2008 News

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December

As the New Year draws near, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continuous support of Hello Kitty Online! So for you we have prepared a small gift - Hello Kitty’s Countdown video. If you are going to count down at home with families and friends, let’s do it with Hello Kitty too!

The loyalty points available during the Christmas Reunion were given only so that our Founders could experience the Item Mall early. Because of that, unused loyalty points will be erased in Open Beta. However, the items that our players have purchased from the Item Mall may be retained, so please stay tuned for further announcements.

As of December 22, 2008 at 23:59 EST, the Hello Kitty Online Founders’ Christmas Reunion has officially ended. The servers are now closed and our players will no longer be able to log in to the game.

As many of you know, pests have now been enabled in our farm system. However, problems with the pesticide prevent them from effectively getting rid of the pests. We would like to assure our players that we are aware of the problem and are working on a quick fix for it.

Designer Depot (Shirt Version)
Ever wanted to leave your mark on a persistent game world? You walk around the game world and say "Hey, I did that!" Now is your chance! Now, now... this event is for the guilds. So, if you're not in one, band up with a couple of guildless adventure because this sure is worth it!

Designer Depot (Hat Version)
You have less than 24 hours to come up with ideas for a design for your own guild hat!

Important Notice Regarding Designer Depot
First of all, thank you to everyone who has shown interest in our latest event Designer Depot, where guilds can design their own hats and shirts, and have them as in-game items for the price of in-game cash. We do not require our guilds to submit any specific designs yet, the colors of your design, including outlines, count as colors that you will have to pay for, do not use any Sanrio characters in your design, or any other copyrighted characters, you may not use obscene/offensive language and images and avoid small fonts and complicated designs.

The hour has come! Hello Kitty Online has now officially opened its doors once more to all its Founders! If you are one of our tens of thousands of players who have been confirmed as Founders, you may now log-in to the game and enjoy the special Christmas quests, maps and all the new features and enhancements!

Having a Few Server Hiccups The very high number of simultaneous logins is currently causing us some problems with the server. Please note that we are doing everything we can to bring the server back online. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused, and we thank you for your patience.

So, do you have your eyes on any of the giveaways for Christmas Reunion? Just want something to remember this special gathering by? If you're a Founder just raring to join in the fun of this Christmas event, then this event is for you! Be one of the first to finish our main quest and you will receive the Christmas-themed Sanrio products!

The upcoming Founders’ Christmas Reunion is not just a chance to celebrate the season with friends, but also a great opportunity for you to test out two key new features in Hello Kitty Online: the Game Profile Page and the Item Mall. Please note that these features will only be open once the Founders’ Christmas Reunion is launched.

Founders' Christmas Reunion Gift Giveaways!
‘Tis the season of giving and we here at HKO are feeling even more generous than usual. Christmas seems to be lost forever… unless you, the brave traveler from another land, snatch it from the jaws of hopelessness and return it to the people. The first five of the quickest, wittiest and (most of all) bravest adventurers to put Christmas back on track will be rewarded with Christmas cheer and of course, loot.

Updates for your game client will be available starting on December 15th 22:00 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST US Time Zone), 2008. All you need to do is start your game client and wait for the auto-update to complete, it will take a bit of time as it’s a big one.

As promised, we would like to share these scanned images of the receipts issued last November 27, 2008 for the donations which you helped to raise during our in-game charity event Food for Friends.

To show our appreciation for a successful Founders’ Beta, we would like to invite all our Founders to an exclusive special event for this holiday season! From December 17 until December 22, 2008, we will be having our Founders’ Christmas Reunion, where players can meet up once more before Open Beta to celebrate the last party of the year in Sanrio Land!

The dust has finally settled and, surprisingly, FOUR survivors have emerged! What? Four? I thought there would only be THREE winners for Frightspinners?! Fate, it seems, has thrown us a curve ball. Here are the results.

November

Okay, weavers of plight and scaremongers! The HKO team needs your support once again: We have chosen ten finalists for Frightspinners and it’s up to you to determine the top 3! Voting ends on November 24, 2008 23:59 EST.

