Knight Online - Some Good, Mostly Bad
The BAD:
It is a hack and slash game with a few quests that are interesting when you start but provide little opportunity as your characters develop. Like many online MMORGs KO/KE (Knight Online/ Knight Empire) has the typical KSers (Kill Stealers), rude players, item dupes, and many many hacks.
While to one degree or another you have to deal with hackers and rude players when online what makes KO/KE worse is that the efforts that the game developers put out to stop the hacking and dupicate items always rewards those cheating. For example if you buy a duplicated item and then the item is wiped you are out the money and the person duplicating pays no penalty because they are very rarely caught. Also, within moments of the game installing a new patch that claims to stop a certain hack, cheat or dup - it is proven wrong. All you need to do is walk around the main merchanting area as the cheaters and hackers like to show off.
Furthermore talk about a laggy game and one with the servers constantly going down - this is it. Several weeks ago they claimed a network upgrade via moving their servers....NOT!. The only reason I have time for this review is because the servers have been down most of the morning. Yeah, and I have been paying for this - no more I am back to playing for free.
Don't ask about customer no service or the gm's who try but are too few in number to bee effective.
The GOOD:
Despite the bad, there are some good players out there to and the game STRONGLY supports an in game party system that ties together the strenghts and weaknesses of each character type. Indeed you can not get far in the game without partying with other players. This is one of the addictive aspects of the game - good parties are addictive and you don't want to leave them.
The Clan system is a further support to the party system and really can let you get far quickly. Also, because the game documentation is weak - at best - clans usually can help you understand better how to play, what you can kill, etc. I have made some great friends in my clan and truely that is why I still play. If my clan leaves I am out of this game so fast. I can't tell you.
So bottom-line, it is an OK game, when it is up and working. The game does a good job at making players party and rely on eachother. But is failes to be up too frequently, is laggy when it does run. And the developers are unable to control the cheating without taking it out on the good players. And if you do not hook up with a good clan, you will eventually feeel like you wasted your time. My advice, give this game a pass and keep looking. Play if you are desparate or go on with a group of friends and you'll have some fun.