It seems like you don't even really care. Like you're just banking on Crimson Desert to pick up the slack. I think you're deeply mistaken if that's what you're banking on, because Crimson Desert even if it is a sensation, has no staying power with it lacking multiplayer and character creation.

Yet Black Desert could have lasted a long time. People are still playing Runescape and World of Warcraft. Why let BDO just rot like this without even saying anything or acknoledging how much fo an exodus there has been? Why aren't you comitting to doing something big to bring this game back into the spotlight, like an engine and visual overhaul to make it more competitive with newer games?

Why have you not addressed the situation with PvP? I'm a bit in the middle on this one, because part of me feels like some "PvPers" brought these problems upon themselves with just relentlessly griefing people who had no chance of defending themselves, but at the same time the changes to Guild war declarations was dumb and completely defeats the point of them. I've never participated in large scale PvP personally because I dislike large scale in general, but I think that it's worth considering what people who DO play large scale are saying instead of seemingly ignoring it like you have been. I don't see a problem with karma being family-wide, but the Marni's realm change is questionable, as part of the appeal of BDO is that it's an open world sandbox, so letting people sit around in their own little instance is questionable.

I can't say all of the changes you have done have been bad, because personally I like family-wide lifeskills, and I think the changes to evasion and hits were good for making PvP less stupid. Sovereign weapons was a bad idea though and especially so introducing them at such a controversial time in the game's life where BDO is hemorrhaging players. I already didn't like that you made all three of my PEN Blackstars that I worked very hard for and spent a lot of time getting irrelevant so what incentive do I have to grind TEN new upprade levels. with even worse probability than before when the future of this game is so uncertain? Are you that delusional in thinking that a handful of whales will make up for everything? Why would the whales give you money when there's nobody left for them to feed their inferiority complex with by lording their credit card over others?

The Land of the Morning Light quests are absolutely miserable to play through and I find myself feeling very little motivation to slog through all of them, especially with how poorly done the cutscenes are and how bad the game looks nowadays compared to other games. Cutscenes that focus on close ups with your outdated low poly models with low res textures doing janky animations that make this look like it's a small studio indie game is just painful, even more so when it's a several hour-long ordeal when all I want to do if I'm on the game is the actual enjoyable part, the combat.

I dunno though. Do you even read or care about these posts?

Maybe I'm wasting my time even typing this.

I am waiting for PA to react to the large exodus of players. Hope they do. I'd love to play this game for many more years.

But seeing the population being smaller and smaller, makes me want to go somewhere with a lot more people. I am playing Throne and Liberty now, it's OK. I'd still prefer BDO through. IF PA takes adequate measures to save the game.

The OP is completely oblivious as well as your own post on what is actually going on.  Every single aspect brought up was already addressed.

An overhaul of the engine to keep it up competitive?  You mean like the REMASTERED version!! I wish BDO was as competitive as those other games.  Those imaginary MMO's that have superior graphics and mechanics.  There are litterally ZERO MMO's on the market today and probably in the next few years that are any higher quality by those metrics.

Ignoring large scale? While many won't be very satisfied with the results, the FACT is PA already HAS addressed this issue by giving the option to revert to the old system.  You can argue this is not the right direction, but pretend PA ignored it completely is factually wrong.

Marni Realms: This is one of the best systems PA created, but the audience is the problem.  The actual problem regarding limited resources isn't about the players or their behavior.  The PROBLEM is the game engine CAN NOT SUPPORT a multiplayer MMO environment.  There where critical locations that only supported 1-3 players at times.  Especially if you go back a few years.  This is simply does not work on a server with a capacity for 1000's of players.

If you go into a dungeon on T&L for example you might notice it SUPPORTS A LARGE amount of players.  Something BDO never could.

PA also addressed the Hammers, the lack of diversity, removed the set bonus, added crystals.

BDO crashed and it's not coming back.  However, those are not the reasons why.  BDO has been trash for a long time.  People just put up with it because they had a sliver of content and no competitors.  The systemic problems are both the player base and Pearl Abyss.

The entire enchanting system has always been known as one of the worst aspects of BDO and the #1 reason people quit.  However, the players kept that system alive by paying for it year after year.  Turning PA into a billion dollar company.  So of course BDO kept that trash P2W system and resulted in what it is today.  It's far beyond that though.

Because the P2W model was so easy there was no reason to develope proper systems.  They just plagued the game with P2W all over it.  Nearly all of your benefits in life skilling come from equipment NOT the time you invest in doing those activities.

It's the same thing for combat.  The entire system is based on equipment because it's all centered around P2W.  The real problem is BDO is a shell of a game.  It's a gotcha system wrapped up within a mediocre game just to keep you interacting with it.

So if you want to MAKE BDO GREAT AGAIN! (Really the first time).  You have to cure the cancer.  As Blue pointed out.  Change the business model itself.  Change the mindset.  Build an actual entertaining game FIRST and hire some actual gamers for once.  It won't happen.  But it's probably the only thing that could save BDO at this point.  BDO has far to many problems and fixing Sieges alone for example won't restore the player base.  