Food For Friends was a little experiment we concocted as a new format for events held in MMORPGs. We wanted to channel the in-game efforts of players into something real that would impact others in a positive way. For those of you who missed it, the basic idea was to craft and a number of food items and hand them in to a GM. Sanrio Digital then made a donation to charity, the amount of which was determined by the total number of crafted food items submitted by players. The event was a resounding success, with Sanrio Digital donating USD 12,000 to Unicef and the Asian Youth Orchestra!

Now, it’s time to announce the biggest givers in our very special charity event! We know that many of you already know what the standings are, but we would like to formally recognize our top 4 guilds, and all guilds who have worked hard to contribute to this cause.

People rushing to complete quests, the competitive relationships of the guilds, constant patching to improve the game, and the multiple events made for one heck of a month! But the best thing that this month brought us are the new friendships that we formed and priceless memories have been made from spending time with each other. We will be having SOMETHING before Open Beta so it’d be awesome if you guys KEEP THE CLIENT!

Whatever could it be?! It’s not a riddle, but it boggles you like one. It’s not a quiz, but it will leave you stumped. It’s an enigma, a mystery, a quandary, an uncertainty, and quite a melon-scratcher that’s highly resistant to all prognostications. Heck, even the GMs are befuddled! All they know is to convene in Sanrio Harbor on November 8, 2008 around 10 PM EST.

Hello Kitty Online players raise over 12,000 USD for UNICEF and AYO
In a wonderful statement to the entire gaming world, the players of Hello Kitty Online show what they’re made of, by pulling together their time and resources for a good cause. Through the in-game charity event "Food for Friends" held from November 3-6, 2008, our players contributed a total of 344,965 different food items from registered guilds, and an additional 894 items from some who just wanted to help! As promised, Sanrio Digital will be donating over 12,000 USD to UNICEF and the Asian Youth Orchestra.

Food for Friends Results: Total Item Count
During the last collection period for our in-game charity event "Food for Friends", we experienced the biggest donation effort by our guilds in the entire event! As you all know, our charity event is now over, and it’s right about time for us to show some results.

Founders' Finale: Blog for Thought
Everyone loooooves a good yarn spinning; be it little kids or those who are a little… seasoned or anyone else in between. Heck, if animals talked, they’d be sharing stories with each other too. Blog for Thought, is a simple affair: write a blog entry in your SanrioTown.com blog about the Founders' Beta. It could be about anything, really, as long as it’s in the context of HKO.

Founders' Finale: A Day With Hello Kitty and Friends
Hello Kitty Online has been an inspiration to all of us GMs and developers. Now we want HKO to inspire YOU to produce some great art.

As the game winds down and officially closes at midnight EST on November 8, 2008, the time has come for the last, the greatest, the best event yet: the Founders’ Finale! We’re making the countdown to the end of this Founders’ Beta a lot of fun, and we’ll be giving away real diamond pendants generously provided by MBLife, so join any (or all!) of the contests in the Founders’ Finale for a chance to win!

Founders' Finale: Crop Circles
As far as events go, this is pretty simple: Design your piece of farmland using crops. You guys could lay out wacky designs or whatever you think will make us go “oooh” and “ahhhh”.

Founders' Finale: Body Doubles
Think of this as taking cosplaying to the next level. Essentially, we want you to send in a picture of you, the player, looking like your in-game-avatar. Upload a picture of you side-by-side with an image of your avatar. The more similarity there is between the two, the greater your chances of winning.

Food for Friends Results: Part 4
Here are your results for today! As you’ll see, things have changed quite significantly since our last results post. And by that we mean a lot more numbers, and a lot of our guilds are still working hard to make HKO history! Please note that these numbers reflect only the total number of items contributed by each guild.

Here are the new results for the charity event "Food for Friends"! Again, we sincerely thank everyone who has spent time gathering and making food. Whatever the amount given, we thank you all the same!

Build New York: Guild Build Winners
Once again, all of us here would like to congratulate not only the guilds that won but also those that participated in this frenetic event! Kudos to one and all!

