Well, as much as I found Shadow Arena fun, I think that only players who liked the BDO vibe and were informed about it could play it.

Don't forget that the game has never been "officially" launched (still in beta) and they changed their orientation several times (solo play, then 3-players team, to go back to solo, there was even a time without solo mode ; they also heavily dumbed down the difficulty to learn skills and controls).

Many games would have also been killed in such conditions. 

Shadow Arena was such a great time and it's one of the biggest reasons I logged into BDO daily. The whole stand-alone version was a complete flop, let's be honest. I tried so hard to get into it and advertised it to so many people but it just wasn't what it used to be when it was inside of BDO as a mini-game.

I would love to see it brought back, highly doubt it would happen, but if it ever does I hope it's the original form. Not a single person would play more than a match if it's the version the standalone ended up becoming.

Shadow Arena meant more to BDO players cause it brought moments of happiness & joy for them after their long repeated grind. The Shadow Arena was very fun as it not only was fun but also contributated on player's gear progression. PVP enjoyers could PVP and progress thier gear and PVE players could just PVE and progress through PVE. Players could chose thier main class in SA to play & enjoy the game mode. I came to BDO when shadow arena was just released because of shadow arena & it's contribution, i was happy playing the game and was motivated to progress my gear. 

Because of Shadow Arena's huge success & unresolved issue of hackers, it was made a stand alone game but it was doomed. In standalone version, enemy players could see eachother's HP bar, class character design & skills changed, Players had lots of HP potions and new players who never played BDO before couldn't figure out what this all about was. Most of the players in Stand Alone SA were from BDO but because it didn't contrubuted in their progression and because it was made a totally a new game of itself, even those BDO players in SA-stand alone gradually left it as it soon because a waste of time & they couldn't bring thier BDO friends to play a whole different BDO version of game. 

Stand Alone SA also felt very bad cause the thrill of "not knowing who" was gone... there was no pressure nor thrill. I played once and was greatly disappointed. I could see HP bar, names, i knew how strong my enemies were so i couldn't kept the pressure of not knowing, had lots of HP pots and new sets of skills.

me too, I was thrilled to play BDO everyday while also having fun with my main class and gear progressing my main slowly.

Everyone I know did not play Shadow Arena, because it was fun! They played it it because they wanted the rewards for BDO!

You also confirmed they played it, because of what they got for BDO:

So my argument still stands:

If people realy liked the game, they would have played and liked it also as standalone game! But because the main reason they liked it where the rewards for BDO, no one played the standalone!

So PA realy thinks about reimplementing SA into BDO, they should do it without any rewards for BDO! And I guarantee you it will be dead content in notime!

The standalone actually changed up how getting gear and skills worked, as well as skill inputs.

It became not Black Desert and thus not fun.

Why dafuq are you so opposed to PvP rewards?? Imagine if the (remaining, dying) PvP scene went around saying "oh, you shouldn't get rewards for the new bosses in land of the morning light. What? If you enjoyed it, you wouldn't need rewards to play it right?"

Frick off you bozo. Enjoyable content can be rewarding to.

They changed it because no one wanted to play SA and tried different ways to attract players!

I am not opposed to PvP rewards!

People claiming SA was a realy fun and new players joined BDO just to play SA! But I say SA was not enjoyable or fun and people only played SA because it was an easy way to get items and silver for BDO!
So if people realy think SA wasn't just played because of the rewards, they should bring it back without the easy money for BDO and we will see how successful SA will be!

Your argument doesn't stand : to like the IG version didn't mean to like the standalone version with modified inputs, less skills, less classes, a different map... When they launched it, my favorite class wasn't even available!

So no, you can't make such a shortcut.

And you can't claim that players were playing the IG version for rewards only. Players also liked it for the challenge, the nice change of pace, it was also more fun than RBF and its single map at that time, results were surprising sometimes.