The Holy Knight of Fighting (HKoK)

Holy Knight of Fighting website (HKoK) was a site devoted to several Hong Kong PK guilds which I will lump into one group (Shadow Legion, KoK, Invisible Power Tibian (IPT)). This guild was mainly comprised of HK players who enjoyed PKing, though there was an elemental of nationalistic revenge as evidenced by their mission statement. At their peak in 2000 the guild comprised of at least 50 players who each had many characters to wreck havoc on their fellow Tibians..

The guild was founded sometime around or before September of 1999 and they made quite an impression on Tibia by causing a huge uproar over an extended period. Many of the issues players experienced in game were in part due to HKoT’s trap PKing, duping, and targeted assault. Their base of operation was the Thais Hotel which had special unintended roof access which they used to dupe. As they owned all the flats on the south side no other players could get to the roof unless invited.

On National Day, October 1st, 1999, a PK campaign occurred were HKoT conducted a massive PK event of 20 players who killed everyone in sight. Their rampage started in Fibula and carried over into Thais depot. Led by Plun, Album, and Cada Knight, they killed many players including a few high levels. They listed a few all-stars from the event such as Minimum who killed a German player with SDs and a level 30 player. Tibia Boy was also commended for killing the level 30 Ishara with a sword and was promptly banned forever as a result. This PKing event made a huge stir on the boards, angering the community, but the thread has now been lost. I believe it was this event that lead to the player base rising up in solidary to fight directly against these players.

One of the characteristics of this guild that really set these players apart from other PK groups was how sophisticated their strategy was. They sought out places to secretly train, organized as groups to attack others, and created strategies in all their plans which was a first for the mostly solo players and semi organized guilds. The IPT, a subset group, employed an interesting strategy where the group would use unknown level 1 chars run by other players to help in locating targets and disrupt their movements by pushing or blocking them. These players were often other miscreates from outside of the HK guild who wanted to cause trouble. Most viewed these players as anything but roleplayers, but part of their role was to pretend to be members of other guilds, earning the trust of those around them before taking advantage of them in their most vulnerable time. All these tactics made this guild an incredibly fearsome opponent which was not easily beaten. Many of the strong guard guilds rose to power precisely because they wanted to defend their members from these specific players. The anger against this guild drove a wedge in the community as players no longer trusted each other for fear that they could be killed by a hidden PK.

Despite their focus on PvP, the website they crafted remains as one of the few early looks at history around the Carlin introduction era. In the internets early heyday, this would have been an invaluable resource to all HK players as searching for websites outside of your language was difficult and Tibian resources specifically turned to your demographic, if it fell outside of German or English language, was a rare and welcome commodity. It is unknown what happened to this guild, but it seems likely the elimination of duping (including the deletions of prominent HK players) and the rise of strong guard guilds spelled the end for these players.