I myself have no problem interacting with it, be it a "shell" with a gatcha system... I am fine with slowly working on knowledge, titles...My problem is that PA has completely ignored many aspects of the game, for years, like lifeskilling, sea content. They only focus on pvp content, with questionable results, because of which the top 1 pvp guild left the game and after them most other pvp-ers. If they focus also on improving other aspects instead of giving us completely mediocre and almost empty loml, I'd still play. I am a lifeskiller mostly, sometimes I grind and play casually. If the game is felt that it's being paid attention to, I'd play. But it feels like they are trying to patch only some of the holes in their sock, ignoring their other playerbase, so in the end the other playerbase leaves too. They need to take the bull for the horns, but I doubt they will. Nor they would change the business model. They'd rather let the game die, IMO.

You do care about it being a shell of a game.  None of those things you mention matter because they are game PLAY related not game PAY related.  Level progression, enchanced skills, alternate advancements systems, end game life skilling, are game play issues.  That's why they are so shallow and where not fully developed.

You think that shell of a game doesn't matter?  What do you think handing out PEN Weapons and rushing everyone to end game is all about?  It's NOT about PLAYING the game, it's ALL about PAYING the game.  To get you into the cash shop end game mechanics.  To get you buying those outfits.

The entire end game is now literally all CRONTENT.

This P2W garbage could ruin any game.

Super Mario Bros, 1/15 chance you have to play every level over because you failed a roll.

Final Fantasy 7, 1/12 chance you gain a level otherwise reset your exp

Diablo 2, 1/40 chance you gain a skill point when leveling

Castlevania, You CRON your whip into 1 shotting every enemy

Metroid, 1/30 chance you actually get ANY power up

Those historic mastepieces would be instantly turned into unplayable garbage.  No longer based on playing the game, but sad gimmicks.

CRITICAL HIT

You say that I'm oblivious to what's going on and then contradict yourself. You say BDO already got "remastered" so it doesn't need an engine or graphics upgrade, but then go on to say that the game can't handle large amounts of players because of the engine, which is exactly one of the reasons why I mentioned it needs an engine overhaul.

BDO looks dated and is ugly even compared to MMOs that came out before it now, let alone other games that aren't MMOs but are MMO-adjacent in a way, like The First Descendant, or Elden Ring, or even it's most recent competitor, Throne and Liberty. FFXIV in the areas that have had it's own graphics update look arguably better than Black Desert does, and in some ways even lower fidelity areas in FFXIV and WoW still look "better" than BDO because they're carried by an art style instead of pseudo-realism, and don't have the absolutely egregious levels of pop-in and LOD. BDO also is plagued by broken shaders, bad lighting and color grading, pitifully low-res textures and low poly models despite it attempting to look more realistic, and some laughably bad animations. The engine itself is janky with rubberbanding happening even at times when you aren't lagging, and when you aren't doing combat content too, which it also can't handle mind you, especially as it's gotten faster and faster over the years, which I would consider a good thing if the engine was capable of handling it.

You also go on to mention the P2W, which I also mentioned, ableit only lightly because I feel like it's painfully obvious and doesn't need to be gone over again. I mention that Sovereign (Karazad too, to a somewhat lesser extent) are attempts at baiting whales, but as I said, why would the whales swipe when the game is bleeding players? PA does need to make money though, and it would take a lot to shift away from Crons as a monetization source. The most immediate idea would be lessening the cost of VP/Kama/Old Moon combo to a standard subscription price, but then BDO becomes a subscription MMO which filters F2P players and that could be an issue in itself. I will say that at least BDO's P2W in the past helped both the person paying and the F2P through outfit sales on the market. Though I personally don't care to talk about this as much right now because I think BDO has bigger issues than this personally.

BDO has almost zero competition as far as action combat in an MMO goes, the only game that could arguably compete was TERA and that's been dead for a while now. Open world dungeons that allow solo and party play would have been great. The combat is already good, the engine just needs to be fixed so that it can handle it, and the open world needs dungeons to delve into and explore because BDO is supposed to be a sandbox. That's it's appeal.

Land of the Morning Light story content is a horrendous slog, and I said it in my original post and I also told them even earlier on, perhaps even before it came out (I can't remember at this point) to handle their story content more like From Software does in Souls games, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, where there's not a focus on cutscenes and heavy amounts of dialogue, but instead the story is shown through the environment, or descriptions on items. You can have dialogue with NPCs but if you can't animate good cutscenes then why are you wasting so much time doing that, and wasting everyone else's time making them slog through them all? Just give the NPCs a few good lines of dialogue and let people move on to the gameplay, because that's what BDO does best.

I think you're more oblivious than I am personally, especially if all you can do is follow and parrot whatever some streamer like Blue Squadron said.

