A new post to the Surreal Technology Page has the latest status on the Drakan patch currently in beta testing, as well as a clarification (thanks VE):

Beta Testers are reporting a massive Internet performance improvement with the new Drakan Winsock patch! They say it is a whole new game experience! Kudos to Satish for his hard work with this gem! Still on track for availability within the next 10 days.

I've seen several reviews lately implying that Drakan's multiplayer is through Mplayer only (and then ripping on the Multiplayer game because they hate Mplayer). Drakan IN NO WAY forces you to play through Mplayer, in fact, Mplayer is merely a side option in the normal path to Drakan's own in-game server browser. Any reviewer that states otherwise has obviously not even played multiplayer for more than 5 minutes.