Black Desert Online Arrives On Western Shores
Go west!
Earlier this year, Black Desert Online [official site] released a free standalone version of its sophisticated character creation suite and the results at RPS Towers were quite horrifying. Today, the Korean MMORPG has finally made it westward and you can check its launch trailer after the drop.
Actually, for those of you sneaky sods who didn't click the above link, you're not getting off that lightly. THIS GUY was born from the aforementioned experimentations with the game's character creator:
Now that that ghastly image has been forever imprinted in your mind, let's look at the prettier side of Black Desert Online:
Looks quite nice, doesn't it? And from from what Steven Messner relayed in his recent hands-on with the MMO, there's a lot more going on beneath its aesthetically pleasing veneer. Speaking to the credibility of its world, he praised how alien it all made him feel, but that this very fact urged him to explore further:
"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."
Given how little MMOs have changed over the last decade or so, this idea of unfamiliarity and genuinely feeling lost within Black Desert Online's world sounds absolutely wonderful, and bodes well for its long-term appeal. I can't remember the last time I started a game and didn't instantly recognise things I was supposedly seeing for the first time. If this concept can also tie into the game's combat, quests and systems, then it could be onto a winner.
Black Desert Online is out now via the game's site. Tiered packages cost different prices: the Explorer's Package costs €29.99, while the Traveler's Package comes in at €49.99 (which translates to £23.21 and £38.62, respectively, so says this currency conversion).