As much as we enjoy spending time with our players, the Hello Kitty Online Founders’ Beta must draw to a close in order to make way for many improvements for Open Beta. So as mentioned in our last news post, Founders’ Beta will end on November 8, 2008 at 23:59 (midnight) Eastern Standard Time.

Food for Friends Results: Part 2
Just when we thought that the collections for Day 1 were unmatchable, you all continue to amaze us with their generosity! We'e pleased to announce that as of the first collection period of Day 2, our guilds have contributed a total of 99,972 food items!

Build New York: Mystery Items!
Here are the mystery items that you need to collect NOW (it is around 8.40 pm EST at the moment). In 1.2 hours, (approx. 10pm EST), One guild representative will head over to Neverender's farm to exchange these for New York house certificates.

GM Event: GM Piñata!
Always wanted to thwack a GM and get away with it? Now's your chance to do it! On November 5, 2008 at around 9:00 pm EST all the GMs will localize themselves in one of the major towns (just wait for an announcement as to where exactly) and they will wait to be mobbed by raving HKO fanatics.

Instead of having the Guild Build today, we will instead announce the needed materials to build these New York icons. Remember, the rules for the Guild Build still stand.

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.

Food for Friends Results: Part 1
At the kick-off of our in-game charity event "Food for Friends", our Hello Kitty Online Founders have already shown us just how much time and effort they are willing to spend on helping those in need! The numbers so far are heartwarming, because in only 2 hours, our GMs were able to collect a total of 49,968 food items!

October

Hello Kitty turns 34 on November 1, 2008. To celebrate the occasion, Sanrio Digital today announced a birthday party for Hello Kitty that will be held inside Hello Kitty Online, the eagerly anticipated MMORPG. The celebration begins on Saturday November 1st, and will include a birthday party lasting through the week-end, a week-long series of in-game quests and events, and a charity event that lets players convert effort they spend inside the game into real cash donations to charity.

Happy Birthday Hello Kitty!
Tick tock goes the clock. For whom the birthday bell tolls? No one but Hello Kitty of course! Get the chance to celebrate the world’s biggest pop-culture icon’s birthday. Awesome… but there’s one caveat: the cake that was supposed to be used for her birthday has gone missing! You have already prevented a hunger strike, wrangled monsters to submission and now, you must heed the call of duty one last time, albeit a rather sweet one.

At 09:15 HKT, the server was taken down for maintenance and for patch updates. Players will have to restart their Hello Kitty Online game client in order for the Autoupdater to run. The server is now back up as of 10:20 HKT, and players may now log-in to the game.

Monster Wrangler!
It's time for the second major event in Hello Kitty Online's Founders' Beta. Hunger Strike asked you to collect yummy, and somewhat hard to get delicacies. Monster Wrangler requires players to start hunting renegade pets in exchange for fame, fortune and… items.

Be Nice, Guys is all about… well, being nice! If you’re nice enough, new players might actually be able to help grizzled HKO veterans.

Critical fixes were made through the update for October 21 2008, solving some important server and network issues.

Frightspinners!
As you may know, HKO just doesn’t just revolve around the game, but it also involves Sanriotown.com which is choc full of neat features that encourage User-Created Content. For this event, we will make use of Sanriotown.com’s Dream Studio. Frightspinners will require players to make a short video using screenshots taken in-game.

There is a new download manager available at the Hello Kitty Online Download Center!

Hunger Strike! (IS EXTENDED!)
Hello Kitty Online’s first official, big-time event for Founders’ Beta is now upon us! Hunger Strike introduces us to Pochi who has found himself in such a… "healthy" predicament, and it’s up to you to help him out!

Today’s update fixes some translation problems and makes some functional tweaks to the game, please feel free to test these updates.

Founders will build New York!
Hello Kitty Online is proud to announce its largest in-game event yet: the building of New York City! Starting October 17, 2008, players of the Hello Kitty Online Founders’ Beta will be able to participate in a series of quests to collect and organize materials for the building of New York, a new area that will appear in the next phase of the game.