What this game could use is inspired developers and leaders with vision that gives everything a purpose in this game.  Give life-skilling guilds a reason to hang out and craft and work together.  Create some safe zones where this can be done.  Make the world open again and create things that make PvP more organic again.  Put more guards in areas where new players hang so they can't get easily poached.  Give higher gearer players more reason and incenitve to duke it out with each other.  Allow for alliances betewen PvP and lifeskill guilds so that when one is attacked, the other can help.  Let us truly craft great gear from the elements found in world rather than a one track system of requiring one weapon type and interacting with a bird statue on an isolated part of the world that has nothing to do with the rest of the world.  Weave the lore into everything so that mundane tasks can have greater purpose.  Let players trade more with each other to support each other.  Right now the only reason to interact with others is to kill people that take your spot, to to kill others to take their spot.  And PA wonders why players are toxic to each other in this game.  The way it's set up really allows for 90% negative interaction, and the other 10% is forced and only in certain situations and places.

Players should be free to play how they want.  Pleayers should be free to hash out problems among themselves.  A game does itse;f no good hen it recreates itself ten years into its existence, thors out its playerbase in hopes that new players will breathe life into it again.  If I knew a game would become something I didn't like two years into playing, as this game did for me (in 2022), why would I even begin to play?  "Hey, if you like it now, be careful, because they might do a 180 and trash it in the near future."  That's not a good way to run things.  

No one person has the perfect answer.  No one person has the perfect way to play.  This game was once freer to pursue many different ways to play.  Now there's really only one, and the reason to play that one way is not tantalizing at all.  Play for PA to feel good about themselves.  Not interested, really............

Black Desert is a game that Pearl Abyss never took seriously.

We all said once the game has a crazy potential, yet Pearl Abyss slept on it. The game is like a menu in a restaurant, a menu that didn't change at all after 8 years of global, and 10 years in global.

Entrance : New class
Main : New region
Dessert : Rework
Coffee : QoL

This is how Pearl Abyss.


They have been sleeping since so long that people are finally waking up.

Yes BDO remaster is a complete joke. I've stopped to use and I'm back to normal graphism, and guess what ? Game is more stable, light is better and doesn't make me blind. Colour are better. Textures are more neutral.
Remaster just enhance some texture and light, yet you can clearly see crazy pixel.

PVP got destroyed because of cry babies that don't want to play it while it's legit said that the game is PVP. They removed war because griefers weren't happy to get farm.
They destroyed Node Wars because they wanted new players to join it without any requirement since those newbies complained about how try hard it was. Yet it didn't changed anything from the try hard part, even in T1 NW, it's full try hard with platoon full of META classes running META buffs.
In the end, they made NW just a random last hit content, where a single man, from a no-name guild can get the node by waiting the last second, no more strategy, no more fun. Just frustration and anger.

The DP & hits changes were good; but now they forgot to really balance classes. Some are OP, some does DMG but doesn't survive, and some useless.
Even the PVE changes from october is a complete joke. Some class are crazy good for grinding, yet some are just pointless.


Lifeskill ? Dunno what's that, they made trading even worst with a rework than what it was. The rest is just whatever, you do them for extra money.

PVE is a joke, running circle, farming deboreka, getting crazy AP to be capped on most spot.


Game is a joke sadly, lately I just log to talk to friends, I don't do anything else. Black Desert should be renamed Cron Desert. Sovreign weapon is disgusting, you don't need FS or mats, you need CRONS. New Karazad accessories will be same.
Still saying there is no P2W is a complate run away from the truth. Remember, they released a enchanting pouch, that for 100€ at least, was giving almost 20K crons.


Pearl Abyss is making everything worst, they don't want to face the truth. They prefer to make more contents for cash shop than making contents for players.

On steam, game dropped from 30K to 15K players. If players still saying game isn't dying, then explain that shit . Plus we don't even have the number for non steam players.

You are using a few rare examples of the highest fidelity graphics ever released as a base line of what an MMO should be.  Which are also NOT MMO's.  They don't incur the same technical issues of drawing and updating players in a massive multiplayer environment.  Nor is WOW by any standards an equivelant to BDO in graphics.  The "stylized graphics" only keep WOW from looking very aged they do not put it on the same stage as more modern MMO's.

Unreal 5+ is capable of producing some of the highest quality graphics in the world, but NO ONE to this date has a functional released MMO using that engine.  At best T&L (Originally Unreal 4) is maybe on par with BDO, but only due to players downgrading their own graphics in BDO for performance.

The defect in BDO is only partially the engine, but mainly the combat mechanics.  Increase the mobility in T&L X3.  Quadruple the AOE size and give players 20X damage.  T&L would INSTANTLY have over crowding issues.  It turns out you can't allow single players to destroy a 4 mile radius in game.  It's so OBVIOUS yet I don't recall another player EVER figuring that out.