There have been a lot of things said and written about Kingdom of Loathing as a purely single-player experience already, so I'm not going to dwell on that too much. The initial things that are going to strike any player is that it's graphically incredibly simple (stick figure sketches) and it tries to be funny from the instant you start creating a character (you choose between classes including "Seal Clubber" and "Disco Bandit").

As I currently live in "the frigid Northlands" (Canada) I thought I'd play as a Seal Clubber, and began my quest, rationed at 40 "adventures" a day. The first thing any community minded player of Kingdom of Loathing must do is pass the test at the Altar of Literacy, which allows them the ability to take part in in-game chat. It's an amusing requirement (expecting knowledge of the use of "their", "they're" and "there") and has led to a community that is unusually well-spoken.

Once that's done (and after working with the "Toot Oriole" on Mt. Noob to learn how to play) the next thing to do is to join a clan, where the main multiplayer experience can be found. You can't join a clan until you are level 3 (which requires a few days adventuring) and once you've reached this level there are a bewildering range to choose from. I just chose at random, selecting the "Seven Lances" clan, and have no idea if I chose wisely or not.

The game has several artificial barriers of this sort -- for example, you can't own a player store until you reach level 9 (though you can sell items in the flea market) -- all of which require you quest in the "main" game for quite a while (a period of perhaps weeks, due to the limited number of adventures per day) and while this can seem restricting, a major part of play is taking part in your clan chat, which allows you to receive advice from other players (which tends to stop short of outright spoilers) beneficial "buffs" for your character (making combat easier, or leading to more item drops) amongst other benefits.

Another aspect of the community is player vs. player combat, playable by choosing to smash the "Magical Mystical Hippy Stone" that exists at your campsite. Combat takes the form of bizarre, in-direct statistic comparisons, and winners can take rank, stats, meat (the game's currency) and items from losers. I chose not to take part for fear of crippling my still new character completely.

I've been unable to access some community features, too. I haven't been able to contribute the required amount of meat to my clan's coffers to raise enough karma in order to take part in Hobopolis, one of the game's main multiplayer areas. Hobopolis is a dungeon in which clans can go on adventures together. However, similar to the content intended for clans in games such as World of Warcraft, this is almost solely for high level characters due to the difficulty. As a lowly level 6 "Malamute Basher" it'll be a while yet before I'm able to take part.

Kingdom of Loathing is a fairly unique game, particularly when it comes to its "massively multiplayer" content. Several multiplayer aspects of it are surprising -- a great example of this was the "grey plague", an in-game event in which players became diseased, leading their font to become unreadable. Players had to work together and quest to find the cure, which had to be used on other players.

There are many examples of this sort of thing, and it's a great way to explain the unusual way that Kingdom of Loathing fits the MMO concept without fitting the template at all. Although I haven't been able to see all it has to offer, I'll be offering my conclusions in the next update.