The latest patch, effective from October 14, fixes some language problems and addresses game balance issues. The overly tough requirements to set up a Guild have been reduced, and the prices of goods derived from farms and crafting should now allow players to make more money.

Thank you for bearing with us as we worked on a fix for the HKO Installer problem we had in the past. But now we are glad to announce that the HKO Installer is back up on the HKO Download Center!

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!

HKO Founders’ Beta Officially Launched!
We are pleased to announce that the much-awaited Founders’ Beta has officially launched, and hundreds of players are already experiencing what this stage in Hello Kitty Online has to offer. Only a few hours into the game, and already the players were swarming in!

Server Issues Fixed!
As of October 10, 2008 at 15:15 HKT, the server log-in problem has officially been resolved. Everything’s back to normal now, folks! That means all our Founders should now be able to log-in and enjoy the game.

Founders' Beta Events Rundown
"Hunger Strike" will introduce players to an innocent person trapped in afrom a fruity predicament. "Monster Wrangler" will make players search far and wide for lost friends and will test the Founders' mettle. Lastly, what better way to end Founders' Beta than with the Birthday of Hello Kitty herself? Huzzah! Hold on to your hats for smaller events such as "They Said What?" and "Farm Design" to keep you hooked well until the end of this season. Hold fast and true, people for Founders' Beta is upon us.

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 we’re doing our best to fix the issue soonest, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused to our Founders.

Installer issues, Top Cats are working on it
We’ve received reports of some users having trouble with the HKO Installer (Download Manager). Top Cats are scrambling to reproduce the problems reported by our users and come up with a fix. Please bear with us whilst they are busy in the labs.

Update on the Server Issues
If you are one of our Founders, you should now be able to log-in to Hello Kitty Online. However, we are still investigating, running more tests and working on upgrades in order to fully fix the problem. While issues like this are not uncommon to Beta stages, we are still doing our best to make everything as enjoyable as possible for all of you. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

If you’ve been having trouble downloading the Hello Kitty Online Founders’ Beta client via Torrent, worry not! As promised, we bring you the HKO Installer, through which you can easily download and install the game while enjoying a interactive Flash tutorial that we’ve made specially for you! We also have detailed instructions there if you should need them, so head on over to the Hello Kitty Online Download Center now!

The Hello Kitty Online client is now up for download on the official HKO Download Center! Just follow the instructions there, and you will be one step closer to joining the fun in the HKO Founders’ Beta! The doors of Sanrio Land will open on October 8, 2008 at exactly 22:00 US Eastern Standard Time (Oct 9 - 10:00 in Hong Kong Time), so start downloading now!

To all our HKO Founders who have been patiently waiting, here’s the date to watch out for! The instructions on downloading the game client will be posted on October 6, 2008! Don’t miss it!

September

When we said we would do our best to make room for more founders, we meant it! Now, Sanrio Digital has once again tied-up with the popular gaming portal MMOSite.com to bring you this special Founders’ Beta Account Giveaway event!

Here comes another exclusive interview, this time from the popular game website Gamers Daily News! In it you’ll find fresh information on the concepts behind the game, so check it out by clicking this link!

If you’ve been eager to learn more about the future of Hello Kitty Online, then we’ve got a treat for you! The popular game website Ten Ton Hamster has posted yet another exclusive interview on their site, this time with HKO Community Manager Abigail Reyes. Click here to read it!

A special announcement for all aspiring Founders: the response to the call for the Hello Kitty Online Founders’ Beta has been overwhelming, and as of right now all Founders’ Beta slots have been filled. We were so impressed by the response (and the impassioned pleas for acceptance) that we are working hard to increase the quota of Founders, so if you haven’t applied yet, do so now!

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!

Here it is, through our very own Dream Studio, the Hello Kitty Online trailer that fueled a massive response from gamers and bloggers around the world!

The hype for Hello Kitty Online is still up, and now MMORPG.com posted the new HKO trailer on their site! The trailer showcases the major features of the game.

