Forums are usually places to write complaints. I think this is because semi-permanent things are like bulleton boards

- We always start out thinking they are going to read like the ones in a school yard. Like under the bicycle shed by the sport's field. People post whatever is going on. "Hey, we need five more people for our soccer club. Practice is at...!", or "Robotics Club! Visiting professor from local university attending. Early college credits to those who join in the summer!"

Instead they usually turn into frustration reports:

- "I run into a bug at loc: -3141, 702. Floating rocks."

Which further devolve into:

- "You haven't fixed this in four years!"

- which I'm sure for the devs feels like the Titanic meme, "It's been 84 years."

Anyway, point is... Developing games is... ... English needs better emotional expression. "Tough" and "Passion" and "Projects of Love" should all have a single word. 

- This means it hurts to know sometimes the things you make aren't appreciated. It's like Magnus. I guess people got frustrated with that? I don't know. I genuinely cannot see why. Maybe growing up through this last decade was not such a great time. If you look at people in the 1970s, 80s, or 90s they didn't have internet things like we do today. The 70s only had arcade machines. That meant most of your time was still with peole doing things you could with other people. The fun was all there IN that. I think that's how we eventually got to BDO. D&D. Getting together with friends in the same room. Struggling to like each other and get along. Even though some days we'd maybe have preferred other company. I think that's how it was back then. You had to get along so you tried.

Today it's not like that. I think must have started fairly recently. I know my family didn't have reliable internet for all of my parent's life. That meant the internet only really became available commonly around 2009? Before that someone having it was mostly "quaint" "novelty". So, all this stuff with gaming online is kind of 'new'.

I know there were things like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot. However, that path for the gaming industry nearly died because of theif companies like World of Warcraft. They'd just copy-paste the lowest-grade most-barebones elements of higher grade things into their stuff. Like how Starcraft is mysteriously similar to Warhammer 40k, but Warhammer came first. So, there's a great scar in the history of gaming from the point Warcraft and its clones enters gaming until it started to die a few years ago. People didn't understand, back then, that the only reason everyone was playing World of Warcraft is it would run on those brick-computers. So, games with extensive environments and vast landscapes like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot had no chance. They demanded too powerful graphics in an era that wasn't ready for it.

I think the MMO genre would have died then. If not for Black Desert. 

The Americans and Europeans are just imperialists. They make a company and then sell it into a company that buys companies. It then turns into a hydra that buys still other things. There's no soul, passion, love, or enterprise besides consumption to their projects.

Black Desert feels ALIVE. The stories in it are sweet and FEEL like people just living in that world. People complain that there isn't this "grand" narrative. However, I don't think they are really complaining about that. They just don't like culture. They've never looked up what Kishotenketsu is. So, they see a story that doesn't have a central struggle happening in the West and say, "What is this?" Meanwhile, for those of us that know another way to experience a story it's so liberating. We can go and FIND the story HAPPENING. We're not the big-fish causing the world to be drown in our doings. We're OURSELVES. 

...and so is everything and everyone else in the BDO world. 

I love how we encounter the Bartoli's and each one is their own person. I love Edan's little crew of people. I loved meeting the Maewha during the Magnus quest. To see all our characters having their own stories, we ourselves (having ours playing), might not have realized they (our characters) were having. It's nice. Really nice. I wish more games would do stories this way. To me, Magnus was like reaching a tiny shard of Enlightenment. Getting to see "the future" and "the possible" threads our characters COULD take or HAD taken (if). How worlds are constructed. How mysterious the BDO world actually IS. It was all wonderful. 

I think gamers today are a little too robotic. Put the candy in front of them. They rush to each it like a snapping dog. Sometimes biting your hand as they do. This is because games usually structure on "getting" something. It's not like getting together for D&D online anymore. We forget to enjoy the time we're having. When gaming is instead LIVING something, people aren't sure what they 'got'. They've been too often trained to "want" and expect to "get". Yet, when they are on Discord talking about it they kind of liked it. They just aren't sure why. So, they complain that it didn't "progress" them. Again, they are too robotic.

And that's because... well... Look at something like Aria (the anime) Season 2:

"Looking For That Treasure" is the episode.

- Playing BDO, to everyone I've talked with, FEELS like the ending of that episode. If you haven't ever seen this I suggest getting together with your entire staff and watching it.

BDO and Aria have so much in common.

And that's why I love this game. 

There are two types of rewards in games. The ones you earn IN the game that move your character ahead in whatever temporary satisfaction that "treasure" can provide. And then there are games like BDO. When I get to the end of my life and where the wall reads "GOAL" some of the most heartfelt JOYFUL memories I will have will be from the time I've spent playing this game. 

You made a good thing with this game. All the years of it, all the ways it brought me together with other people I've also spent years with, and all the experiences GAINED from it are truly precious treasures to me.

So, ... thanks. Really, and truely.

It's rare to encounter something in life worth truly praising, but all the years I've had in BDO have been just wonderful. You did good work, here.

Whoever you all are. Good work. 

For sure, thanks are a rare occurrence on forums, but you're right, BDO is still a funny experience despite its flaws, if you appreciate the travel and you're not willing to find a game in which you simply run toward the next assigned daily/weekly goals (as I call it, the "spoon-fed fun"), BDO is by far one of the best alternatives.

It is not perfect, but which game is? 

I too, would like to express these sentiments!  This is the best game I've ever played!  I'm very grateful for the weekly updates, as it shows that the Devs have a continual interest as well. 

As this is supposed to reflect on the positives and not the negatives, I will not bring up my usual pet peeves.  It is obvious that some of our conerns are taken seriously, and aspects are updated and changed in ways that do not seem to break the game, but improve it.  I am grateful for this!  I do appreciate the light-hearted approach to most things in the story, and how some of the events are presented.  It is obvious that imagination  and creativity are important foundations to this game, and I appreciate that.  Also, they see our time is valuable, and they take steps to helps us maximize our investment, without seriously altering the playstyle or feel of the game.

Many thanks!

OP, you and I have been around for a long time, so many years really. 2016 perhaps? We've seen this game be the most anticipated MMORPG to be released into the most devestating game to play in just one year's time. It was difficult to login and stay logged in for more than an hour and it was a daily problem. Kakao was a terrible publisher but the moment that PA took over years later, they seemed to be looking into "how do we recover from the negative light?".

It took over a year (has it already been about two?) but they managed to turn things around and improved vastly. Magnus was bad because it was so broken on release and there were some questional gameplay decisions but overall it wasn't terrible.  Fortunately they are now working on a game they sat on for a while. I'm not saying they didn't improve it, they just didn't focus on it competitively. Now they're actually releasing content after content, fix after fix, they are listening to player feedback and implemented a feedback board (which I requested a couple of months ago woo!).

I've had some of my ideas implemented in the game, I've seen others have theirs and the game keeps getting better and better. I don't know what happened exactly but this game especially in the past year, has become much, much better and their attitude/tone has changed completely. There's still a lot of work to do but I definitvely see them being more appreciative of us as their customers / fans than ever before and I see this through their efforts. To that end, it's been a rollercoaster and we're now going up the rollercoaster track. I hope it won't go down again lol