that that ripplecloud’s blog (now updated) actually listed Serenity (who was also present), but ripplecloud decided to let her in anyway since she started working on her blog too.  (I’m glad. ^_^)

While there, we took several photos of different poses.

Sorry that the names of the featured bloggers aren’t on these pictures.  Please check ripplecloud’s blog post for more info.  Also, please excuse the yellow area on the lower right of the picture.  With all of the bugs on Sanriotown happening lately, I decided to make a little collection of pictures this time.  Hope you don’t mind.  hehe

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend ripple’s final appearance at Hello Kitty’s house in London.  But I’m not upset ’cause I still got to appear at her party anyway. ^_^

Whenever the final moments arrived, I acted as a pack mule for the guild, delivering clay, sorosis, and other stuff to the guild’s reps.  To help pump myself up, I was playing the “Kingdom Hearts 2″  track “Vim and Vigor” over and over again on my iTunes while I was racing against time.

After I made the final deliveries, I joined my guildies and almost everyone else at a nice get together by the Farm guy  at London.

Then the Sailoria guild decided to meet inside Buckingham Palace for a nice photo op.

I definitely noticed us getting some more male members lately.  Guess the game’s success is spreading further than I thought.  hehe ^_^

Then the final meeting place of the game was at Paris.  So everyone was rushing to the City of Lights/Love/Romance one last time…

…to say “Goodbye.” (for real) to the game once again till the next beta.

However, the map was soooo crowded, just about everyone there suffered from really bad lags. T_T  Nevertheless, the goodbyes continued on, until…

[Notice the new “Disconnected from server.” window?]

Oh and by the way, everyone in the game created 61 shirts and 28 bags, which translated to 183 shirts and 84 bags in real life.  I’m sure those orphans will be really happy. X3  Good job, everyone!  XD

Well despite several kinks and glitches here and there, especially whenever the newbies came in (for the stress test), I think that the Happy Hearts event was still a success.  Hopefully, all of those kinks and everything will be fixed for the next beta.  And hopefully, there will be more stuff to actually do and buy later on, know what I mean?

And what the HKA (Hello Kitty Alliance) (with Sailoria and the other guilds in it) did during the charity thing should’ve taught us a lesson that can be described from a scene from one of my fave childhood cartoons:  “Muppet Babies”.

So I guess that’s it for now.  I hope that everybody enjoyed themselves in this event and are enjoying some well deserved time off (from the game that is).  Hope to see everyone again in the game’s next beta (whenever that will be *sweatdrop*)

So till then, catch ya’ll later! 

[The “The End…For Now” message was created at GlitterMaker.com.]

When we last left off of our story, I talked about some of the advances (pets, farms, etc.) and problems (rollbacks, a dead Item Mall, etc.) that I and just about every other player had encountered in the game.  Plus I actually started talking about the main quests for the Happy Hearts (Valentine’s) Reunion till I ran out of time.  *sweatdrop*  So now, let us continue our trip down memory lane…

As I said before,  unlike the Christmas Reunion, the Valentine’s quests were added on at different days.  And the character who let us know to when we’d have to wait till the next day for most of the quests to start was My Melody’s Grandma.

Of course, not all of the quests started with her.  Cupid also helped with the final quest.

Each series of quests awarded us with a different key.  And we needed to collect all 5 keys in order to qualify for the grand (real life) prize.  The problem is that while they said that the next quest would start at around 11:00 PM or 12:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time) the following night, they sometimes started at around 1:00 AM EST or so.  And, unfortunately for me, I live in the Eastern Time Zone.  *rubs eyes from lack of sleep* T_T

The quests ranged from making plushies, bouquets, and cards to collecting arrows, feathers, and hair for Cupid to pairing up Sanrio characters who were each looking for that “special someone”. X3

However, during the one where I had to give Cupid my bouquet, plushie, and card, I found myself going from London to Paris then back to London….then back to Paris.  T_T  That’s ’cause I thought that I needed to visit Melody’s Grandma to Paris to finish the quests, but when she didn’t have a check mark over her head (meaning that the quest is complete), then I thought that I had to visit Kitty’s Grandpa in London.  So I went from Paris to London to see him, only to find out he didn’t give out anything either. T_T  So after talking to my guildies, I learned that I actually had to go back to Paris to visit Cupid who was in the building to the left of Melody’s Grandparents. T_T  Thankfully, Cupid was caring and understanding.  ^_^

Then came the night of the final quest.   I found myself all the way at the Harbor picking oranges ’cause I thought I need to make a Chocolate fruit or something for the final quest.   Unfortunately, I found out that I actually had to pair people up instead.

