Apparently this game has been in beta for a while, I think it’s out of Korea, but it just opened for general last week.
I bought the game last night and played with the character customization. There’s a lot there. Anyone else playing it? Apparently it’s less “theme park” MMO and more sandbox.
So far, my biggest gripe (I just started so more may/will pop up) is that the classes are gender locked. If I want to be a sorcerer I have to be a sorceress.
I’ve been keeping an eye on it.
The character customization is…odd. Very powerful, but still very focused - there’s a lot of fine detail, but most same-class characters are still going to be more or less indistinguishable from each other at normal viewing distance. Especially with the limited in-game wardrobes (the cash shop* & dyes will eventually sort that out, maybe.)
I don’t really get the gender-locking complaint too much. Because quite often, 2 of the classes are nearly identical:
Wizard (M) & Witch (F) are completely identical.
Warrior (M) & Valkyrie (F) are nearly interchangeable.
The upcoming Blader/Plum and Ninja/Kunoichi are quite similar as well.
Ranger (F) supposedly has an opposite-sex couterpart in the works.
That pretty much just leaves the sorceress (F), tamer (F), and Berserker (M) as the only truly gender-locked classes.
What’s really got my attention, though is the slow-grind-sandboxy elements of it. Crafting seems to have more in common with the X series (if you’re familiar with it) than with any MMO. Crafting actually makes money!
Overall, looks pretty good for a buy-to-play MMO (like Secret World, or Guild Wars 2).
And, reportedly…NO GOLD SELLERS!
*largely not pay-to-win. There’s a few exceptions: the pets (that auto-loot), 1 wardrobe item (that increases drop rate) and the inventory/storage/character slots/weight limit increases.
There are always gold sellers. Guild Wars 2 did a lot to limit gold sellers and they are still around.
All servers are PvP from what I’ve heard, which kinda kills it for a carebear like me.
I heard it’s worse in Korea. But I believe the entire game is “Free to play.”
I agree with the clothing items. I wanted to play a wizard but didn’t want to just walk around like Gandolf. That wasn’t an option.
Yeah - it’s free-to-play in Asia, so the cash-shop is the only income source there.
I’m not sure how goldsellers could work, since apparently you can’t transfer money or (most) items between players. 
Not sure how the PvP is supposed to work - from what I’ve seen it looks mostly tied to the guild mechanics.
A friend and I started playing this Friday and we’re completely hooked. It’s the first game in a long time that really has me sucked in.
It’s definitely a unique MMO that’s pretty overwhelming at first. There are loads of quests, exploring, gathering, crafting, trading (with NPCs) and plenty of other things to keep you busy. I definitely recommend watching some “Tips and Tricks” videos before getting too far into it. Since it’s been out so long in Korea be sure to find videos less than a couple weeks old, otherwise it may be outdated or Korean specific.
Two tips I’ll say right now:
First, in your quest tracker, on the top there are different quest types you can display. But by default only the kill monsters type quests are enabled. Enable the other quest types as well. If you don’t you won’t even be able to see that NPCs are offering those types of quests. Not sure why they set the default like that, but it’s a bit of a quirky game.
Second, when you’re AFK, park yourself by water and fish. You’ll need empty bag space, of course. When you catch a fish in BDO there’s a mini-game to reel it in. All that mini-game does is let you bring the fish in faster. If you leave it alone after a few minutes you’ll bring the fish in automatically and then recast, assuming your fishing pole has durability left. When you get back, head to the nearest trade vendor (you can only trade or cook fish, you can’t put them on the Marketplace (auction house)) and sell them all for a pretty good chunk of silver. And don’t worry, the game encourages you to do this. If you switch to Windowed Mode (with a border) and minimize the game it’ll ask you if you want to move it to your system tray and it’ll run in a lower resource mode.
And a bonus tip: I recently upgraded to a 1440p monitor, and when I first closed out of the game it changed my refresh rate to 23 hertz, which made my display look very odd. All I had to do was go to the nVidia control panel, add blackdesert64.exe to the 3d Settings manager and change “Prefered refresh rate” to “Highest available” and the issue was solved. My buddy has a 1080p monitor and said he didn’t have that problem, so maybe it just affects higher refresh rates?
BDO is definitely a grindy game. But unlike ArcheAge I’m really enjoying the crafting system and the grind in general. If anyone is on the Uno server, my name in game is Pronk.
Thanks for the tips. I’m level 12 right now but have mostly been doing combat quests. I’m finally going to Veila (?) where, I believe, I can finally start crafting/fishing/etc.
I get not wanting to hold the player’s hand, but my God there are a lot of things they don’t tell you.