Devs have already denied PvE servers, as stated on this post: https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=26049

As this has been repeated quite a few times in Dev Commentaries, Feedback posts, Calpheon / Heidel Balls etc, I dont personally expect their stance on the subject to change any time soon.

I haven't experienced random PKing in a few months. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen but the people playing seem to be a lot more calm and respectful than they were a year ago. If it happens it might happen once every month or two and it's more of a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. When I lifeskill, people either ask how much time I have left or swap without asking. I do the same. Seems very courteous. There's marni's realm so if people try to outgrind you, you can just use Marni's realm for an hour.

The world is pretty big now and has a lot more places where people go, lots of servers, and now double the elvia realms. Add Marni to all of this and it's pretty unlikely something bad will happen unless you AFK horse train.

Hmm. Personally I've been afk horse training for the better part of the last 2 years (not counting the few months i spend on dummies to get that 66) and I have been randomly killed a total of one (1) time, which was when i forgot that i was on arsha. Using duvencrune safe zone, i have not experienced much issues myself.

yep have been wagon training 10+ hours a day everyday the last 2 months never been pk'd

Sooner or later they will do it anyways, they have to do it to attract new players in the long run....

The 3 Most hated System for any MMORPG Gamer are

- Negative Item progression

- Forced Open World PvP

- P2W

BDO has all 3 of those... sooner or later they have to adjust it, or they just run out of players. Like seriously how many new players you see ingame? The Season servers and Olvia are not even Overrun.

Source that isnt personal opinon for the most hated systems? Also people wont come to the mmo not because of any of things you listed exception of P2W. The reason the games not getting fresh players at this point is because of the fact people are seeing complaints about new content being buggy and not as polished as they use to be. Also class balance being non existent with specific classes having extreme amounts of overtuning an others being completely useless.Also the visual issues that are getting worse, visual fidelity going down the drain is really hurting the game right now since it isnt the best looking MMORPG anymore because of rendering distance reduction and textures not loading in properly multiple topics on the issue and PA still has not fixed them even though they got most improved game of the year its also been the most degraded game of the year at the same time with specific things that have happend which is a massive no for alot of people

Also buy the gear instead of enhancing, i remember when you use to talk about naru gear being to hard kekw. If it is that hard to enhance just by spamming to get pen then i would say buy gear only , before you talk about name on a item , the name just means you got lucky or alot of work went into the item either way buying it still means you worked for it.  The name litterally means nothing go grind an buy all items if needed. Leave the cursed system for people who enjoy it an make money of it like Biohack and Salt.

The thing about those things are also key points to making a killing off of a free to play game. P2W and negative item progression go together very well. This part of gambling is why we can still play BDO without a mandatory subscription service since whales be whales. I wouldn't mind a subscription service but they already have their business model working for them and it seems to work.

Forced open world PvP isn't really forced here, you can opt-in at level 50 or just play on seasonal servers since there's pretty much always a season server. But even if that weren't possible, BDO has more servers than active players. Joking aside, there's a lot of normal servers + their evlia equivalent, then there's marni's realm and then there's also seasonal, arsha and olvia servers. That is a lot of choices!

Top top it off, the world is pretty big, so big that you hardly ever encounter other players grinding especially if you choose spots that are slightly less rewarding than others. For places with good rewards, there's Marni.

BDO was once really toxic. It was toxic becaues of a few factors:

#1 - The world was small. It didn't even have a desert on its relese as I remember. So grind spots were pretty tense.

#2 - The hype was real and everyone was playing BDO, so there was a lot of players for the few servers that were available. Lots of conflict.

#3 - Information was never available. There weren't websites with databases or guides. Everyone was their own encyclopedia. This means competition.

#4 - Kakao servers were trash. The max uptime during a day was probably 2 hours if you were lucky. People were angry since they weren't fixing this. I don't know how the servers were between the remastered release and before PA took over publishing though.

#5 - Lack of moderation under Kakao's rule

#6 - There were a lot of punishing game mechanics compared to today

There could have been more reasons but BDO was the most toxic game anyone could play but you could not play the game without getting griefed, PK'd or whatever and that's only if you were able to connect to the server. BDO was a joke in the MMO community and there was really few people who remained. Honestly, Kakao really screwed BDO's potential because there were waves of people leaving in anger.

But ever since PA took over publishing, they have doing a much better job. Every month they seem to improve themselves as a company and the game itself seems to get better. With that, people become more content and less griefing will happen because of angry people and bored players. The game is a lot less punishing too. When it comes to random PKing, it happens, sure... But if they just fix the part where you lose some buffs on death and some transport items, there wouldn't be any more worries about getting PK'd. It would just be an incovenience. That's my 2cents anyway...