Battleangel

Since Knights Online entered open beta yesterday I thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately, the servers have been clogged up so gameplay is difficult to assess.

First off I think the web based login system is a little lame. As is the fact that you have to restart the game when you are disconnected. And due to the recent server situation gameplay became difficult at best. By far the most annoying thing was picking up dropped items. They should do that in the background instead of waiting for the player connection. Too much of the interaction was going on server-side and that really slowed everything down. I guess they are aiming for some sort of cheat protection scheme (like the feature of logging in over and over again). Plus I don’t understand why you have to pick up money at all. Shouldn’t that be automatic? Who would leave a pile of gold after having painstakingly killed a pesky Werewolf for example? Maybe they should have an option to set at least .. “auto-acquire gold”.

Furthermore, like many MMORPGs, it is difficult to keep up interest. First you kill Worms to be able to upgrade your weapons and armor, then you kill Bandicoots to be able to upgrade your weapons and armor, and so it goes on and on. All I ever interacted with was NPCs. Apparently you can also enter into “teams” but as for fighting other player or doing anything but hunting overgrown bunnies … who knows.
And killing bunnies is like playing the lottery. If you’re lucky you might get a 100k ruby. But that only happened once. I don’t see why it should take so long to level up since fighting basically consists of pointing and clicking anyway. It’s not like it requires any skill. Chances are you will just get bored in the process and toss the game. Hmm. Perhaps I have missed something fundamental about role-playing games.

<Edit> And another thing. After having played the game some more I find it just as flat. Plus the team thing was no fun at all. Unless the members are hyperactive you will be better off killing monsters yourself. Unless there is a really large one that you cannot handle. But one of the points in killing monsters is gaining items and since you share them at random with your team, the feature is a little situational. Hell, it happened twice when I was in a team that I (myself) killed a pesky creature and it contained crystals or rubies. First time around accidentally grabbed it and “gave” it to someone else. The other time around I knew better and quit the team before picking it up. It’s good to know one’s price. </edit>

Anyway, since it is a beta after all and since the developers are promising “ongoing development” the verdict will have to wait. At least until the connection issue is out of the way.
Another interesting thing to note is that they jumped on BitTorrent to distribute the beta client. One of the first demo or beta releases that I have seen do that.