Black Desert Online launched successfully a few months back with a buy to play model, similar to Guild Wars. Generally speaking the game has some of the best Korean MMO style graphics in the market right now and is very well made. I remember i downloaded the Beta before it launched and was impressed, although i never considered playing it, wanna guess why?
There’s only one problem with this seemingly very good MMO, as with every other Korean MMO’s it will eventually become a F2P-P2W game. The time has now come for the Pay 2 Win formula to enter the scene. Apparently projected incomes for the European and North American publisher Daum Games weren’t good enough.
What’s even more amazing is the fact that the publisher actually promotes this change as an absolution for people that otherwise couldn’t buy cash shop items. Now they can purchase them with ingame currency. “Wow what a relief, i can now grind like a fucker all day to get a looting pet.”
Of course like most Korean grindfest MMO’s this game is heavily focused in Open World PvP, rare items and very small enchanting success rates. This formula guarantees that people will spend months grinding currency just to get an edge in PvP.
With the ability to sell cash shop items ingame, players will be able to essentially buy ingame currency with real money, bypassing all the grind and getting on par with players that have played thousands of hours in just a few days.
I guess developer Pearl Abyss got private tutorials from NCSoft in how to essentially fuckup a good game. It baffles me that people keep falling for this kind of shit, its like a never ending story with these MMO’s. Before the launch there’s hype and promises of never becoming F2P/P2W. A few months later, even if the game is successful, they slowly start introducing “things”, till they reach a point of a full blown P2W.
WAKE UP!, its a trap, they want you to invest your time, so when they decide to milk you, you will be reluctant to quit.
In a previous article i analyzed how these games operate and why you should avoid them with a 10-pole stick. If people ignored all these games the developers would be forced to stop pulling tricks and “Work” for their money.
Myself i have been burned thrice with Korean MMO’s, first Lineage 2, then Aion and after that TERA. All were P2P in the beginning and all ended up F2P-P2W. For me the rules are simple, STAY AWAY FROM KOREAN MMO’S, unless you are prepared and have accepted the fact they will eventually become P2W.
