Jade Dynasty players may have noticed the recent appearance of the Induction Agent in Sunstream City and the Divine Well. It turns out that the NPC allows players to refer friends to earn bonus EXP, Jaden and other items.

You must be level 60 or higher to induct your friends into the world of Jade Dynasty. Once you've hit that requirement, talk to the Induction Agent to get an identification number that will allow your friend to link to your account. Inductors will get bonus EXP and Jaden when the Inductee levels, and Inductees will get a special Brocade Box that can be opened every five levels to obtain items.

For more information, check out the official Induction Agent guide.

Perfect World Entertainment has just revamped its site, and the changes include a new blog that promises to "offer a glimpse behind the 'corporate curtain' of PWE and give our users an understanding of who we are, what makes us tick, further insight into our products/features along with the occasional dose of office shenanigans and if you're REALLY fortunate perhaps the recipe for the ultimate Banana-Walnut muffin!"

The blog has already received a ton of updates, including this tidbit from SillyPsyche: "We’re also getting ramped up for some huge releases next year including Forsaken World (formerly project Empire). From what I have seen so far it looks like it’s going to take the gaming experience to a new level. As a former hardcore MMO player I fear for my free time when this one comes out!"

The Perfect World Entertainment portal gives players access to games such as Perfect World, Jade Dynasty, Ether Saga Online, Torchlight, and the upcoming Kung Foo!

With Christmas just around the bend and school dwindling down for the holiday break, a lot of MMORPG development teams have been hard at work, making sure that all of these holiday gamers have (at least!) a few new things to look forward to for their end of the year gaming sessions.

With so much new stuff in the industry every day, it can really give someone a headache to figure it all out, so developers Perfect World Entertainment invited ZAM to sit down with project manager Andrew Brown to see why Jade Dynasty's 'Ascension' expansion, launched just a few short weeks ago, is one of the most unique takes on the concept of the MMO content update. Read on and we'll tell you about our fun little in-game tour and how developers PWE have managed to keep their communities playing together, even in the face of a new expansion.

Today marks the launch of Ascension, the first expansion for Jade Dynasty. The update introduces the Athan race, new zones, an achievement system, a transformation system that lets you turn your characters into creatures, and the ability to fight in the air with Skyblades. Two new factions, the Arden archers and the Balo warriors, will also be added to the game.

In addition, your character will be able to ascend to become more powerful once you reach level 135. You'll start back at level 15, but will be more powerful. This is a cooperative effort among players; one of the requirements is that 300 players must be level 135 or higher to enable ascension on each server.

The servers will be offline today for maintenance from 2-5 p.m. PST to implement the expansion. The team warns players that the downtime may be extended if necessary.

Perfect World Entertainment has announced that the first expansion for Jade Dynasty will be released on Nov. 12. "Jade Dynasty Ascension" will introduce the Athan race, new zones, an achievement system, a transformation system that lets you turn your characters into creatures, and the ability to fight in the air with Skyblades. Two new factions, the Arden archers and the Balo warriors, will also be added to the game.

More information about "Jade Dynasty Ascension" can be found on the official expansion page or in the Q&A after the jump.

Today marks the three-month anniversary of the launch of the Jade Dynasty open beta, and the team plans to open a new PvP server named Wildlands in honor of the occasion. Wildlands will become available to the general public on Sept. 17 at 6 p.m. PDT.

If you have a level 60+ character, you'll gain early access to the new server from 1-5 p.m. on Thursday. Four hours may not seem like a long time, but it will let you reserve your preferred name or level your character a bit before the floodgates open for all players.

Server transfers will not be offered to Wildlands, but a double exp bonus will be in effect for the first 24 hours of the launch. More details on the new PvP server can be found after the jump.

In order to entice players to become friends of the Jade Dynasty Myspace and Facebook pages, the team offered three days of double experience if the social networking pages had a combined total of 5,000 friends by the contest's deadline. Well, the goal was met and the double exp offer has been extended to four days in celebration.

The bonus exp will take effect on Sept. 3 at 10 p.m. PDT and and will last through Sept. 7 at 10 p.m. All Jade Dynasty players will be able to enjoy the bonus whether they're part of the game's social networking sites or not. Currently, the Facebook page has 4,311 fans, while the Myspace page has 1,074 friends.

It has always been man's greatest goal to uncover the secret of immortality. In Jade Dynasty, a new Free-2-Play MMORPG in development by the same company that brought your Perfect World International and Ether Saga Online, that's the underlying theme and the ultimate goal. This martial arts centric MMO is based on the popular Chinese internet novel "Zhu Xian" and is currently in closed beta; however, that didn't stop us from getting our hands on some exclusive screenshots!

Our second batch of screenshots contains six great examples of the rich environments and stunning particle effects that exist in Jade Dynasty. As far as F2P games go, this one looks great and because it's being developed by Perfect World, I'm sure it'll be fun.

The open beta for Jade Dynasty is now live, so head on over to the game's official Web site to download the client if you'd like to try out this free-to-play martial arts MMO. If you already have the client, you can manually apply the patches to participate in the open beta. Patch 22, the most current update, was released on Friday, and you can check out the release notes after the jump.

In case you missed it, we recently posted some exclusive screenshots from Jade Dynasty. We'll be posting more next week, so keep checking ZAM.com for the new media. If you decide to try out the game, let us know what you think!

It has always been man's greatest goal to uncover the secret of immortality. In Jade Dynasty, a new Free-2-Play MMORPG in development by the same company that brought your Perfect World International and Ether Saga Online, that's the underlying theme and the ultimate goal. This martial arts centric MMO is based on the popular Chinese internet novel "Zhu Xian" and is currently in closed beta; however, that didn't stop us from getting our hands on some exclusive screenshots!

Our first screenshot batch contains five great examples of the rich environments and stunning particle effects that exist in Jade Dynasty. As far as F2P games go, this one looks great and because it's being developed by Perfect World, I'm sure it'll be fun. Enjoy the screenshots and stay tuned for another batch next month!