The game is set in the midst of a civil war in the fictional country of Derbaran between government soldiers and a rebel organization called the National Independence Union (NIU). The location of Derberan is usually squeezed onto a map of Central Asia between real countrys to make it appear more believable. [5] Players select between the two teams and engage in battles using 20th and 21st century military equipment, including a large assortment of infantry weapons and vehicles.

There is a reasonable selection of weapons and equipment compared to other games, ranging from real firearms like the Colt M1911 and PSG-1 to a fictional hand held version of the M134. The weapons are split up into different categories - for example, a sniper rifle can only be used by the Sniper character, and rocket launchers can only be fired by Heavy Troopers, although there are a few exceptions, including all secondary weapons. You start with only default guns, but can rent more weapons with Dinars as you level. Some weapons have additional restrictions such as level requirements or premium membership. New weapons and items are introduced to the game a few times a year with patches, though recent additions have been for premium members only. Equipment available from the PX(post exchange) ranges from character adjustments that boost experience earned to adrenaline shots and medic boxes for health boosts.

Upon entering a game, players choose from five character classes, consisting of Heavy Trooper, Assault, Combat Medic, Combat Engineer and Sniper,[8] although they can switch classes at any point in the game before respawning after a death. Players can lease weapons from the armory using the in-game currency, Dinar, which are either earned by playing games, or through buying a premium package. Some weapons have level restrictions, and are only available to premium customers. As of 11/21/2007, users may also rent weaponry with real world money directly from the game's Marketplace web site, with no level requirements., as of 1/2/08, PX items were available in the marketplace to premium and non-premium members alike. Players that have purchased retail will have an extra weapon forever for a certain class, along with some bonus equipment (typically Smoke Grenade x1 for all classes without the retail weapon and Med_kit 2 for Medic class, for which there is no retail weapon). Retail packs are limited edition boxes created to promote War Rock upon its commercial release. No new retail packs have been made, so they are in quite high demand amongst War Rock players, because of the advantages gained in game. For example, when a retail code is applied to an account, as well as a certain gun (either the G36 with a 100 round drum for the engineer, L96 for the sniper, M60 or FAMAS for the assault, the M249 SAW for the, or the M134 minigun, both for the Heavy Trooper), but two months of Gold Premium was applied to the account for 2 months before April 30, 2008 due to the retail packaging mentioning VOIP functionality which at the time had not been introced. VOIP has since been added, and retail codes activated after April 30, 2008 would only give the user one month of gold premium. Though to this day it is known that retail packs are in short supply.

War Rock games are divided into three modes of play: Close Quarters Combat, Urban Ops and Battle Group.[9] These differ in the size of the map, the number of respawns permitted and the availability of vehicles, with CQC being focused on small-scale infantry missions and BG involving huge battlefields with some tanks, transports, boats, helicopters and jet aircraft.[9] Objectives in the different game modes include capturing and defending key positions on the map, planting explosives on enemy targets, accumulating points in a team deathmatch-style game or a free for all match. For Deathmatch/Battle Group, there is also Conquest mode, making it necessary for each team to capture all the flags in the map, or whittle down the other team's points from 999.

War Rock offers a premium option, which gives you Dinar each month and offers a wider selection of the guns in the weapon store, buying premium lets you make a room with custom names, private options, and any map available in War Rock. War Rock features a list of servers which members can log into, so you can choose the closest one to you. Premium members have access to Vivox VOIP for in game chat, however it cannot be used by Free2Play users and is only be available to Gold premium users.