One of Kal Online ’s lasting appeals has been it various PvP modes and general emphasis on player vs. player combat. There are currently five different PvP modes, all of which award honor points, which can be used to upgrade skills or buy new weapons and equipment. All five game modes involve large groups, with Castle Siege as the most ambitious. This mode involves four guilds, one of which defends the castle while the other three assault it. Other modes include Protecting Leader, in which players defend their guild leader and hunt down the other team’s leader, Suffering Valley, where two guilds battle monsters with the team that accumulates the most points being declared the winner, Destructing Key Points, where teams race to destroy towers belonging to the other side, and Battlefield Island, where teams defend their pillars and plant new ones to gain control of the battle island. It takes a great deal of good old-fashioned grinding before being able to experience or contribute to these PvP events, which keeps the barrier of entry rather high.
Most of Kal Online’s community is composed of old veterans who have been playing the game for many years. Older games like this have a difficult time attracting new members, since there are just so many kalonline geons alternatives available these days in the free-to-play arena. Even players looking specifically for an oriental style MMORPG could look elsewhere at games like 9Dragons or Twelve Sky 2 before turning to Kal Online.
New players begin their journey in the village of Narootuh, located on a small island which is connected to the mainland with a giant, oddly shaped bridge.
There is no formal tutorial, but a help box does appear on the bottom-right of the screen, which provides helpful hints concerning quests available and what monsters to hunt at their present level. NPCs with quests available have glowing green scrolls over their heads, but the one NPC that players must seek out to progress their beginner quest is not marked in this way. Instead, players must rely on a poorly designed minimap, which consists of blurred tiles and small squares marking NPC locations. Only by hovering the curser over these tiny squares can players locate the appropriate NPC, which will introduce players to the game’s background and give them kal online geons to complete. As with many other oriental MMORPGs (such as Silkroad Online), the enemies in Kal are various demons who are pillaging human settlements. Outside town, players will encounter various small demons and will get a sense of how wide open the game world really is in Kal Online.
Never have I walked so far from one enemy to the next of the same type. For some reason the world is incredibly spaced out in Kal, which leads to a lot of running around. The benefit of this is that towns are huge and seem more lifelike. I remember playing Dark Age of Camelot where towns would consist of a single watch tower, a building, and a gazebo. That’s not the case here. The starting town comes complete with docks, water wheels, several houses, a market area and two sets of guard towers.
