MMO's and Hello Kitty Online

That said one of the larger F2P game publishers, Aeria Games, has opened up their new game Hello Kitty Online for Closed Beta* earlier in the week. You heard me correctly; Hello Kitty Online. The reaction to that is quite common, is rather obvious, and if you haven't been able to figure it out yourself I pity you. I imagined it would be something like this or the image below. I'll tell you right now that it wasn't. It was much much worse.

When you do get in game you learn everything is as Hello Kitty as you can get. Pink interface with happy-go-lucky characters that are so cute you want to claw your eyes out using the closest object you can get your hands on. In my case it was the mouse considering I already had my hand on it.

A few minutes later after giving up on the mouse (too large) I continued my adventure and started a quest by a near-by NPC. The quest had to be the most creative as well as most deserving of my time quest I have ever received in a game. The task was that the NPC and their friend couldn't decide what to eat; They wanted hamburgers while their friend wanted a sandwich. If you didn't catch the sarcasm in the kind words I said about the quest there's a good chance you do now.

I'm sorry but what? Why in the world are we supposed to care that they can't decide what to eat? I wanted to just yell at them until they ate what ever they wanted. Sadly that wasn't an option that I could choose. The quests tend to be on that same basic concept. They send you to do something completely useless that serves no actual purpose. Just like every MMO out there.

Now we are getting to the point. Hello Kitty Online is just another average MMO. Every MMO follows the same basic concepts and ideas. You can argue about this all you want but it is true and will more than likely always be true. You go around doing quests that have stupid reasoning for doing them or it's just something you flat out have no reason to care about.

Going back to Hello Kitty there's an important part of this game that should mentioned. Combat. HKO has combat. The thing being HKO doesn't have combat in the traditional sense when you think MMO. There are no combat skills, the monsters don't die, and you shake a magic wand at them until the fall asleep. Not only that combat is completely useless inside the game. The only thing you gain from it is items which are used for quests. That doesn't stop the developers to make the game have agro's so you can't get resources in certain areas easily.

This brings up the question: How do you level? That's simple my dear lad. Gathering, Planting, Chopping, Cooking etc. The entire games leveling system revolves around what typically are in games as little side jobs made to use useful items. When leveling the exp you gain is put into a main exp bar that compiles all exp earned in the "sub-jobs" to show your total level. Let's put it this way. I'm currently on level 5 of gathering and I gain no more than a cm (or less) of exp on the bar per gather.

This brings me back to the first point. The game is grind-tastic. I'm already so early in the game that it rivals Silkroad (as well as others) as having the worst early-level-grind I've come across. The issue being here it really is like Silkroad in the sense you need to go kill (Oh I'm sorry. I mean tuck them into bed. By the way fun fact: The word Kill is censored) a ridiculous amount of monsters for a ridiculous amount of items. It would have made sense if the combat actually gave you something. It doesn't give you exp, it doesn't give you any items (other than things you can use for quests or a few recipes to make stuff), and it doesn't even give you the satisfaction of watching your enemy die horribly.


MMO's just never cease to amaze me how they can't pull an original concept out of their behinds. I don't care if a soon-to-be-released game claims to be something new. I'll save you the trouble and tell you now that it isn't going to be new. It will do nothing more than put a new costume on the same old way of doing things. HKO didn't even bother with a costume and proudly stood nude for all to see.

I wish I could control myself and stop playing the occasional MMO but it always happens. I get sucked into one between waiting for a new Console game to be released and I can only stand it for a week. Two weeks is the magic number for an MMO to gain with me. I don't mean every day for 10+ hours. I merely mean that if an MMO can keep me casually interested for 2+ weeks it's an above Average MMO. Does that mean it's a good MMO? No just above average.

I'll just finish this up now. I've looked into a lot of information about HKO before playing and was under the mindset that it would be different than normal MMO's. That was a mistake. HKO is nothing more than an average grinding only MMO and should be treated as such. The only thing it has going for it is that the maps are so small and you move so fast there's no worry about having to spend 10 minutes running in one direction just to find your princess is at another castle.