AAAAAAAAAAHH!

So I had to race from the Harbor to Cupid’s pad in Paris even though I knew that I’d never be able to send in my entry in time to get the prize.  In a panic, I asked my guildies whom I was supposed to pair with who.  As it turned out, I had two pairings in Paris, two in London, and one all the way back at Florapolis.  T_T

However, when I got to the final pair in Florapolis, I found out that one character is looking for a girl with “red overalls with a little white flower in the middle of it”.

All of a sudden, I found myself smiling.  ^_^  Maybe ’cause I thought that outfit (the red overalls with the flower on it) sounded kinda cute.  Sorry if that sounded kinda odd.  *blushes* But sure enough, that girl with the red overalls with a flower on it was

Daisy!

And she wanted to be with a boy with red overalls too.  (No flower though. hehe)  Of course, that boy was Coro, who asked me to find Daisy.

Although I was happy that I had finally finished with the pairings and was ready to return to Cupid, I just heard some really terrible news:

Just as I feared, I started the final quest way too late. T_T  And I wasn’t gonna get the special prize.  T_T  Even if I sent in my picture with the 5 keys on it (which I did).

But on the bright side, I was able to finish all 5 quests in the series…

…and gained a lot of gold and even more surprisingly a lot of Friendship points….for Paris!

Nope, you’re not seeing things.  Many of the players have actually gained 5,000 Paris Friendship points for finishing these quests.  And I guess that’s still a pretty good consolation prize along with the big heap of money and the keys.  Although I’m not sure if the keys will be useful for anything….yet.  But I’m still gonna keep the keys just in case.

I’m sure that those points are gonna come pretty handy when the Open Beta (OB) starts.  Assuming we can finally buy more stuff from there (besides the stuff they offered us for those quests and the Reunion of course, like the glitter and the skill books. ^_^)

Oh yeah, I just remembered some other interesting things that happened along the way.

First of all, GM-Miyaw hosted a special screenshot gathering at London.  Although I still needed to finish one of the quest at the time, I still managed to check it out.  Lots of people were there, including some of my fellow guildies and other friends.  ^_^  Glad you guys can make it too.  ^_^

Speaking of friends, I’ve finally got to meet my blogging pal Bi ingame.  She couldn’t make the Christmas Reunion, but I’m glad she could make this reunion.

Also, Yin and I got to see a Hello Kitty (called “Haller Kitty” I think for some reason) wandering the streets of Paris during the events.

I didn’t know if she was lost (separated from her GM owner) or just wanted to see the sites on her own.  Either way, I thought that it was a “Kodak moment” (hence the screenshots).  And I bet Yin did too.  ^_^

Later, one of my guild friends decided to have us test out the “Follow” feature on our characters and some of us were able to link together to created our own “Love Train” (which I named after the classic song since it kinda related to Valentine’s Day)

‘Course the chain did get cut on occassion. *sweatdrop* But that’s ok.  ^_^

After I finished the quests, I decided to help out some of my friends build their houses, including Yin’s,

Ayu-chan’s,

and Carlos’s.

Although we (my guildies and I who helped) were only able to finish Carlos’ house.

But that’s still pretty good considering how much work had to be done and how few people there were to actually build the houses.  Good job, guys! ;)  *thumbs up*

Well, enough about that, let’s get on to one of the biggest events to the Reunion:  the arrival of new players.  ^_^

And came they did.  At around 8:00 PM EST on Feburary 14th (Valentine’s Day), which was also during those events I talked about earlier on here, new players from all over the word (excluding Europe sadly T_T), were finding themselves appearing at the dock of the Harbor.  And many of the HKO veterans (including myself and my friend Bi) were there to welcome them.

There were so many of them, there had been a really big lag at the Harbor later on.

Then came the supposed final night of the game: Tuesday, Feburary 17th.   Although I logged on pretty late (around 10:00 or 11:00 PM EST), I was ready to say goodbye the Reunion and to all of my “HKO” buddies at midnight that night.  Until….

WHAAAAAAAT?!  FIVE MORE DAYS?!!!  Sorry bout that.  hehe.  But as it turned out, the Reunion was so successful, the GMs decided to keep the game open for 5 more days.

