Why I'm asking is, I heard KoL has a multiplayer dungeon hobopolis and I am interested in finding out what the mechanics of this multiplayer dungeon are so that I might implement one in my own game. I am too much of a noob/lack the inclination to get into a clan in order to access hobopolis, so I was wondering if anyone here has played in hobopolis before and would be kind enough to dish on how it is setup(I can't put a finger on the finer details of implementation - for example can players venture off from the group - and how do you account for that??). Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope to hear of some of your experiences.

Basically it's similar to the island war in that there are a set number of monsters which must be killed in each subzone of Hobopolis, however this state is shared between all the players in the group rather than being per-player. There's no notion of "venturing off from the group" - each player can adventure in any zone they can reach, more-or-less independently from the rest of the group, except that all players in the group are contributing to the same kill counters and other state. Lots of details on the KoL wiki: http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Hobopolis

When you say there are a set number of monsters, do you mean the monsters in the dungeon are common to all players(so multiple players can encounter the same monster instance - just like in a shared 3D world such as world of warcraft), or do you mean there is a goal for the number of monsters to kill and the monsters are randomly generated single player encounters like in the rest of the game. If you mean the former.....how does kol represent this situation....a player, say myself, goes to a location where there is a monster. I then engage the monster in combat. If another player goes to this location while i am battling this monster does it tell you this in the game, and can this other player help fight the monster? Is there any player to player interaction? For example I read somewhere that you can free fellow clan members when they get captured by CHUMS.

The latter. Eg if a player clicks on Hobopolis Town Square they'll get to fight their own randomly generated hobo, until the requisite number have been killed at which point the next player to click on that area will encounter Hodgman, the final boss. This means the total number of hobos killed can go over the threshold, because it's possible for more than one player to be in a fight at once, and they're each fighting their own monster. Only one player can fight a boss, though. If another player tries to enter combat while the boss fight is still in progress they'll be told that the boss is busy, eg: http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Not_Now! There are ways for players to interact with each other to kill larger numbers of hobos at once, eg: http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Attention_--_A_Tent!