I am a very new player, what fish is it that is so rare and important?

There's so much more to the game than grinding the same mobs endlessly. If you are feeling burnt out from that, work on the other numerous aspects of the game:

- Work on building an optimized node empire. I spent months hiring and firing workers until I had ones I needed and wanted in all the towns to get the nodes I would use the most. It was so satisfying getting each node with the best worker I could on it.

- Work on your knowledge, especially ecology if you don't have 8k ecology. Going back to underleveled areas and riding around on your horse destroying the entire population to get S ranks on them is surprisingly satisfying. Completing areas for more energy is icing on the cake.

- Find quests and complete them. Some of the quest chains in this game are actually pretty well written and interesting if you read the dialogue. If you don't completing them to complete Rulupee's journal is great, going above that and doing 60k like that other person on this forum is pretty cool too.

- Work towards a mythical horse. Catch wild horses, train them and breed them, get those 2 pegi and go for a flying mount.

- Go bartering and sea monster hunting. This provides excellent income, especially once you work yourself up to a better ship.

- Hunt for those rare items like compass, map, pots. You can sprinkle this in to your regular grinding so you aren't grinding the same mobs over and over.

I'm sure there's plenty more to do that I can't think of right now. This game has so much more to offer than just grinding mobs for 10 hours a day. Go take a look and see if you enjoy any of it.

Its an incredibly stupid notion that mmorpgs must force you to to rely on others to progress to be considered an mmorpg. 

Ultima Online inspired all the mmorpgs of today and had gameplay more similar to BDO than WoW or EVE.

Are these silly kids gonna tell you that ultima online wasn't an mmorpg too because you can do everything solo?

Very, very stupid.

I think the poster is referrng to the Fishing Event.  You can find info on the fishing event on patch notes, but I'm not sure if it's still going on.

This thread is killing my love to forum threads and humanity.

Playing since release? Not full tet yet? If you have love for other mmorpgs you'd know how linear progress works. There are few western examples where you completely get freebie gear. 

In fact, most mmorpgs don't give you the options BDO does for progress. Example:

- Seasonal servers added recently for extremely fast progres.

- Lifeskilling such as:

   Hunting

   Fishing

   Cooking

   Horse Training

   Trading

   Bartering 

And few others.

YOU chose to neglect everything and decided to grind few spots. Since you're near tet since release, you clearly are not fan of efficiency grinding. You could easily explore other zones and grind there and maybe, just maybe have fun.

In terms of progress, BDO is like any mmorpg you have ever played. Well, I guess not games you have played, since I'm sorry to say this adventurer, but you lack game experience from your words.

Regarding pop ins and RNG, need I respond? You remove pop ins & can straight buy items from marketplace. An experienced mmorpg player would have researched it.

Also, adventurer, you contradict yourself. You like freebies but don't like when they give them to everyone, so they neglect your progress? What exactly do you want?

Please, don't confuse new players thinknig this is BDO's problems. Game is not even near perfect, has many problems, but regarding options of how to get income in the game, it's one of the best.

100% agreed

Please what?

Like FearlessMe already wrote, BDO is even less of a sandbox than your typical run-of-the-mill themepark MMOs. Also: Comparing a single player experience (which was in development for only 18 (!) months) with a pseudo MMO (that was in development for more than 3 years) is ridiculous. FO:NV is far more of a sandbox (especially featuring much more player agency) than BDO will ever be. I consider it an insult to even compare a - albeit flawed - masterpiece like FO:NV with BDO.

Well, no...

Sandbox-games, by definition (!), are supposed to offer a gameplay environment which offers a high degree of freedom and player agency, where players can do almost anything they want. Sure, there have to be some restrictions, but in general, that's the gist of what sandbox-games are supposed to be. In that regard, it's perfectly reasonable to argue that BDO isn't a proper sandbox-game due to the heavy and manyfold restrictions it places on its players.

Care to explain which substantial group content BDO offers beside stuff like Node Wars and maybe stuff like Vell? 'Cause - honestly - I don't see it. Most stuff you'd probably label as "group content" is probably just glorified zerg-content where people "play together alone" rather than playing and properly coordinating as a party. Don't forget: You've already criticized games like WoW for the lack of interaction in easy group-content to which the "playing together alone"-principle applies to.

Although I can agree that BDO is rather "tame" in comparison to other korean MMOs, that doesn't make it any better, does it? I mean, the games you've mentioned are all already dirt-old and haven't had the technological possibilities game developers have nowadays. Back in those days, due to technological restrictions, grinding was main content. You hardly can compare these games with BDO although you could describe BDO as "middle-aged" already. Besides, it's not that these games were all that popular in the west to begin with. As far as I can tell from my own experiences, these games mostly could be considered popular during the times where they weren't as grindy and thus more "western-friendly". In South Korea especially, the grinding aspect was always an element to monetize games. Due to south-korean history, there sadly exists the rotten mentality that being able to throw money at nonsense is considered a symbol of status. That's - at least one of - the reason(s) why P2W-bollocks aren't as heavily criticized as they are in the west.

To be honest, most of the activities you've mentioned are just another kind of unengaging grind while others (like playing the game as business simulator) are quite niche (in a game that already caters to a niche audience). Sadly, most systems in BDO are - although utterly convoluted - quite basic and unengaging. That's especially true for life skills. The questing in BDO is also the most basic I've probably ever seen in any MMO. In general, I myself can only consider BDO as a framework for something rather than being something whole. It does work, sure, but well... That's what it is, I guess? Besides that, dream horses are probably one of the worst offenders if not a downright insult to players I've ever encountered in my life. If it had anything to do with actually training and working with your horses, fine... But instead, it's just a massive RNG-based time- and resource-sink that isn't just a bottomless pit, but rather a giant black hole.

