Dynasty Warriors Online allows players to create their own character and choose a weapon from existing playable characters. Once a character is created, the player enters the world of Dynasty Warriors, defeating opposing armies for experience points. Players can also see other players that they can battle. It also poses the introduction of free roam, of which a player can go from city to city talking to various non-player characters.

The gameplay of Dynasty Warriors Online is similar to its console counterparts. It composes of two main parts, campaign battles and melee battles. Campaign battles occurs weekly, where the 3 Kingdoms (Wu, Wei, and Shu) fight for cities and territory. If there is not a campaign scheduled, then a large 24 player Showdown battle will be held. The goal of the game is to complete the objective specified for the type of battle. In melee, there are four modes:

    * Capture- Capture all the enemy bases, or all the bases on the battlefield
    * Defeat- Defeat the certain number of troops in the time limit
    * Confront- Defeat 10 enemy players
    * Search- Bring 10 pieces of treasure back to one of your bases or supply base.