I`ll start I guess what keeps me is the interactions with the community you probably have seen me meming in Megaphone chat and I actually find it quite fun considering how people tell me I make their day better with my mischief or how I make their grinds more bareable 

My biggest reasons are:

My own characters, which I 100% made by myself. I have never used the album for any reasons, my friends.

The vast map, which I never get tired of exploring and riding on my own horse.

The smallest reason is:

Albeit the tiresome grinding, the way I cleave groups of mobs somehow compensates for that with my warrior or DK aaaand sometimes on my nova.

Having fun with trump quotes!  Lool

I LOVE the combat and combo system. I cant play any other MMO any more because the combat is so pooorly implemented in otehr games, theyre ALL WOW clones, even FF14. You have a skill bar, and you press 1-9 to do a skill, u dont have to move or dodge out of the way, all attacks hit and hit you, and everything has the same skill timer, u just stand there on the spot waiting for timers to run out and then press another skill. 

BDO on the other hand has u dodge enemy skills, jump around, dodge, do a chain of attack combos, dodge, move in for a strike, back off and defend against thier strongest attack, counter it, input another combo. Its a fighting game (e.g. Street Fighter) as a MMORPG.

Yes I want to try other things, I want to try FF14, I want to try New World, but when I see demos and other streams of their gameplay I just want to close my eyes and go to sleep.

what keep most players :

- how combat is made and handled (despite poorly managed fight mechanic : protection / defence / grab / cc )

- graphic and visual immersion

- game world feeling with a lot of good ( but poorly exploited ) idea like node / worker empire

- sunk cost ( time / money )

- for now lack of real new competitor

Other than this, BDO is a overall mediocre game to play at. ( and has one of the worse predatory buisiness model impacting far too much the game itself )

What would "bring people back" : total management changement, to manage a game and not just a inconvenience leading to the cash shop, which will more likely never happen. 

Imho, just have to wait for crimson desert to taste again the PA touch a few months before they ruin again their game with intensive p2w and other predatory buisiness practive.

The bobs, obviously.

Literally the only thing that keeps me playing is the fact that I can be afk 100% of the time and still progress.

BDO has a monopoly in the modern Sandpark genre even if it tries towards the themepark more years ahead.
The point of no return hasn't happened yet so it's still enjoyable for my species.

BDO remains a monolithic world to this day. that's what holds me.

on the days when I no longer feel at home, I will  return quietly to a good C4-C6 Lineage 2 server.

Only thing that keeps me playing is bartaring (Afk money making), my PEN BS gear, and the slim hope that maybe PA will start caring about this game and improving it.

But really I guess I'm not actually playing the game at all while bartaring sense it just me right clicking the map and pressing T ever 30 mins and nothing else.

But really in another month I'll be trying Bless Unleashed to see if Neowiz can finally release a playable game, one without game breaking bugs, hacker, and experience ruining exploits like duplicate glitches, after somehow releasing the same game 7 times and having it fail within literal months after it release 7 times.