{"id":840,"date":"2018-03-01T07:07:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T07:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kittyblog.asinglelion.com\/?p=840"},"modified":"2018-03-01T07:07:25","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T07:07:25","slug":"an-eulogy-for-hello-kitty-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asinglelion.com\/kittyblog\/?p=840","title":{"rendered":"An Eulogy For Hello Kitty Online"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

My Avatar<\/p><\/div>\n

Good Bye HKO<\/p>\n

2009-2018<\/p>\n

The last time I was able to log on to Hello Kitty On line was August 2017. All attempts to contact Sanrio Digital to get a status on Hello Kitty Online remains unanswered; therefore, I must conclude the rumors are true that Hello Kitty Online has ended and the servers taken down.<\/p>\n

My own adventure started with the Beta on 2008 and the Founders Beta.\u00a0 While Sanrio aimed the game at young female demographic, I could not help noticing the positive reviews and interest from male gamers.\u00a0 The game had potential to be a hit.\u00a0 I believe Sanrio mismanaged the distribution and promotion of Hello Kitty Online and squandered an opportunity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, what went wrong? First was the crack up after the betas.\u00a0 One selling point was the international flavor of the game that one could play with players around the world but Sanrio Digital did not see it this way. Their strategy was to break up the game it regional servers.\u00a0 Some like Indonesia released the partially finished game while North America under Aeria Games delayed release.\u00a0 After dragging their feet, Aeria Games released the game on in the falloff 2009, just in time for Hello Kitty\u2019s birthday.\u00a0 Aeria Games was not a good fit for HKO. Their demographic was more towards young male gamers. In addition, Hello Kitty Online players experienced trolling and harassment by other Aeria users.\u00a0 Rumor control had it that there was conflict between the Game companies and\u00a0\u00a0 Sanrio Digital over release schedules, and who was responsible for promotions and updates for the game.\u00a0 Sanrio Digital announced they were transitioning the game back to Sanrio Digital in Jun 2010.<\/p>\n

This led to the second major issue: The Patch of Doom. The new patch, released in March 2010, transitioned the game back to Sanrio Digital, also had changed the mechanics of the game, making the monsters harder to knock out and remove some popular rewards.<\/p>\n

Another issue was the undeveloped game areas such as the social networking, and guilds. Many players burned though the game, and then got bored when there was not much to do after the main quest.\u00a0\u00a0 New quest features like seed quest were buggy.\u00a0 Sanrio Digital announced a DVD version of the game in 2010 but due to delays, the game missed the crucial Christmas sales. By the time it came out, a new threat casual PC gaming, in my opinion, came in the way of console gamming.<\/p>\n

From 2010 this began to languish. The Sanrio promised release of the Tokyo city quest, while players can see it on the world map, was never released. Instead, we \u00a0gotten a stripped down\u00a0 New York quest.\u00a0 In 2011 there was\u00a0 the Holiday\u00a0 blowout where\u00a0 participants receives $100 in Sanrio \u00a0Cash. This was\u00a0 a sign to me\u00a0 that the game was over; \u00a0you do not just give away $100 of product. \u00a0The final quest was the Valentines Quest the following year.\u00a0 Following \u00a0the Valentine\u2019s event, things \u00a0slow down . Users left the game and eventually the Game Masters where not active on HKO.\u00a0 The game eventually became like a ghost town but everything was still working.\u00a0 A huge\u00a0 hit was the 2016 hacking incident where many Hello Kitty Town and HKO accounts\u00a0 wee compromised. The fix disabled\u00a0 the\u00a0 item mall feature of Hello Kitty Online. The last time I was able\u00a0 to\u00a0 log in was around August 2017. At least I was able to\u00a0 take one more thing off my bucket list by\u00a0 replacing \u00a0my starter house on the farm.<\/p>\n

Hello Kitty Online today<\/p>\n

While as I sad before the game had potential, but was squandered \u00a0by mismanagement\u00a0 by Sanrio Digital, Hello Kitty Online \u00a0still lives in elements\u00a0 of \u00a0various\u00a0 mobile games. \u00a0For example, Hello Kitty Blocks, a connect three game uses the music, furniture, and housing \u00a0system from\u00a0 Hello Kitty online. \u00a0Hello Kitty Food town, a restaurant game, uses a strip down farming system from HKO to grow food for recipes for the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

So let me end with a short wake for HKO. Let us lift up or glasses and remember it was fun when it lasted. I also like to give shout out to my former Sailor Scouts Guild members.<\/p>\n\n\t\t