Aubrielle received a copy of Black Desert Online and found out why the game isn't your average MMO in this review.

Killing hordes of enemies in spectacular fashion with lightning-fast moves and bloody combos is, for me, one of the game's high points.  At the moment, the character I've played most aggressively is my ranger.  She's a heartstoppingly hot redhead with girl-next-door freckles and a milkmaid complexion.  She's also one of the deadliest characters I've played in any game.  When whole squads of rebel soldiers or filthy imps step up, my chick is gracefully dancing past killing blows and showering a killing rain of arrows on her enemies.  If they get too close, the daggers come out and I chop them into fine mincemeat.  If I'm feeling snarky, I start kicking.  And by kicking, I mean, like...in the air, Bruce Lee style.  Then I'm doing backflips, the bow is out faster than you can blink, and they're sinking to the muddy ground with three arrows in their throat.  Lining up and trading hits until that mob dies is so 2004.  Combat in Black Desert is entirely about your personal skill, and depending on your class, you may not need to get hit at all.

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One difference you'll quickly find between MMO staples like WoW and avant-garde games like BDO is the combo system.  See, you're not just limited to hotbar rotations anymore.  Depending on what's happening in combat - and no two fights are ever the same - you'll need to change how you fight.  Each class has its own button combinations that feel oddly natural to use.  As a ranger, holding down shift and pressing your left mouse button fires explosive arrows over and over.  That's super easy to do while you're in the flow of dodging a heavy blow and getting in position to launch a powerful attack by pressing another two buttons.  It sounds complex but it becomes second nature.  If you're absolutely uncomfortable with not using your number keys to unleash special attacks, many classes offer you the ability to bind your fun skills to those number keys.

WCCFtech reviews Black Desert Online and gives it a thumbs-up score of 8.  They've included some in-game footage to whet your appetite.

Our own review will be out soon, so stay tuned!

Black Desert Online puts me in an awkward position. For a while now I’ve had a big issue with the stagnation of the MMORPG genre, the fact that beyond the visual there was rarely anything new, original and refreshing to grab my attention, beyond a few exceptions like The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 and, to an extent, Elder Scrolls Online. Games like Devilian and Blade & Soul have come and gone with me giving no second thought to them. I’ve been looking for something fresh, Black Desert Online delivers.

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Those of us eagerly awaiting the Ninja/Kunoichi class, as well as the huge new Valencia desert area, will have to wait a little longer. Daum Games has delayed Black Desert Online's Valencia update for NA/EU due to technical issues.

Unfortunately, it would appear that the Valencia update for Black Desert Online, scheduled to be released on June 1, has been delayed due to technical difficulties.

According to the Black Desert Online team, the release of both Valencia Part 1 and the Siege Mode updates were not compatible with the game’s current build. Instead of releasing the update in a buggy state, Daum Games wants to make sure that it isn’t overshadowed by a glitches and compromised security.

On the bright side, this delay is allowing the development team to improve security features, crack down on bots, and target unapproved third-party software. There is currently no new date for the update’s release, but the “Blackstone” and “Pirate Rhum” events have been extended an extra week.

The Valencia Part 1 update will include new weather effects, armor/weapons/accessories, mounts, hundreds of additional quests, and it will expand enhancement to +20. Furthermore, the PvP update scheduled for June 15 is also expected to be delayed. It will include the highly anticipated Node and Castle Siege Warfare modes.

Source.

Black Desert Online's next update will add the Arab-esque land of Valencia, which will increase the world size by 30%.  It is scheduled to launch for NA and EU on the 1st of June.  No official trailer was released, so here's a video showing off the Korean version.

Thanks, Couch.

Daum Games Europe announced today that the massive Valencia Part 1 expansion for Black Desert Online will hit North America and Europe on June 1st. They also released a batch of screenshots of the beautiful and dangerous desert region, which you can check at the bottom of the post.

Like Mediah before it, it will add a further 30% to the landmass you can explore including the desert itself and the beautiful (and enormous) Middle East-inspired city of Valencia. It’s actually quite a lot bigger than the Mediah expansion, but I guess this is calculated as 30% of the original plus Mediah.

The new content increases the size of the world by an additional 30% and also brings hundreds of new quests, some of which extend the main storyline.

With Valencia Part One, players will be able to journey to an expansive desert region where exploration will take a completely different turn. Extreme heat during daytime requires proper hydration, and intense cold at night requires players to stay warm. Additionally, a new weather effect, sandstorm, inflicts damage unless players set up a tent to protect themselves. The minimap will be unavailable, but getting lost is not all bad―who knows what treasure your shovel may strike?

Regular horses and wagons are not ideal to traverse the desert and will see their speed lowered. Thankfully, players will be able to purchase Camels from NPCs, which fare much better in these harsh conditions. Another new mount, the Guild-owned Elephant, serves as a powerful war mount in sieges.

On top of that, node and castle siege warfare will be added on June 15th, starting a trial period to let players familiarize themselves with the system. After two weeks, results will be wiped and the real deal will start. Node and castle siege is a guild vs guild PvP system that involves truly massive battles.

