This is a perfect example of how no MMO developer can please everyone.  
  
They've got some people quitting the game because they can't grind peacefully for even 1 hour a night, and the marni realm helps this. 
They've got some people quitting the game because the lack of spontaneous world-pvp-griefing makes the grind feel lonely and boring, and the marni realm hurts this. 

  
Everything is a compromise. What makes one player unhappy doesnt bother another player, what makes one player happy makes another player unhappy, etc, etc.   
  
One thing seems to be true, though -- this game has a crazy attrition rate. Just look at Node Wars, Red Battlefield, Arsha -- you consistently see a lot of old familiar faces, not a lot of new players. Seems like fewer new players rising up to replace those who fall out. New players just... aren't making it that far.    
  
Not sure what the solution is?

I agree, MMORPGs cannot be satisfied with everyone, but they shouldn't do that at all. Above all, a self -proclaimed Sandbox MMORPG shouldn't try something like that. We already have enough MMORPGs that try to have something for everyone. Instead of improving his "deficits", one should further promote the strengths of the game. The resources that PA put into this boring story Questline in Eternal Winter, for example, could have put them in somewhere else. BDO, however, is becoming more and more a MMORPG that is compromising, and thus becomes more and more equal as all other MMORPGs.

I am not sure why. I can only speculate. I think that is because the game was not motivated to make wars/sieges, RBF or go to Arsha. This is "End Game" content and most of the new players don't have the time or patient to wait until they are taken.

Most of all new players just manage to complete the season. After that, BDO's slow progress reveals itself. And if this progress only consists of grinds, without social interactions, without great variety and fun, then most leave the game. I believe that most of the new players start with BDO, blinded up by the graphic and the combat system and expect a massively multiplayer online sandbox game. At the End most of them playing solo. And I think that they play solo, not because thats more fun, but because there is no reason from that is given from the game itself.

if bdo is a solo focus game i guess its becoz "dungeon like mmo" fail to socialize ppl also, look how it work when u wanna make a group for dungeon ( example: lost ark, wow, neverwinter etc etc ) the group leader look at ppl gear lvl and choose wich ppl will be added or not... this is an elitist system that make ppl feels like shit when they are just casual player wanna have fun with other and cant advance in gear progress ( or very slowly )

Yea its not all the time the case, sometimes ppl carry the team into dungeon and they are cool to do so but after a few months, years, its less and less the case you can even wait hours to find a team... thats where bdo grinding system is somehow a solution: you can start any kind of content w/o waiting for other ppl to join or accept you

i believe bdo feels soulless not becoz of the lack of ppl interaction ( we have node war , even the market place system is a player to player trading you just dont choose who you trade with and so what? who care the result is the same and the most important that system make Farm bots non existant ! bots that breaks so many mmo's ingame economy... ) well i believe its the PVE system that lack Soul, bdo world itself is lacking souls... the NPC are soulless, the Mobs are empty sockets ( Dead IA ) players will grind in the same exact way for hours and hours and years... 2h of fun pvp and 10h of boring pve per day... if you dont grind you pvp will become shit so you force to grind, you force to get a bad experience of loosing you life time doing bullshit content... i dream of an complete UPDATE OF PVE SYSTEM, idk somethin like changing the dark rift system into somethin with more story, more script like Red nose appearing, gathering a army of imps to invade Velia , kidnapping NPC, make the NPC dead for sometime if not saved in time, getting acknowledgement of NPC saved! and so on it can be a endless solo/party story that make the world of bdo more living... well but no... PA want to focus on doing endless new characters for more and more balance works in anticipation coz their Devs Loves to balance bdo characters ( didnt you noticed every patch notes is a character balancing more or less ? ) PA devs feels usefull that way: create new Characters with a lot of rewarmed mechanics, release the shit then listen to players crying ( or not ), balance the new class, and 4 months later repeat!! that's the real story of BDO lol then let release some new Elvia zone with the same bullshit dead grindin system in rotation for ever... cool bdo world thx PA... i do have thousands of hours in bdo but its over now i dont want to come back in guys... awak drakania  looks cool but i dont care lol

Call it a hot take if you will. But I think the blame is only partially on PA. They could design the systems to engage players in cooperation more, sure. As a guild master, I wholly support that and wish they would. Especially if they give us better community management tools (come on PA, guilds are hard to run! Anything we can do about that?) My community would benefit a lot from that. But ultimately most players' mindsets are a major player here (same with karmabombing/griefing, but that's a whole other topic.) As the GM of a very new/returning player friendly, "play how you want" sandbox style guild, I've seen my share of player types come and go. Our leadership literally offers events practically every day of the week to do as a guild or in groups around peak NA times.

