Like many MMORPGs, gameplay is centered on killing monsters, namely grinding, doing quests and venturing into dungeons to obtain experience points and Alz, the in-game currency. Players can band together to form a party, with a maximum of seven characters. Additional "Party Bonus" experience points are obtained by the members of the party based on their contributions.
Characters are created on "servers" or game worlds, each with its own unique name, such as Mercury or Venus. Players from different servers cannot interact with each other and their characters and accounts cannot be transferred between servers; however, all non-event servers have equal content, the only differences being the player base and the total number of items and money flowing in-game. One account allows for a maximum of six characters per server and a player is allowed to play on every server with that single account. Servers are subsequently divided into "channels", whose number again differs from version to version. Unlike servers, however, players can communicate with others in different channels through private messaging, or whispering, and they can switch to any channel, including Premium ones if they have bought the Premium package.
Channels can have several characteristics of their own; those whose name is green-coloured have player killing disabled for all non-war maps, unlike those with a white-coloured name. The Trade channel is designed specifically for buying and selling items from other players through either broadcasting to the entire channel, or shouting, or by the use of personal shops where players set up a number of items and their prices and quantities.The Novice channel is designed specifically for a gathering place for newcomers and is PK-disabled. Some channels are Premium, meaning that they can only be accessed by those who have acquired the Premium status from the Cash Shop, which is the substitute for the monthly subscriptions the game used to have. Premium provides many bonuses in experience gain, item drop rate, the ability to use Premium channels and special teleportation points or warp gates, through the use of the "GPS Warp",among other particularities. Lastly, there is a War channel in which Nation-based Player Killing is fully enabled without penalty and in all maps, effectively extending the "war map" status to the entire channel except for "Warp Gates".