I played MK from December of 2006 to about March 2007 (I think...) and got a good tasting of what it's all about. Here's the condensation of that tasting... yeah that's how I'm going to phrase that.

First the good, then the bad.

The first thing I think that set in for me was just how huge the universe is that you have to play in. For my BP friends out there, every solar system in MK probably has the same amount of total land as one planet in BP, the universe consists of a 135x110 grid, most grid blocks of this universe have about 3-6 solar systems in them! That's enormous and one of the high points of MK.

Another high point is the complex resource system. There are, aw crap I forget, but probably about 15-20 resources scattered around the planets, with about 4 rare resources, two of which are only found on maybe 0.01% of the planets. This makes for specific points of control and sparks war. you can build and fight with only a few of the rare resources, but like always it's better to have all of em.

Now for the bad. The thing that pissed me off the most about this game is the bugs in it... and there are a lot. Most of them are like loopholes in the rules, for instance it addresses the "if a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?" issue, buy saying, "THE TREE DIDN'T FALL AT ALL!" Guns don't fire while no one's watching, meaning a player can move an entire fleet right across your defenses just by looking away... There are a bunch of other little bugs like this that take an awesome concept and just make it cheap...

Another issue is the game's lack of a support crew. While I was there, support was minimalistic, much like BP, but shortly after I left, the owner basically said, I'm out of money, and I'm not doing anything else. The player ­base­ is likewise small, but the thing is, it takes about three months to complete the research needed to compete in this game. With that long of a wait time, new players are going to be few and far between. Now, I'm for in depth research, but only when there are multiple branches, in a game that doesn't really reset, three months to be on par with a rather limited span of units is just ridiculous.

Lastly, the graphics are horrible... It attempts a 3d environment with 1990's graphic capabilities. The unit models need serious work, and the interface could use an overhaul. What is nice is the in game mail system, though chat is localized and in a huge universe that is a mistake!

There it is in a gigantic nutshell. My recommendation is to play BP instead of MK. BP may be somewhat smaller scale, but MK is just too slow and buggy to be fun.

all i ever got was a trial, and their trial thing has been buggy all summer last time i checked, so you can't make a trial atm. i like how you can just fly far out and claim a system, i remember i found a nice one that was completely empty with lots of good res. one thing i dislike is the people resource. by the time i got a nice lil' ­base­ up i only had around 100 people left, and then half of them died when i was trying to figure out the residentual system. i'd like it better if you could pay money to develop AI's and robots instead of people. makin people takes too long for my taste, till you get a nice n' large amount of people. after a few weeks it seems more like a whore house if you don't use too many of the people XD.

personally i'd love a MK-BP-EVE-infinity mix with hald decent graphics. like something between BP and EVE, so you can have the sweet ships but not too taxing on GPU. i dunno why but i've always wanted a mmorts/rpg mix, but it would have to be balanced. balancing a mmorts/rpg mix seems scary i sure don't want a person playing rts ­style­d and i'm playing rpg ­style­d and he pwn's me. the rts ­style­d players would have to be able to get stronger at the EXACT same rate as rpg's. that would rock having 5 rts players with 50 ships each in a battle with 5 rpg players in their 5 super ships with 2 wing ships each

... now i think what i just said was the pure essence of 'rambleing'

I think you're just posting to up your stats now Mono!

Kidding of course!

you can't say that cause my posts tend to go on and on!

I had been following MK forum for a while in its high days, great wars between BORG n everyone else. I was intrigued by the scale and diversity of the universe. I actually was about to sign up when i found BP. No further explanation needed hehe. Then a while later i still thought i had to check it out, so i signed up for the tutorial system. I seached that entire area, but couldnt even find a place to land because every damned resource was built upon. Graphics were appalling, i thought at first tutorial might have lower graphics for easy play, but that apparently wasnt the case. This together with all sorts of bugs making for an unfair universe led me to quit even trying. As far as I'm concerned it is one of those great "could-have-beens" but simply never was.

Lord