Why pay to play WoW every month when you can try a free MMORPG? Silk road is a free game that allows you to form your own style of character with many weapons and equipment, many quests to be done, guilds, trade-runs, and more features and functions being added all the time. The latest European expansion to the game offers another chunk of map, more weapons, quests, everything else, and lead into more expansions to come.

Another update expected in May 2008 will offer more equipment and yet another section of map, to the already huge world!

So what exactly do you do? Well whatever ya want really. If you're a guild master you will try to compete for top guild. Hold guild wars where you fight and battle members of other guilds, take hold of fortresses and so on.

Once you hit level 20 you can take one of three jobs. Trader, Hunter, or Thief.

A traders job is to purchase items from one city and deliver them to another to be sold for a high profit. A hunter's job is to protect the trader from monsters and thieves. The thieves job of course is to kill the trader, steal the loot, and sell the items for %100 profit.

Balance changes are made to the game to keep aspects fair, developers inspect the servers weekly to keep things running smoothly.. special items and other characters are available to purchase with "Silk" which costs real money, but offers nice additions to the game. You can buy animals to collect loot for you or even to help you attack.

The game offers many skills for you to attain and level at your own will. For example if you build a Chinese character, you can choose between blades, glaive, or bow for a weapon. You can also choose ice, lightning, or fire for skills. You can even mix these skills as well. If you want to benefit from some of the lightning skills, feel free to level it up as you wish, while still maxing out your fire skills to deal massive damage. European characters offer more types of characters, and run off a different skill set from Chinese. Europeans offer warrior type characters, rogue, mage, warlock, cleric, and bard. All of which can also be combined as you like.

Completing quests will give you EXP, SP (Skill Points) Gold, items, weapons, all depending on the quest. And will give direction with the game.

The Level cap right now in the game is level 90, but is very hard to reach. This level cap is also occasionally upgraded with game updates.

There are many servers to log on to and play,  however characters are non-transferable. Whatever server you create your character on, is the server you must play on to continue that character.
Though there are many servers it can be difficult to log on to play, but with some searching you can find programs to help you log on faster. Just find the right time of day to log on and you'll be fine, don't give up!

Silk road is an excellent FREE MMORPG, check it out at www.silkroadonline.net