The valencia part one expansion also brings new weapons, armor and accessories (like the Rocaba armor set that grants an evasion bonus and the Rosar weapons that ignore resistances), new crafting recipes and crops, and the increase of enchantment limits to +20.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Steven Messner says that Black Desert Online's beauty could be "more than skin deep", and says some intriguing things about the upcoming MMO...

Thanks, Lostforever.

I am bored to death of MMORPGs. Not their potential mind you, but the execution. The seemingly endless chains of quests, the sole focus on murdering everything that doesn’t give you a quest (and some things that do), and, perhaps most of all, the way developers think that shoving more quests into the meat grinder is the solution to prolonging a game’s lifespan.

This is exactly what I was expecting to see when I sat down and hesitantly logged into Black Desert Online for the first time. Here we go again, I thought. But within my first hour of playing, Black Desert Online revealed that it was more than just a pretty face (and some not-so pretty faces). It made me feel something that I haven’t felt while playing an MMORPG in a very long time: I felt lost. The good kind of lost.

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Daum Games Europe has released a new teaser trailer for Black Desert Online.  BDO will launch on March 3.

Everyone has seen screenshots of just how gorgeous Black Desert Online's character creation system is.  But now you can see for yourself - a free version of their character creator has been released.

If you haven't been following Black Desert Online's development, you probably know it as 'that one with the crazy character creator', and you'd be right—we're approaching Black Desert's second and final beta, and the character creator has been deemed special enough for a standalone release ahead of time. You can download it and marvel at the results (hideous or uncomfortably beautiful) here. Any characters you make in the creator can be imported both to the beta and the finished game.

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Black Desert Online's project manager and marketing manager discuss the upcoming mmo's gameplay, localization, business model, and more.

A big thanks to Couch for today's haul of news.

Black Desert Online is certainly an interesting entry in the MMORPG field, with absolutely beautiful graphics, what can probably be defined as the best character creation features in the industry, and fast-paced action oriented combat.

It will be released this year in North America and Europe for PC with a buy to play business model.

In order to know more we asked a few question to Marketing Manager Rick van Beem and Project Manager Daniel Loehr, who talked about the reasons behind the decision to go buy to play, how the business model will be handled, the challenge behind the western localization, gameplay and much more.

You can check out both interviews below.

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Here's seven reasons to be excited about the highly-anticipated Korean MMO, Black Desert Online.

Thank you, Couch, for tonight's news.

Unless you’re a MMO connoisseur like myself, you’ve probably not even heard about the upcoming Black Desert Online MMORPG slated to release hopefully early 2016. So what is Black Desert Online and what makes it stand out against the plethora of competition?

Black Desert Online is an open world sandbox MMORPG created by Korean developer Pearl Abyss and is finally making it’s way to North American shores after already being in open beta in Korea, Japan, and Russia for awhile now. Overseas it will be F2P (free to play), but here and Europe it is slated for a B2P (buy to play) release instead, both with an in-game cash shop with cosmetic and convenience items.

Hold on, I can hear the rolling of your eyes already. There are some really interesting design decisions that I think will make Black Desert stand out among the competition. Only time will tell if it’s successful, but here’s a few reasons I’m excited for the upcoming release after a few dozen hours with the first closed beta.

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For anyone that's been excited by the upcoming release of the MMO Black Desert Online, HardcoreGamer's beta report will be welcome news.

I had the chance to spend some time in the closed beta of Black Desert Online, the new MMORPG from Korean developer Pearl Abyss. The game has been in development since 2010 and will be coming to Europe and America as a full release in 2016. The game shows a huge amount of promise.

Anyone who has seen screenshots or video of Black Desert Online will be awed by the visuals. Even on a midrange PC, with a lot of settings dialed back, the game simply looks better than any other MMO currently on the market. Its artistic design is basically High Fantasy 101, set in environments — at least in the sections of the beta that I played — that suggest the geography and flora of the Mediterranean coast. A full day and night cycle, dynamic weather, and very effective use of lighting — not uncommon in games, but rarely done so well in an MMO — bring the world to life. The photorealism brings to mind the graphics of Star Wars Battlefront in their crisp detail.

By far, the game’s character creation tool is the most powerful in any current game, genre aside. The level of photorealistic detail that can be manipulated is simply amazing and made me wish that this tool could be used in other RPGs or a game like The Sims, where creating a lifelike and distinct character is so important. It’s a huge bummer then that when tossed into the world, my character was wearing the exact same starting gear as every other in my class, which to me is one of the most immersion-breaking things an MMO can do. I get the need to start with newbie-level gear, but why not allow for some small degree of customization, especially given the tools available?

In recent Western RPGs, we’ve come sort of expect class-less characters that can be developed in any direction and with whatever combination of skills we want to use, whether or not those builds are ultimately effective. Black Desert Online sticks to a traditional class/gender/race character development model. Want to be a melee fighter with sword and shield? You will be a human male. Want to be a dual-wielding, fast attack ninja? You will need to be a female. Only six classes were available in the beta, but it may be that the final release includes more, with options for all classes to be open to both genders.

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