August

We know how excited many of you are about the next phase of Hello Kitty Online, so now we’re releasing some previews of what’s in store for all our players in Open Beta. Without further ado, here are some screenshots of one of our new maps — London!

Good news to our bloggers! SanrioTown has just launched something special for our HKO players and fans — a Hello Kitty Online blog theme!

The community has spoken! In the current poll on the gaming community TenTonHamster, users are asked to vote on the question “Which Game are You Most Looking Forward to Coming Out in 2008?” Among 4 other games, Hello Kitty Online stands out with a whopping 54% of votes!

July

TenTonHamster, a popular gaming community aimed at younger players, has a few exclusive Hello Kitty Online articles that we’re sure many of you will be interested in. Click here to read LadyLotus' experience during Closed Beta and here for an interview with the Managing Game Master.

It’s inevitable! The hype for Hello Kitty Online extends beyond SanrioTown, as the game earns a hype level of 7.08 out of 10 on the hugely popular game community MMORPG.com.

Hello Kitty Online is once again featured on MMOSite, this time in the form of an interview with Managing Game Master Ali Aslanbaigi. The interview gives players and readers another inside look into the gameplay and goals of HKO, especially for Open Beta. Click here to read it.

The HKO Trailer Contest has ended and the winners have been announced! Thank you so much to all who have participated! More contests will be coming your way soon, so make sure you sign up for a SanrioTown Account to receive our newsletter for more exciting events and contests!

Just a little treat for all our HKO fans, especially those who love XO! Now aside from showing Badtz-Maru, there’s also one particular monster shown there that will be in HKO also as a pet! Check that out in the video, and while you’re at it you can leave a comment on it through Dream Studio.

The Sailor Scouts Guild had been up for a while in Closed Beta, but during those last parts, this guild showed us exactly the kind of community that we were going for in the game. The guild of 12 rose to a mighty 40 in a day. But it wasn’t for fame or popularity, it was for the sake of helping others.

SanrioTown is home to a lot of really skilled gamers. If you check out our flash game center, you’ll see some crazy high scores! Our CB testers got a taste of the mingames in HKO, which was one of the ways our players got to show their competitive side. While we got some good feedback for them, those were just a taste of what’s to come! Having said that, we’d like to give you another sneak peek by showing you some added titles to our minigames!

Great news! Hello Kitty Online received an excellent review from players on duowan.com! Duowan is a well-known game site based in China, and it’s a popular place for gamers to get together and talk about games. In the site, HKO earned 2,222 votes from Duowan members, and what’s more, it got a rating of 3.5 out of 4 stars!

June

For all those who have been wondering, “Hompy” is the term we use for the interior of the house. The Hompy System, as our Closed Beta testers have experienced, is the system that allows you to decorate the interior of your house.

You might remember a previous post where mouth-watering images of upcoming pets (for OB), farm and avatar designs were shown. Yes, yes I know they’re amazing. This time, how about I show you guys 3D versions?

It’s time for more contest entries! We’re well into the competition, and the number of entries continues to rise. Right now, we’d like to feature two great contest entries.

Most if not all of our Closed Beta testers experienced having pets of their own. And with the Monster Hunter event that happened during CB, there were even more pets introduced in the game. So here’s an exclusive preview of two other monsters that will be out in future versions.

The Hello Kitty Online Closed Beta is now over. We’d like to thank all of our testers, old and new, who’ve sent in their comments, suggestions and bug reports. From the early days in April, until midnight last night, you’ve all helped make the Closed Beta a wonderful success!

May

It’s time to announce the winners of the Closed Beta events "Monster Hunter" and "Farm Expert"! Note that all winners were chosen from participants through a lucky draw, and results are final.

We’d like to announce that we are no longer giving out accounts to our Closed Beta subscribers who have sent requests after 26 May 2008, 23:59. Also, the CB Account Giveaway event on MMOSite officially ended at 09:00 yesterday. To everyone who got into the Closed Beta, have fun playing!

