Per the last Calpheon Ball, Pearl Abyss announced that Mercenaries would no longer be allowed to partake in guild bosses, in order to accommodate a future revamp to guild bosses that is coming in January 2026. This is a short-sighted, destructive, and poorly thought out decision. Removing the ability for Merc to partake will have a severe impact on the BDO Community. As an example in the European region, there's over a thousand player doing this activity every day. Removing the ability to do this every day would kill off this large community aspect in BDO. There's no sense in it, and the claimed balancing concern is not relevant when the bosses would take significantly more time to kill with less players dealing damage.

TL;DR Don't do this. It's an all around bad decision. Find a different way to handle the situation.

Edit 3: The 7-Jan-2026 KR update increased the gold bars silver output from guild bosses from 1,850m-2,750m to 3,850m-5,250m (Global Lab -> Live game). While this buff is appreciated, it does nothing to address the disbandment of a large community collaboration and interaction. Unless Pearl Abyss provides an activity that replicates this, or re-allows War Heroes to participate in guild bosses, the damage this update will cause to the community will be long-lasting.

Edit 2: As expected from Pearl Abyss, they've completely disregarded the community's call to reconsider this decision. The Global Lab update details the same update that was announced during the Calpheon Ball. This is very dismissive of the players and only serves to demonstrate their deep lack of appreciation to our support for the game (despite many claims to the contrary, actions will always speak louder than words). Below, I will be listing some numbers regarding those changes.

◆ Gold bars payout from doing all 5 bosses after the update (note: this is best case scenario, you may get less silver in practice):

Level 0 bosses: 1,850m (per week)

Level 1 bosses: 2,150m (per week)

Level 2 bosses: 2,450m (per week)

Level 3 bosses: 2,750m (per week)

◆ Gold bars payout from doing x8 boss runs with the current system:

9,600m per week

This is a 71% to 81% reduction in weekly silver from guild bosses.

The argument attempting to favor these changes by saying that you spend less time on guild bosses with the new system is largely irrelevant, as the vast majority of guilds will experience a 50%-80% loss in DPS, caused by the inability to hire Mercenaries (War Heros), while the bosses will only lose 10%-22% HP (the higher range goes for lower boss difficulties, which most guilds will not use). This means that the majority of guilds will be spending at least double the time to kill the bosses if not more. This is also not going to be offset by the degree some are expecting through the use of main accounts, as the bosses seemingly have invisible AP caps, making it very difficult to properly utilize higher AP.

Not only does this massivelly reduce the weekly silver from Guild Bosses, but as previously mentioned, it destroys all the communities that were built around doing it. Pearl Abyss risks losing many players if this change go forward in the way it is shown.

Edit: As there seem to be confusion about the current state of Guild Bosses and the upcoming changes, I will do my best to clarify that.

So, at the beginning of this post, I said that Pearl Abyss plans to prohibit Mercenaries from participating in Guild Bosses of other guilds for the supposed reason of maintaining balance (I've edited this now to better reflect the change. Keep reading to better understand the change). This is a correct statement that can be verified by watching the Calpheon Ball live stream. However, what many seem to not understand/know is that this statement was not said in relation to the current state of the Guild Bosses. It was said in relation to the state of Guild Bosses after Pearl Abyss update them with different bosses and different rewards (that Pearl Abyss claims to be better than what a current Guild Boss full rotation provides).

You can watch the announcement here: https://youtu.be/RG1zxeo5R0k?t=6530
If you want to read the announcement faster, the transcript can be found here: Guild Bosses Mercenary change transcript

In the transcript I've bolded the most relevant part and underlined the keyword there, "would". Pearl Abyss was speaking in the future tense, about how there would be imbalance if they have proceeded with their plan to buff the loot from guild bosses while retaining the Mercenary system as-is. Which means, the current system isn't imbalanced, as if it was, they would've said so or even addressed it much sooner, not after approx. 1.5 years. But moving on... given their announcement, one may think "Well, they have a fair point, in order to buff loot from guild bosses, this nerf is necessary". And judged in a vacuum, that statement would be correct. However, this dismisses the fact that nobody asked for such a buff to begin with. This is something that Pearl Abyss came up with on their own, unsolicited.

So, in other words, Pearl Abyss invented this problem out of nothingness by deciding to implement this so-called "buff", where then they claim that unless they disable the Mercenary guild boss participation, the balance would then be distorted. For those cognizant enough to see through this, they can easily identify how this is a manipulative tactic designed to gain more control over how we play the game and earn rewards. Not only that, but this so-called buff to (what will be) a weekly guild boss run will in fact be a nerf for the vast majority of guilds, as over 90% of guilds require many Mercenaries to kill bosses in a reasonable time frame. Buffing the end-reward while requiring much more time to obtain will only lead to a much lower silver per hour ratio, and this is not even accounting for the loss of six other loot opportunities that they're taking down with this change.

I support this,  PA add a role or system for Guild Aid or something so that small guilds with Gbosses up can get help from more players.

I would make the loot questwise like f.e. garmoth to handle the maxloot per week problem

I agree, this is a great opportunity, especially for beginners, to earn a little extra silver. I actually expected them to make a double reward for one week, but they decided to remove it altogether

There is a lot in the game right now that should be removed altogether, starting with many useless quests and ending with other useless content.

In my opinion, a good solution would be, that only the guild member would get the enhanced loot and the mercs would get the same loot as it is now. This would be a slight buff for the mercs (5 instead of 4 bosses) and the desired buff for the original guild. This also allows small guild to host guild bosses, because without mercs many small guilds aren't able to run those bosses. Big upside would be, that big communitys wouldn't die out. EU has 3 big Guild boss servers (that i know of), which would eventually disband, because of that change.

What a great way to discourage people from playing and creating community. Don't do this there are more than 5000 players affected

hbu NJET

PA only need money, that's why they will do anything to delete only one profitable activity and force you to buy profit boxes with crones and other enchant items from IS. This game is already dead, all activities is unprofitable without Item Shop. 

There is also the social aspect.

We've met new guildmates through guild boss mercing, checking out our guild before deciding, it is a good way to get some insights into a guild you might be looking to join before.

Also, to gather friends from other guilds once in a while for some fun.

And meeting new people all around!

This is actually quite big for me, I will stop all acoin buyings and reduce my play to only afk things, or even go on a half year or endless break if this doesn't get resolved.

Do you listen PA? I will not spend another euro on this game until this has been rectified.