DarkEden is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing computer game in isometric projection or 3/4 perspective developed and published by SOFTON. It is the first MMORPG in the horror genre. The game revolves around the everlasting war between humans and vampires in a region called Helea located in a fictional country of Eastern Europe known as Eslania. The original version of the game, and the most advanced one, is the Korean one from which several other versions have been derived from such as the Japanese, Chinese, Thai and International versions. It should be noted however that the Thai version is currently closed.

Vlad Tepes, Elizabeth Bathory, and Gilles de Rais, three of the twelve master vampires, form an alliance and enter the mountainous area of Helea, killing every person they find. They then attempt to awaken Lilith, the mother of all vampires, so that they can have her power. Opening her tomb does not awaken her, but it does create a cloud over Helea that blocks the sun, making Helea a dark eden for vampires. The human world responded by isolating the region and sending in their militaries to try to rid the area of vampires.

The master vampires soon discover that the only way to gain the power they seek is to search for the pieces of Lilith’s soul, which were scattered about the area of Helea. Unwilling to share this power, they break their alliance and begin a civil war. Later, an ancient race of people known as the Ousters awakens from their long sleep and are shocked to see what the vampires and humans have done to Helea. They begin to attempt to wipe them from the area.

Darkeden is a hack-and-slash game, which requires the players to kill hordes of monsters in order to make their character progress. This character progression varies according to the different races with slayers only having to attack a monster/player to gain experience points whereas vampires need to kill the monster/player and drink its blood to gain the full extent of the experience points available while ousters just have to kill to gain these points. For the same monster, ousters gain more experience points out of them than vampires do even when drinking their blood. This is an aspect of the balanced system present in the game between the races having each a special advantage: the slayers sell the heads and skulls of monsters (one of the ways to make money in the game) at the highest prices to npc, the vampires drop the best items out of the 3 races, and the ousters get experience points the quickest.

The Powerlvling(Plvling) relationship is also present in the game but only concerns vampires and ousters. It is frequent that a low level player (leecher) is power-leveled by a high level player who kills monsters the low level would be incapable of alone and thus make him/her progress way quicker than s/he would have alone in another place. The experience points are divided between the members of a party for ousters and vampires wheareas slayers get a percentage increase. However, as far as slayers are concerned, only their attributes (strength, dexterity and intelligence) rise since they need to use their skills to gain experience points for their level.