Event: Lucky Seven!
It’s time for another in-game event, the last chance for all of our Closed Beta testers to get in-game items in HKO Open Beta and commercial release!
Start: 29 May 2008 HKT 00:00 (Thur)
End: 1 June 2008 HKT 23:59 (Sun)

As the event announcement stated, as of 23:59 yesterday the events Monster Hunter and Farm Expert are now over, and we will no longer be accepting submissions to these events. We will be announcing the winners on the 31st of May 2008.

Due to the large number of requests we’ve received in-game, in the forums and through email, we’ve decided to give the HKO CB one last week. The Closed Beta will be extended officially until the 1st of June, 2008 at 23:59 HKT!

If any of you have experienced problems logging in yesterday at around 20:50 HKT, please note that as of 22:45 HKT yesterday (May 20, 2008), the server has been back up and running smoothly.

Rewards for our Closed Beta Testers!
As the end of Closed Beta draws near, we want to show you our appreciation for all the time you have spent playing Hello Kitty Online! If you are one of our dedicated players, we want to make sure that your time and effort does not go to waste when Open Beta starts.

We’ve uploaded some tutorial videos to walk our players through all the systems of the game. You can find all of those videos on the Hello Kitty Online official tutorial page.

Event: Calling All Hunters and Farmers! Great news for all our Closed Beta testers! Due to public demand, we are extending the CB period until the 1st of June 2008, that means you will have several days more to complete your quests, talk to your in-game friends, work on your farms and build your houses! All the Sanrio characters really appreciate your participation and support. So before the end of CB, we have arranged a special event for all of you, starting May 22, 2008!

Even in this early stage of the Hello Kitty Online contest, we are receiving a number of creative, inspired videos from our members. So now we want to feature some of those great entries that are already becoming popular on Dream Studio!

Hello Kitty Online on MMOSite
Hello Kitty Online is quickly increasing in popularity in the MMO scene, and we want to give even more gamers an opportunity to enter the game at this early stage. We are happy to announce that Sanrio Digital has tied-up with the popular game community MMOSite as HKO enters Closed Beta 2!

HKO CB Extension Launched Successfully We are pleased to announce to all of you the success of Hello Kitty Online Closed Beta 2! The game is now running on a new server, and there are many new players that you will see in the game. We hope you will all enjoy the CB extension, and we hope that all our old CB testers can help out our new players as they find their way through Sanrio Land.

Hi everyone! We are pleased to announce that as of 12 May 2008 at 16:30, the server issues have been resolved, and the server has been running smoothly since. All our players should be able to log-in to the game with no problems, so we hope to see you all in Sanrio Land.

We are currently experiencing some technical difficulties with the server, so some of you may not be able to log-in to the game. We appreciate those who have sent in reports in this regard, and please know that we are working hard to address this problem. Rest assured that it will be resolved soon.

In order to serve all of you better, we will be having a major system upgrade and migration on May 11, 2008 00:00 - 03:00 Hong Kong Time. Please note that you may experience gameplay delay or even may not able to run the game during this maintenance window.

April

If you are experiencing any difficulties with the client’s auto updater, we have provided you with direct-download links on the official site. These files should fix the auto updater problems reported to us by some of our Closed Beta testers.

As there are some factors in shipping that are beyond our control, we hope you could all bear with these unforeseen circumstances. Rest assured that we want all our Closed Beta testers to experience the game and get the guides in our packages, so please give it until Thursday (24 April 2008).

Hello Kitty Online Closed Beta has begun!
Welcome to Sanrio Land! Finally, our closed beta testers can now start playing Hello Kitty Online! Only hours into the start of the closed beta, we have testers chatting, farming, playing minigames, doing quests and just enjoying the game.

Hello Kitty Online Closed Beta Package Concerns
Some testers have raised concerns regarding the type of Hello Kitty Online package they received. A small number of you have received special Closed Beta packages that looked different and contained more items than the standard package. We would like to clear up this issue and apologize for any misunderstanding.

Good news for all our Closed Beta testers! We know you’re all excited to receive your packages, and so we’re pleased to announce that your packages have been sent, and you should be receiving them very soon.

