My wife and I also stopped playing mid 2021 and started playing other games. We've been playing Lost Ark since it launched but quit after hitting the T3 wall and the honing frustration (which is funny considering the BDO has probably the worst gear upgrading system imaginable). But here we are mostly lifeskillers and sailors/barterers, so we're going to enjoy being back.

The population definitely seems down in Velia and Heidel, but I haven't explored much else yet and it's definitely enough to sustain active gameplay. Frankly, I like where it's at better than the ridiculous crowds and lag we experienced previously, making gathering and even Cooking turn ins much more competitive and frustrating.

We started Seasonal characters so we're making our way through the quest line again and getting re-familiarized with our mains;' skills and the various systems. After the season ends we'll switch back to all our regular toons and keep this extra slot for new seasons.

Good luck coming back.

If you ONLY used steam charts and neglected the stand alone version  (far more popular at least in my circle). The games still doing fine.  Go have fun there will be tons of people to steal your rotation!.

Steam says BDO has around 12k players right now

FF14 has around 19k

Elden ring and Lost Ark both have around 500k players right now

I don't know how many are playing GW2 but probably more than BDO and FF14.

The difference betwen BDO and other games is AFK fishing and multiboxing due to it being beneficial. I think it's against the ToS but you see a lot of people do it. So even if you do see numbers like 12,000 players are online, it doesn't mean they are actively playing the game. Most probably aren't and that's why you rarely see people while doing anything outside the cities now.

Non-mmorpg are a lot more popular though. For example, a CoD game could easily have over 60mil players at the same time. Same with Bejeweled.

BDO feels empty but so does FF14, theres' no one online anymore. Everyone is playing other games and that's to be expected whenever there are new releases. I imagine BDO's playerbase to go back up to 20-30k (steam only counting) in April with the new expansion but it may not last too long. It depends if they added more than just a new map with more things to grind. I know there's alpaca and ice fishing.

Here's a (dated) but relevant list on Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-played_veo_games_by_player_count

bdo and FF14 ain't steam only, so you can easily double the numbers you see there.

On games that aren't steam only, you can only use the chart to track the trend. Obviously (unless there is a steam only free giveaway or outrage etc.), the %changes on steam chart reflect the change on the whole playerbase.

LA is a new game, it takes like 3months or so to have it's playerocunt matter, and elden ring is a singleplayer game idk why ppl even comapre it, give it a few months, and it will be nowhere kek

Regardless, bdo ain't failing cause other games, but due to lack of content. And the new region not gonna change much either.

my estimation is steam+no steam+console+asia and south america=100000 black desert players every month

steam doesnt include console, no steam pc, asian and south american players

so my estimation on american server we should be around 20000 players every day

People compare Elden Ring with MMOs because everyone was talking about how they were going to take a break from their favorite MMO to play it so it is relevant to numbers, at least to compare that BDO has almost no one playing compared to what people do play on a day-to-day basis. A videogame is a videogame, regardless if it's an MMORPG or not.

Next month, FF14 has patch 6.2 which is a big patch and will attract a lot of players. BDO will have its expansion, which will also attract people. But BDO is easily AFK for freebies (dailies and whatever you craft or fish) so people will login into BDO regardless if they want those, skewing actual player numbers since I don't know if you want to count them as real players.

The real question is... Do you count AFKers as real players or not? If you don't, then how would you view the active population on BDO? Still active? Dead?

The only reason BDOs player number on steam saw a drop is because of incompatible EAC. Generally, new game release means whole of BDO goes fishing. It also made people make a choice or time share between new games and BDO this time around.

New class + Expansion will bump players for one or two months and then it will settle down again to average.  

To me the best indicators are the steam charts over time. 

https://steamcharts.com/app/582660#All

I know BDO has client non-steam players, but let's just focus on this a minute.  

at steam launch in 2017 bdo had 26k players. Most of 2017 thru early 2019 it had around 20k players. At all time peak during 2019 it had a brief moment of 60k players, at jan 2020 it got to 35k players. Today it has 18k players.  
  
BDO's lowest points in 2018 or 2019 are lower than its current point is now.   

Even if the overall trend is decline (not surprising for an aging mmo), the population today isn't actually much different than it was 4 years ago. So when people talk about the old days and how active things "used to be" what old days do they mean? The current BDO is roughly as active as it's been, on average, all long - not counting the huge spike 1 month in 2019 or the pandemic start. 

People afk because they have nothing to do in this game because despite the gigantic content of the game, 95% of its content does not make any meaningful profit. Open pvp is primarily to blame for this. Only trash from mobs generates reasonable money, but even 75% players are not interested in forced pvp, so they don't grind on mobs.

Conclusion is simple: players are not able to get items from the enchantment, they also do not have realistic opportunities to earn for them, so they leave or afk and play something else during this time.

As someone in another thread rightly pointed out: for 99.99% of gamers this game ends with pens from quests (sometimes bs tet weapons) and tet but not bis accessories. There is no point in playing it any further because there is no progress.

So people afk and life skill for those few or a dozen  billion to buy manos clothes and manos tri or tet accessories.

- You don't afk-lifeskill if you don't play the game at all.

- blaming owpvp for every problem is ridiculous. 

- random numbers pulled out of nowhere.