I'd like to take a few minutes to thank the dev team for several of the recent quality of life changes:

Specter's Energy

1. A few weeks ago I started the Blackstar Awakening Weapon questline, and I love it very much. But I've been stuck trying to get a Specter's Energy to complete the quest. I've done 2 to 4 hours a day of heavy PVM trying to get the drop and just couldn't get it. With this week's change to let Rift Bosses drop it, I finally got the Specter's Energy on the third rift boss. Thank you so much!

New Skill

2. You added the "Flow: To Ashes" awakening skill to the Guardian, and I've used it for several hours now and love it tremendously. It's true to the spirit of guardian (slow attack with reasonably hard hit), and it's comfortable to use and balanced on damage and makes the shift-F attack (Cleansing Flame) even more useful. Thank you so much!

XP Boost

3. I'm so very grateful for the 1000% XP boost bonus nights and weekends. For a year I've been so frustrated spending hours a day doing heavy PVM at 61st level and got only 7% into 61st level after months and months of heavy PVM. With this boost I can see the XP go up around 0.5% every couple of hours of PVM, and to be able to see progress is so wonderful. I hope you keep this permanently because it really feels right. It lets us actually get progress by just playing the game. I'm now up to 27% into 61st level, and if you keep this bonus for at least a couple more months I'll finally hit level 62!

Being PKed

4. It isn't a recent change, but I want to thank you anyway for not giving us XP loss when we're player killed. A couple of days ago I got slaughtered twice by somebody, and I asked her afterward what her class and AP was. She answered she was a tamer with 290 AP. 290 AP!?!?! In over 5000 hours of playing I'm yet to reach 260 AP on my main character and 220 in the other 11 characters, haha, but because I had no death penalty for dying there was no issue, and I had a nice conversation with the PK afterward. I don't like how gear-unbalanced the game is in PVP, but so long as we don't lose anything dying I honestly don't mind it. So thanks for the lack of death penalty for being PKed :)

Since the dev team took over the game, I'm overall even happier with the game now than I was the previous year, and I loved the game overall the previous year :) Thanks a ton.

Agree, Pearl Abyss has greatly improved BDO over the years, taking baby steps every week through QoL and feature patches.

FYI PA has always been the "dev" team for BDO.