Play Knight On-Line! New "Reign of the Fire Drake" Patch Released!

Knight On-line is a massive multi-player online role playing game (MMORP) with a number of different servers and features, one of their newest being the "Reign of The Fire Drake" patch. I personally have been playing Knight on-line for a little over a year and a half, and have been quite pleased with the game play. It is in a medieval setting with various quests, creatures, and story lines. When you first begin the game you are able to choose your character class, as with most RPG's. You begin in a small city called Moradon. Originally in the game you could talk to the non-player characters (NPC's) and agree to take on any quests available. You were free to roam and fight, band with other players to up your experience and your levels. The downfall to this was generally that completing a quest meant bringing back a certain number of items collected from fighting certain types of creatures. Depending on the drop rate, completing one quest could take hours upon hours upon hours of game play. This is fine for serious gamers, but for people who play simply during their leisure time, this made it difficult to advance in the game very quickly, if at all. Not to mention it was easy to forget the required number of items needed to be carried back to an NPC to complete a quest. So this then entailed a lot of running back and forth from town to battle field, in order to find out.

With the new patch release I have found two types of quests available. One requires that a certain quota of creatures be killed. For this you are generally rewarded with an experience bonus. The other is more of the old style of requiring a certain number of items be presented to an NPC, for which you are generally rewarded with a more valuable item made from the items you collected. In this patch you are also given a helper or a scribe, that will pop up and let you know when you've met your quota of kills, or when you have collected the required number of items to complete a quest, so there is no need to keep running back to town to figure out if you've collected enough items, or if you have to go battle some more.

On the Fire Drake patch I have also found it a little difficult to get used to the location of various control panels, such as your skill sets, and equipping items. I feel however this only comes from being familiar with the old lay out, and after a bit more game play it seems that the new panels will be as easy if not more so than the old ones were to navigate.

Knight on-line offers two varieties of game play. There is a free to play service which entitles the player to all upcoming patches and necessary updates to be able to continue efficient game play. The down side to this is that when servers are full, the paying clients are given priority. At the moment this makes it very difficult, because since the release of the new patch, Knight Online servers have been having some stability issues, which they are currently working to repair.

The second of course is the pay to play option which as they say is, "For die-hard fans who wish to support Knight Online financially and are interested in enhanced game experience (e.g., higher hit rates, increased player abilities, access to special weapons, and many other benefits), we offer a variety of premium options. To view our premium packages, please visit our Power Up Store."

They offer a few different feature for the hard core gamers as well. There are three player versus player (PVP) events. The first is the "Dark Lunar War". In this particular PVP feature, the goal is to kill all the NPC's in an enemy's base. to enter this event you have to have achieved a level between 30 and 50. The event is only held at certain times and only the first 120 of a particular nation to show are admitted through the gate. The times for these events are done by server name and are listed on the web-site . The second PVP event is very much the same as the first. This on is called "Lunar War" and it requires a level of at least 30. In this one the first 200 players are admitted through the gate. Times for these events are also organized according to the server being utilized by a player and are listed here. The Third PVP is the "Castle Siege War". This event occurs on the #1 server for all world servers (Ares 1, Beramus 1, Xigenon 1... etc.) There are no lasting penalties in this event, and only requires a level 4 for participation. However I have found from experience that to truly enjoy the event, one should have at least a level 30 or above, otherwise, you simply get killed and respawn over and over without really getting to do anything. The goal of this event is to get into the castle and gain control of the artifact located in the center of every town. This allows players to compete for Lordship. Times for this event are located here.

There are a couple of other features that make this game fun. One is an Experience jackpot. You never know when you're going to hit it, and I've found the computer tends to generate an occasional lucky streak for a player. This allows you to earn up to 100 times the experience you would normally gain from fighting battles. Another is the "Forgotten Temple" event which allows you to quest for rare items (which can be sold to other players for very high prices). In addition a person can strike out on their own, or you can band together with other people. Joining groups tends to help you collect more experience and gives you people from across the globe to interact with. There are also options to form game clans. The rank of a clan is generally determined by the National points they collect. National points are collected by the completion of quests by the clan's members.

One thing I would like to eventually see is being able to create a character that can be translated from server to server. It is inconvenient to have to begin with a brand new character on a different server because the server I usually play on happens to be down for maintenance.

Overall Knight is a good game for either the leisurely or hard core RPG'er. The new Fire Drake patch looks entirely promising once they resolve their server stability. It is a good way to unwind and interact with other folks, while enjoying the benefits of a good video game. The graphics are in general astounding, and the audio is blissful. Check it out at Knight Online World. Start playing today!