Stupid? Did you play Ultima Online? At least from what you've written, it doesn't seem to be the case? Ultima Online placed a huge emphasis on social interaction. Playing entirely alone came with drawbacks. BDO, on the other hand, is basically almost in its entirety a single player experience. Your comparison is nonsensical.

Some other user here used the concepts of opting in and out of social interactions, multiplayer gameplay, etc. while stating that in BDO, you opt into multiplayer gameplay in opposition to other (real) MMOs where you opt out of multiplayer content (while incurring certain drawbacks from doing so). By definition, in a real, proper MMO, there should only exist the aforementioned option to opt out of multiplayer content, else - obviously - it isn't a real and proper MMO. The opting in option is rather akin to games like Guild Wars (1) which understood itself as Competitive Online Roleplaying Game - and never as MMORPG for that matter! That also applies to BDO. BDO is - like Factorial already mentioned - a grinder with online elements.

I agree that BDO is largely single player.  I think the devs realize the importance of group play more now, they are introducing dungeons this year and hopefully shaking some things up regarding open world PVP (bounty system).

But to say BDO is less sandboxy than run of the mill mmos isn't very accurate to me, having played "typical run of the mill" MMO's before coming to BDO.  And it's BDO's non-linear progression and "sandboxiness" that keeps me here (along with combat, graphics, and wonder).

BDO is non-linear, in that, there isn't a clear path to progress laid out by the game, or, progress isn't exactly black and white.  In typical MMO's, new expansions release often, making players run the same dungeons over and over for BiS gear.  Once a new expansion comes out, it's rinse and repeat, and each gear set from past expansions becomes obsolete.  In BDO, gear does not becomes obsolete remotely as quickly.  Ring of Crescent Guardian was released 2+ years ago and is still a relevant item to use, granted, enhanced.  Players can do a combination of lifeskills, a combo of lifeskills + combat, purely lifeskills, purely combat, or come up with "creative" or "unorthodox" methods.  Can't really do that in typical run of the mill mmos that have a set in stone way to progress.

They way I like to explain the "sandboxiness" of BDO is this.  The game gives you these tools, right.  Think all of the lifeskills, all of the grind zones, and "unorthodox" methods of making money -- IE: Biohack, Agent Russ.  The game doesn't explain exactly how to use these tools, like, they'll show you the bare basics, but incorporation, they do not.  So the game throws your these "tools" and you, as a player, figure out how to use them to form your gameplay.  Often through trial and error and discovery.  Often leading to players customizing the usage of these tools to create their own gameplay loop.  Like my gameplay loop is different than my friends'.  And this leands to player agency, agency over our own gameplay loops.

And speaking of player agency, I think BDO offers more of that than typical mmo's.  How you deal with people in the open world when it comes to spot contention situations, for example.  DFS, or Duel For Spot, is a community created aspect of the game -- DFS was made by players in order to combat the negative side effects of the Karma System.  Whether it's used in a fair way or unfair is not the point.  This is player agency.  And just one example, and there are more.  Like you, as a player, having to do some deep researching online if needing help to figure something out.  The game places it your shoulders to figure it out.  This is "player agency".  BDO doesn't hold your hands like other MMO's that point you in a direction and you follow it til the end, BDO, you do your thing and it's fine (unless it's just pepega, like "I want full PEN gear but I only want to RP".  Yeah, that's pepega).

That is the "freedom" associated with BDO that typical, expansion churning, MMO's don't have.  In those types of MMO's, you do the expansion quests, run the expansion dungeons over and over, get BiS gear, wait til new expansion drops and do it all over again.  This is as linear as linear gets, my dude.

Sure, BDO can be perceived as linear in that end-game is basically making silver.  There are META ways to make sivler, like certain grind zones or lifeskills.  And if you want to be making relevant silver, you're kind of "forced" into one of, like 7ish grind zones, depending on your GS, or the META lifeskills.  PVP doesn't make relevant money or much EXP either, so you can't PVP to progress.  So it's like, once you figure out "your thing" and what you like to do, the game can get pretty linear after that.  Compared to typical MMO's, BDO is more sandboxy IMO, but a complete and full sandbox, I don't think BDO is.  But it's way, way closer to one than, say, WoW.

So maybe you can explain how "typical run of the mill" mmo's are "more sandboxy" than BDO?  Because I don't see it.  @KhaosThanathan

BDO may has several systems (combat gear, life skills, etc.) in which you can progress, but progression in each of these systems is purely linear - especially nowadays since PA did implement various "BiS" solutions while killing any notion of having alternatives. To be honest, I don't see any player agency in the current BDO. There are no different reasonable options for gear and there are no real reasonable options for gameplay (you don't even have different build-options - your only option is whether to play succession or awakening and that's still quite new). Sure, some typical themeparks aren't any better after being dumbed down to make them more casual-friendly, but that still doesn't make the situation in BDO any better. BTW: You also have several systems to progress in in other MMOs just like BDO, so I don't quite understand your argument there. BDO also started employing the gear treadmill long ago - especially with Blackstar gear - that's the same themeparks do just in other clothing.