To be honest, when I first heard this news, I was both happy and upset at the same time.  I was happy ’cause I get to play the game a little bit longer XD, but also upset ’cause I won’t be getting much sleep for a few more days. T_T

But I guess the GMs did it to not only give the newbies more time to enjoy the game (which I thought was really nice ^_^), but also to throw in one more special “charitable” challenge.

What is this challenge of which I speak?  Tune in next time to find out.

Catch ya later.

[The “To be continued…” sign is from “Star Trek Voyager” this time.]

[Also, Gandalf the Grey is from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in case you were wondering about that too. ^_^]

Hey guys.  Sorry for the LONG delay in posts.  I was playing the “HKO’s” Happy Hearts (Valentine’s Day) Event till it ended and then needed some time to recover and be allowed free time to post.  No hard feelings, right?

Well since lots of stuff happened (not to mentioned many screenshots taken by me to choose from), I figured that instead of making one REALLY long post, I probably should make 2 or 3 (if not more *sweatdrop*) smaller posts.  So here it goes.

So anyway,  on the first night of the event, I was able to log on and noticed the first change in the game:  A “Terms and Conditions” window that you must agree to in order to play the game (for obvious reasons of course).

Unfortunately,  I also discovered another thing:  my mask is still a stinkin’ beard.

I later found out that this was also happening to all of the other male player characters, including my friends Bry of Sailoria and Captain.Harlock of the Pirate Guild.  Hopefully, this problem will be fixed by the next beta.  Although many of us might wanna still be able to buy the beard in the Item Mall.  Speaking of which…

Yep, I’m afraid that the Item Mall was closed during this event.  T_T  I later found out that the items you get become “?” marks. Here are some that I stored in my inventory.

Another problem everyone had dealt with time and time again are the infamous “rollbacks” that took away lots of the stuff that we have worked so hard to get.  T_T I even logged out of the clay fields with clay only to log back into the copper fields WITHOUT the clay. T_T

Well anyway, I logged back the game, I was back in New York and found out that my farm is now empty with some rocky areas.

Apparently, you’d now have to pay deeds of different levels in order to plant more plants (also of different levels).  However, I was still afraid of the new rules that I didn’t bother getting an upgrade or do some farming of my own.  So instead, I just helped out some of my guildies’ farms (which is one good thing about these new rules ^_^).

Here I am at Sailoria’s farm.

And here I am at sofia’s helping her out.

And here’s deadrose’s farm.

Along the way, I’ve learned a few tricks about the farm.  Like fertilizing the areas that you are about to plant before you plant them.  And also to water them once every “day” or they won’t grow.  Speaking of farm “days”, here’s what you’ll be seeing when the next “day” comes:

A “New Day” logo?!  Can be pretty scary for all of us trapped in our farms.  hehe

On a brighter note (no pun intended), we finally discovered one really awesome addition to the game:   PETS!!!  X3

Yep, apparently, most of the monsters can now drop pet cards and you can now have your special friend.  I decided to “adopt” a fox ’cause it’s so cute!  (Not to mention it reminds me of Eevee of “Pokemon”.  See this previous post for more.)

In fact, I actually decided to name my fox “Eevee”.  And after a bit of thinking, I decided I make her (my fox) a girl since you can also call her “Eve” for short.  (I don’t think she would mind.  *giggles*)

I even saw a girl with a fierce spooky tree named “Oddish” (also a Pokemon).  And Captain.Harlock even considers capturing pet cards like catching Pokemon”.  (Gotta catch ‘em all!)

Oh yeah, we also got another thing added to the game:  SOUND!!!  That is, almost everything now has it’s own sound effect.  Although some are can be pretty annoying.  The necklace’s sound effect hurts my ears.  Ooooooh!

But anyway, sorry for the holdup,  back to the story.  Although the new quests began in London starting with CHOCOLAT:

Most of the quests did in fact begin in Paris.  Most of which headed by Melody’s dear grandma:

With a special appearance by the boy of the hour himself:

CUPID!!!!  <3 <3 <3

Unlike the previous reunion, all of the Happy Hearts events are introduced in the following days.

*Looks at his watch*  Woah!  Look at the time!  Sorry to leave you guys hangin’, but it looks we’re have to continue this another day.  So before I leave, I would like to visit the Pantheon in Paris to pray for a bit.  v.v

Till then catch ya later!

[The “To Be Continued…” logo is from the movie “Back to the Future” by the way.]