About Cabal

Cabal Online is a free-to-play, 3D massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), developed by South Korean company ESTsoft. Different versions of the game are available for specific countries or regions. Although Cabal Online is free-to-play, the game has a "Cash Shop" which allows players to purchase game enhancements and useful ingame items using real currency.

The game takes place in a mythical world known as Nevareth, which was destroyed by an evil entity known as the CABAL. Out of the survivors, seven "Masters" rose up, each wielding the abilities of the "Force Power". These masters taught the people, and Nevareth was rebuilt. Years later, the CABAL is plotting a return to power, and the characters of the game take up the role of heroes who battle the CABAL uprising and conspiracy.

History

Cabal Online was first released in South Korea in October 2005. The game was later released from closed beta testing in Europe in July 2006, and in December 2006 it was announced that the game and all subsequent versions had become free-to-play. In North America, OGPlanet had picked up the license for the game and open beta testing began on February 1, 2008. It was also stated that the full release would most likely come by the end of February. On February 28, 2008, the game officially launched in North America, while closed beta began in South-East-Asia Gameforge published Cabal Online in Germany on December 3, 2009. The service in North America provided by OG Planet was ceased on March 31, 2010, as the company did not reach an agreement with ESTSoft.

Gameplay

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 can 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".

World

The world of Cabal Online is split into different zones, namely maps and dungeons. Starting players will only be able to access three maps and one zone, the "Warp Gate", which provides walking access to all the three initial maps. As they progress into the game and gain character levels, they will gain access to new and more difficult maps, as well as dungeons, or instances. Each map has a different setting and weather; examples of these include deserts, forests, snow and ice maps and even a futuristic cityscape. Each map has its own unique set of non-playing characters, such as quest characters and shops, as well as many monsters to fight and gain experience and treasure from. Travelling from one map to another is done by either walking through the warp gate links or by using Premium GPS Warp to instantly warp into a specific map.