We run T1 node wars twice per week. Guild bosses once a week, Atoraxxion, Vell x 2, Khan, etc. We pull quite a few numbers for most events, but I can't tell you the amount of times an officer or I have posted an announcement on the guild discord looking for an idea of how many can attend an event, and only get 5-10 let us know out of a 90+ member guild with literally 90+ active members at any given time. Sure, part of that is the fact that we have many time zones and most of us have jobs and families to take care of. But really, it's not hard to read an announcement and let us know by reacting. A few minutes maybe? Yet most members won't bother. Why?

My theory is that many are not as concerned with actual "group" content in game (granted, a lot are!) as much as they are having a community where they feel at home in BDO. A place where they can chill, play the game for a bit, and just have fun hanging out with people. Like the game itself, you can't have the typical old-school "theme-park MMO" mindset. BDO has a different kind of community because it's a different kind of game. The blame lies partially on PA, the community itself, and even guilds. Because it's not as easy as people think to lead a functioning, healthy guild in BDO (again, come on PA! I have faith in you!) but also a very large amount of guilds let players down, especially new/returning. Everything from dead guilds (or feeling dead at least), to requirement guilds, to toxic guilds. We don't make it easy as a community to welcome people into the kind of community they need to be around, especially if they're new or returning players. To say BDO isn't social isn't true. It's as social as you make it and mostly relies on guilds for that social structure. Find the right guild, and the game becomes a vastly different place. It just takes a lot by guild leadership to make that happen, and I think most likely it's related to the sandbox nature of the game itself, really.

You completely miss my point. i´m not mainly complaining about a lack of social contant, i´m complaining about the lack of impact, that the player can have on each other with Features or Systems of the Game world that arises by itself with spontaneity and the unexpected, just because its opend designed.

These are the fundamental conditions for a real Sandbox MMORPG. What you address are systems/contant from Themepark MMORPG's. What I want are more tools and systems with which you can influence other players and the game world (opend designed). Not only in a positive, but also a negative way. I don't just want to make content for making new friends and work together.

If players exclude other players from a certain content because their gear is too bad, then these are also social interactions that I want. I just don't want the game to decide whether you can take part in content or not. For example, that you can participate in a dungeon, only when you have a gearscore of at least 600 or something.

What you want is a game world with more content through story and a horizontal progress system so that group content is not excluded. The perfect MMORPG would be Guild Wars 2 for you.

BDO is said to be a sandbox MMORPG with a strong vertical progress system. And I think that's a good thing. I am not interested in the story in an MMORPG. If I want a story, I prefer to play a solo offline game. When I play an MMO, I primarily want to experience my own story, which only arises from the influence of other players. But especially this influence is not enough for me in BDO.

I don't understand why some players complain about the grinding, slow progress or missing story content. That misses my point.

I give you a few concrete examples from BDO that I would change, which would make it more sandbox as I understand it.

1. Rift Boss could be attacked by everyone. One boss. as with the World bosses.

2. Every boss, every NPC has only one loot pool. There is no individual loot. A group rolls for the loot or talk about who gets which item. This would also give Open World Pvp a completely new meaning. Different groups want to kill the same boss, but do not want to share the loot with other groups. As a result, you fight the other groups while trying to kill the boss and get the loot right. Or decide to deal with other groups and become a large group and share the loot. its up to the players.

