State of Play: Where do the MMORPGs WoW, ESO, GW2, FF14, and Black Desert stand at the beginning of 2017?

Black Desert – a game in progress

Where does Black Desert stand?

Black Desert had its release in the West in 2016. In many respects, it is a fresh game that still seems to be finding itself.

The graphics are great but should get even better. More classes are planned to come into the game, the world should get even bigger, and a port for PS4 and Xbox One is also planned. A lot “should,” a lot “will” – with the fantasy MMORPG from Korea.

At the beginning, Black Desert seems to have all possibilities open: Will it ever have a “real endgame PvE” What direction is it developing further? What ideas is Kakao pursuing?

Even after a year, it is difficult to say where the journey is going and what kind of game Black Desert actually wants to be.

The positive aspect is that Black Desert has enormous potential, and many people interpret their dream MMORPG into it. The downside is that after the release, the monetization is renegotiated. This has caused some excitement.

Black Desert developed significantly slower in the second half of 2016 than before. After the summer, the pace was slowed down: Here in Europe, just like in Korea.

Last year, everything in Europe seemed to revolve around the basics: first bringing all classes, then unlocking the basic regions, and after that unlocking all “secondary weapons” in the game – in the next step, expand the world and the possibilities.

The visions and goals of Black Desert remain enormous. Just stating: Oh, the graphics are getting a bit dated now. We’re going to upgrade that, is an unheard-of statement for an MMORPG that fans of many MMORPGs would wish from their developers.

It remains to be seen whether everything works as announced.

What happens next?

Black Desert will continue to be developed not with major expansions but with updates that come quite sporadically. The timeline, which the developers published in April 2016, probably served only as a rough guideline, from which they deviated by months thereafter.

Here in Europe, the next addition is the Dark Blade as a new class. It will surely also receive a secondary weapon. After that, the Elf region should be unlocked.
In Korea, talk of dwarves and another new region has already been mentioned. The world should therefore get even bigger.

If Black Desert really comes to Xbox One and PS4, it might be that the pace at which new content appears slows down significantly, and the game will go in a different direction – more towards “polish” and not constant growth and this “finding itself.”

What is the perspective for Black Desert?

Evaluating the perspective for our market for Black Desert is difficult because this type of sandbox MMORPG, without a clear goal, without a real direction, is something new in the West.

The initial skepticism that it might become a purely graphic blunder seems to have faded. Black Desert built a loyal following here in the West in 2016.

Where Black Desert will ultimately fit is hard to say. At the moment, similar to Final Fantasy XIV, it is a niche game here in Germany, a category beneath titles like The Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2.

With the transition to PS4, Xbox One, and new substantial content, especially in PvE, this could change. But the strategy of the Korean company is hardly comprehensible to us compared to the known players like Blizzard or Zenimax.