HKO Official Closed Beta start on 23 April
Now that all our testers have been selected and all their game packages have been sent, we are proud to announce that the Hello Kitty Online Closed Beta will officially be starting on 23 April 2008 at exactly 00:00 Hong Kong Time.

We know that you’re all excited to receive the Closed Beta package, and we realized just how much as we were going through the forums. But as we are still rounding up all the delivery addresses of our Closed Beta Testers, we have not sent out the HKO game packages yet.

We’d like to make special mention of Joystiq’s sister site WoW Insider, for featuring Hello Kitty Online in their site for April Fools. They’ve converted it to Hello Kitty Insider for a day, and it came as a shock to many people, and that’s the stuff of great April Fools pranks!

Island Adventure will be the first expansion pack in gaming history that will reduce rather than expand an existing game world. The premise is the crash-landing (without casualties) on a mysterious island in the South Pacific of Hello Kitty Air flight 337, which had been carrying Hello Kitty and friends to the 5th Cuteness World Symposium in Perth, Australia.

March

1. DO NOT give your personal information to any email other than “onlinegame{at}hellokitty.com”.
2. For our chosen closed beta testers, please be assured that we will keep your information confidential, and will not share it with any other party.
3. Your emails are safe from spambots.

It was a tough call to make, but after weeks of screening, we finally have our selected closed beta testers from the many many users who have submitted applications in Dream Studio.

Thank you for your enthusiasm for the Hello Kitty Online closed beta! We’ve received hundreds of applications on Dream Studio, and are currently in the process of selecting those who will be getting the closed beta accounts.

We are proud to announce that Sanrio Digital will be working with our European partner Burda:IC to bring you HKO in 6 European Languages including German, French, Italian, Turkish and Spanish.

We have gotten applications of all sorts in Dream Studio. Our subscribers have used possibly every imaginable reason why they should be picked as beta testers, and so we’d like to feature that diversity a bit more.

As we all know, there’s been a lot of activity all around SanrioTown regarding the closed beta applications, especially on Dream Studio. But the buzz isn’t limited to SanrioTown.

February

As we go through your application videos, we are really entertained by what we see. Some of our aspiring testers have sent in some really complex videos, but we have to give special mention to some videos — some that are simple at first glance, but are really special in how they were made. We have two videos here that make use of very simple scribbles, but we’re sure you’ll enjoy them!

Today we have a treat for all of you, as we’ve added a new section to the official game site — a section full of HKO artwork! Note: the website featuring the artwork is no longer available.

We got a lot of feedback from our valued subscribers base that the recent email sent to them in effect penalizes people who are long time contributors to our community but do not necessarily have the creative ability to generate eye-catching videos. We will be making extra room for our loyal SanrioTown users and we assure you that the existing applications and video entries will not be affected.

Creative closed beta applications
Over the weekend alone, there have been so many great applications for Hello Kitty Online closed beta in Dream Studio. The response to our call has been overwhelming, and because of that I’d like to feature some of our very interesting videos.

As much as we would like to accommodate all our subscribers, there are only a limited number of accounts to give out. We would like to pick best people to test the game, so this is your chance to tell us why you should be one of the chosen applicants.

The subscription period for Hello Kitty Online closed beta testing has now ended. We’d like to thank everyone for their support and enthusiasm for HKO, and expect that those selected testers will have a great time ahead!

The HKO Closed Beta Application will be discontinued on 22 February at exactly 00:00 Hong Kong Time (or 21 February 24:00 midnight).

The news is spreading like wildfire! More and more people are signing up to get closed beta accounts, in fact, we’re quickly approaching the 50,000 subscriber mark!

Hello Kitty Online was mentioned on Kotaku!

CNet covers Hello Kitty Online
"In addition to many of the regular features of an online game, like a virtual economy, guilds and custom avatars, Hello Kitty Online will offer players a persistent, beautifully-designed environment"
Read more on CNet News.

More HKO Press Coverage
HKO was covered by Valleywag, Japanator, Rockpapershotgun.com, N4g.com and more!

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