3. RBF and AOS can be queued as a group.

4. Real Space Player Housing instead of instance Housing

5. Real Player-to-Player Trading (I know is a very difficult topic. It's just an example, no claim.)

6. No level requirement for anything.

7. revamp the karma system and add a bounty hunter system

That would be all changes that "open" the systems. This gives the players the freedom and the opportunity to have a greater impact on the mutual gaming experience and the game world. sometimes a positive or negative influence.

lol u will understand my complains after 5,0000 hours of braindead grindin in rotation... KR devs dont understand that occidental point: there is no fun in tightening a screw all day long..... i mean its a adventure... its a game!!... w/o a story or reason behind your every action in a game you will auto make it into a stupid content ( soulless )

i mean what you goal in bdo? its gearing up for best performance in pvp rigth? ( if not your not on the rigth mmo ) i told you 90% of the time u will spend in bdo is a pve content and sadly this pve content is boring... no real bdo endgamer will deny this fact... pve in bdo sux !! and you will spend 90% of your time on pve content ! 

i dont understand why you dont see that its so clear to me now... ( well after 5,000 hour of grind btw ... lmao )

i mean your points about player to player interaction are legit, maybe your rigth but from my experience ( for example ) not being able to join a dungeon party becoz your lacking gear LVL sux, i never felt more lonely in those mmo if you dont keep up the gear progression at the same speed as other nolife gamer... i do have a work man and i dont like to wait hours for a group to accept me into pve content... and you want that just becoz its the real sandbox stahdard? lol there's a game perfect for you called Lost ark you will trade player to player, elitist sytem for dungeon etc... im not sure if its a sandbox like you belive its shoud be but it looks like what your looking for

what is a sand box standard? do u thing you opinion about what a sandbox mmo shud be is the standard? or the only way a sandbox shud be? defined what a sand box mmo is ... and even after you do i can tell you everyone has it own definition of sandbox coz  its relate to your perception of freedom or convenience in a game BDO already reduce our freedom of trading like player to player becoz of bots farmer... does its make less sandbox? maybe but i believe its a better system than a "basic" sandbox becoz of its convenience 

A sandbox game means that you have not a prefabricated content, but make it yourself content. For this you need free/open systems and tools that are connected to many other things. So can have an impact on each other.

A theme park game is the opposite. Prefabricated content is given to the players who only needs to be consumed. Content like Story Questlines, Dungeons, Raids. Each form of instance or Storytelling is a prefabricated content. These are self -contained systems that have no influence on the rest of the game world or the players.

This is not my definition. You can read that everywhere.

Games like WoW, GW2, LA, ESO are more Themepark MMORPGS
Games like BDO, Archeage, Albion, New World are more sandbox

You just complain about something completely different from what this topic is about. And your proposal as you can fix this (for example by Story Quest) basically contradicts what I want. Your proposal is a theme park concept. I want BDO more sandbox.

Guild Wars 1 proved you don't need grind to pad out endgame. The devs there just gave people a ton of classes with a ton of skills and limit them to picking only a few to "create a build". This meshed well since the game was focused on PvP, hence GuildWars. Playing through the story to get to endgame was a nice experience. And when you get to endgame you find yourself in an endless PvP puzzle with thousands of builds you can play and experiment with. The game had a lot of soul. Just not the exact same kind OP describes.

well i see better what your proposals are and it's a choice bdo made long time ago while creating it, because of the large community they were expecting and because its not a game like archeage or albion system, they decided to make most of content more democratic or user friendly like housing, world boss drop, rift boss and focus the elitist aspect on pvp 

that's a bias they choose i believe to avoid unecessary toxicity, yea it feels less realistic that way i agree with you having less the feeling of owning this world but once you become someone relevant in pvp, people will know and remember you without caring to mutch over thoses alt content.

anyway, for me the worse they did well to avoid is the player to player trading becoz toxicity of bot farming

RBF queued in group could lead to the same OP team rolling over everyone again and again with no chance of winning, but well im not really against it since bdo choose to make pvp content a elitist content so ok, they should do the same for RBF and AOS but again it's a choice between user friendly or elitist content both have legit reasons ( will it become something player will compete over or is it mostly a training ground )

Well anyway my proposal like you said looks like a themepark concept but i dont like to frame it into something too simple based on a repetitive story instanced, i'm talking about making this world alive by itself. I mean something like the npc villagers having issues with mobs around and then players choose to help or not or make it worst.

Adding to that players actions it would lead to different responce from npc or impacting nodes fonctionality or making the life skilling impacted like gathering wolf meat being impossible because imps around killed them already... it looks so weird to see imps on a plain walking side by side with rabbits w/o hunting them... that many details around artificial intelligence in the game looks soulless for mewould be great if improved