It starts getting light at 1 a.m.; roosters start crowing an hour later. I don't know what kind of hellscape this is (and what lattitude they're living at - is this high summer in northern Yukon Territory?), but I could not endure such apocalyptically brief nights.

lol, I know right? If I remember correctly, the game used to have a proper night/day system where at night time you could actually see stars because it got so dark. But unfortunately, they made it more casual eventually and the game has unfortunately a terrible night/day cycle on regular servers. On season for example, there's no night, it's just day time 24/7 and on servers like Mediah, the time randomly changes around and never synchronizes with anyone. In fact, I'd argue that game-time changes from player to player because I have a friend who plays next to me and we often don't share the same game time. It's crazy black magic desync.

Its about that time of the year were I live but I dunno about hellscape. Its more like heaven for plants because of the amount of daylight hours so they can make up for the longer winters.

i pretty sure they are in southern hemisphere

black desert world is not so bad, only valencia is really harhs area and maybe eternal winter area

but when i compare with tera or guild war or lineage the world of black desert is ok, they are not under threat of end of world, they have slaver, bandits, disease, mad scientist and some cursed area, but most area didnt turn into ruin or suffer scorched earth and their world seem in peace with only small revolt, but not war at large scale 

because at night it was so dark we see nothing even with the lamp

It would have been nice if it were dark for longer, but they do this because darkness is already an obstacle to gameplay, mobs are stronger, and you can't see anything without bio-illuminescent bugs or fairies. 

I'd that overall the world is quite immersive and realistic. The thing that does throw me off is that east and west are reversed, such that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

darkness is not a problem anymore night time look like night time in new york or tokyo at cloudy night, not so dark you can read a book even at night, before yes it was so dark i cant see beyond 3 meters from my character even with lamp

because we are not on earth, but on another planet ^_^

BDO obviously is not on Earth.  I don't know why all fantasy games use the default moon pictures from NASA, but the moon on this planet resembles Earth.  Their moon rises in the southwest and sets in the west.  Sun rise is in the west and sets in the east.  The scale of distance is shown on our trakers as meters.  Drop a map marker in Velencia and stand in Calpheon, the distance isn't more than 13 miles or 20 kilometers.  Either the planet is very small or we have barely seen it all.  All the evidence makes no logical sense when trying to ponder it.  But  the great thing about fantasy is, we can turn off the science mind, shrug, and say, "Because magic duh!?".  I don't need some Star Wars nerd telling me I can't be a Jedi without a good midichlorian count!  I will get my midichlorians from the Jedi puppet master Yoda with a long needle. Why do I need to train in the swamp, if all I really need to do is inject  intelligent microscopic life forms into my body?

@Calpheonian about the light question.

It gets dark almost pitch black in most places from 10 PM to midnight.  Then the moon rises and gives the players without morningstar on our fairies light to see. After the moon sets at 2 AM we have a morning civil twilight until dawn breaks at 7 AM.  This is obviously done for players to continue playing the game outside the cities with or without fireflies.  The nine hours between 10 PM to 7 AM, is roughly 90 minutes of real game time.  Players would be crying about the darkness, if it lasted the full 90 minutes and not just +20 it does already.  

Have fun!