Just looked it up on wikipedia. Seems like it's free to play, but to get the "good" items you need to pay real money or a lot of in-game currency. I'm fine with that, personally; reminds me of Kingdom of Loathing. I might give it a try sometime. It says really nothing about the battle system of leveling on wikipedia, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_World#Races_and_Classes
Edit: Oh, and the title/logo is TOTALLY based on the FF franchise titles.
Edited, Jun 19th 2009 9:21am by LockeColeMA