On December 9, the community event “Voice of Adventurers” for Black Desert Online took place for the first time in Europe. MeinMMO author Mark Sellner attended the event in Utrecht and had the opportunity to speak with Lybee Park, the head of the developers in Europe.
Black Desert has been a major MMORPG for years. This is also true for Germany and generally Europe, but only in the past 2 years have the developers of BDO, Pearl Abyss, actually worked to address this.
Until now, all relevant events for the MMORPG were held outside of Europe or America. However, this has now changed. On December 11, there was the first Calpheon’s Ball in America, an event with many new announcements for the future of Black Desert.
Two days earlier, less grand and relevant for all players, Pearl Abyss held the “Voice of the Adventurers” event in Utrecht in the Netherlands. This event was less about new announcements and much more about bringing people from the community together.
It is the first event of its kind in Europe, aside from fan meetings at gamescom.
The best part – it was completely free for participants. In advance, people could enter a lottery, and 90 fans of Black Desert were selected and invited to the event at Kasteel de Haar, the largest castle in the Netherlands.
I was also invited by Pearl Abyss to the VOA and had the chance to talk to Lybee Park. She is the CEO of Pearl Abyss in Europe and was also present at the event.
The latest new class, Drakania, came up in the discussions:
Community was the absolute focus
Shortly after my arrival at Amsterdam Airport, I noticed that Pearl Abyss had really made an effort with the event. Right in front of the main entrance of the airport stood a large black coach with the inscription “Black Desert”.
This was not only waiting for me but also for numerous other fans who were slowly arriving. Pearl Abyss had organized two such buses that shuttled from the airport to the hotel directly to the location.
Already during the approximately 40-minute bus ride to the event location, it became clear that a lot of passion for the game was gathered here. Some fans were even dressed up, and of course, there was no other topic in the entire bus than Black Desert.
What I particularly liked was that the developers and the team from Pearl Abyss were not separated or isolated anywhere but were always in the midst of the community and were a constant point of contact for the fans – great!
The event itself was divided into three areas, all located on the large estate of Kasteel de Haar. A tour of the castle was included as well. The first hours of the event consisted of a casual gathering and chatting.
Real-life quests with real rewards
Each person received a personalized goodie bag, which included business cards from the players, and a kind of exchange game quickly began where people tried to trade cards with each other.
Game is also the next keyword, as there was plenty of content related to it. In addition to a quest logbook with various tasks for fans to complete to claim rewards, there were also several games directly organized by the developers.
There, one could compete in PvP duels with a game master, participate in a pub quiz, or take nice Polaroids in front of a green screen. Snacks and drinks were also provided for free during the entire event for all participants.
Pearl Abyss also hired professional cosplayers to be present at the event. They were in typical Black Desert cosplays and were available for photo ops with players at any time.
Dinner in knightly atmosphere
To conclude the day, we returned to the large main hall of the castle, which was now filled with tables and a projector. There awaited not only a luxurious three-course menu but also a surprise raffle, where fans could win a gaming PC, among other prizes.
This was rounded off by an Italian quintet that performed some songs from the soundtrack of Black Desert, creating a truly sublime feeling in a knightly decorated castle.
After dinner, there was another goodie bag for everyone, and the Black Desert bus drove back to the hotel. For the community, it was truly a successful day. One attendee told me that this event was his highlight of the year, as he could finally meet his guild leader, who had been like a younger brother to him for the past two years.
Everywhere there were beaming faces and the feedback after the event on reddit is extremely positive.
Between activities and dinner, we had the chance to talk with Lybee Park, game master Nox, and Rick van Beem, the PR head of Pearl Abyss in Europe.
German fans are to blame for the male archer
Black Desert was released in Europe back in 2016, yet it took a long time for the culture surrounding the game to arrive with us. With the VOA, the first community event came to us 6 years after the release. A period during which many MMORPGs already lose the interest of the masses.
Black Desert seems to not have this problem. Therefore, I first wanted to know from Lybee why this is and what makes Black Desert, in her view, so special.
I think it’s our engine. It allows our developers to quickly build new updates and therefore also rapidly create new content for the game. At launch, it was our large, contiguous open world that had never been seen before in an MMO. And of course, the character editor and the action combat system. There are many systems, but all of this only works because the engine builds the foundation.
And this freedom that we have to update the game at very short intervals and also to react quickly to feedback from the community. That explains not only the very good launch but also the success over the years.
Then I was interested to know if anything ever made it into the game that the developers initially did not want in Black Desert. Or at least something that did not necessarily fit the vision of the MMORPG.
And indeed, it turns out that the German fans are to blame for this happening.
Nothing comes to mind right away, if there was anything, then it would be the male archer. People asked for it a lot. And indeed, he mainly came into the game because of the German fans, if I may say so. We showed the male archer in the beta, but actually developing this class was not a priority for us.
But after very in-depth conversations with our German fans, we dug that back up. So yes, that was a point where fans had a really big influence on the developers and managers.
The still small team in Amsterdam was almost entirely present at the event, together with the fans, it made for a great group photo:
“I admire our European fans”
I also wanted to know why it took a full 6 years to engage the European community with an event of this kind, especially since the German fans of Black Desert had such a great influence.
Furthermore, I referred to the new Pearl Abyss location in Amsterdam, its purpose, and whether Black Desert intends to focus more on the European market in the future.
We opened the location in Europe as part of the transition of Black Desert from Kakao Games to us, but during the pandemic. We love offline events and actually meeting people in person. We love hearing their stories and feedback in person. But during the pandemic, we couldn’t do that. In fact, we have been planning the VOA for two years already.
At this year’s gamescom, we had the opportunity to at least set up small spaces to hang out together. That was a great experience and we learned how to implement these meetings better. It gave us enough confidence to now execute the VOA. Europe is of course a very important area for us, especially Germany, where our largest fan base for Black Desert [in Europe] is.
Lybee further elaborated on why she took the long journey from Korea to take the position of CEO for Europe in Amsterdam. Apparently, we are just detail-oriented.
I flew all the way from Korea here because I admire our European fans. They enjoy the game in a slightly different way than our Asian fans. Asian players often think very practically and find the most efficient solution for a particular thing, but European fans, I simply admire them.
They find all the different little things and details in Black Desert, hidden gems that even the developers have sometimes forgotten. It’s the way our fans enjoy the game that fascinates us and that’s why we love to hear our fans’ stories.
And now we also want to give something back, for the fact that they have inspired us for so long and show them that the fans here in Europe are also loved. We are proud of the large fan base here that supports us.
In conclusion, I was naturally burning to know if we as fans in Germany can also soon expect an event like the VOA. I have not yet received an official confirmation about this, but the event apparently went very satisfactorily for the Pearl Abyss team, as Rick assured me.
It is conceivable that events of this kind could occur more than once and may even take place in Germany at some point. We will keep you updated about this.
This would surely please our editor Alexander Leitsch, for he clearly considers Black Desert to be among the current 15 best MMORPGs.
