Black Desert Online is one of the most popular, most successful MMORPGs across the globe. This is in part due to the fact that there just isn’t any other MMO capable of rivaling aspects that BDO excels in. BDO provides us as gamers some of the best action combat, one of the largest, seamlessly accessible worlds, and best character creators available in the genre. All that in a game that is over 7 years old.
Yeah, if you didn’t think the genre was stagnant before, try retaining the #1 spot for all of the above for the better half of a decade with absolutely no competition whatsoever.
But no game is immune to decay. Without regular updates, every MMO will suffer from the very same stagnation that the genre as a whole suffers from.
Thankfully, Black Desert Online keeps player engaged with seasonal updates, some consisting of small new areas, others of large entire continents. And most commonly – the addition of new classes.
Every year sees at least one or two new class additions, bringing players back for a few weeks as they let nostalgia take hold of them and relive what they loved about the game, before departing once more. That’s the average Black Desert cycle.
In light of this, Pearl Abyss teased back at the Heidel Ball in 2022 that they were planning a large new update, introducing an entire region to the game. Further details came via the Calpheon Ball, also held in 2022.

As of the 29th of March 2023, just 2 weeks ago, the – what can only be described as essentially an expansion, titled “Land of the Morning Light,” was released in Korea, with Pearl Abyss confirming that the update would be releasing Globally shortly after.
“Shortly,” of course, being entirely subjective, as we were promised Crimson Desert and DokeV years ago and we’ve still received relatively no news on either.

The Land of the Morning Light expansion features the new continent of Haso – located across the seas, beyond the Musa, Maehwa, and Lahn classes homeland – Port Ratt. According to the Black Desert Foundry, the region is going to be roughly the equivalent to Kamaslyvia in terms of size and scale, and has been an actively discussed region for years.
The region itself looks absolutely gorgeous. And that should really come as no surprise given that’s the main appeal of BDO. Black Desert might have its flaws, but it never fails to deliver in terms of beauty, or gameplay.
The expansion brings with it a lot of inspiration from Korean history, specifically the Joseon Dynasty, the last dynastic kingdom of Korea, featuring unique areas, buildings and vegetation specific to that era.
There are new races present, such as the Horang, Hare and Tortois Folk.
Naturally there’s an extension to the story – and unlike what players are typically used to, the story will provide us with a semblance of freedom, allowing us to choose different story-related paths with different outcomes.
The Land of the Morning Light will also feature a slightly different approach to its world. There will be several large boss monsters spread throughout the world, each having their own set of unique complex mechanics, and requiring a different method to defeat.
There are new Gathering mini games, new Hunting Lifeskill, new Cooking and Alchemy tools along with various other additions and alterations to lifeskilling. New Mansions for players interested in player housing. New ships. New gear to obtain, and so much more.

This expansion is going to be absolutely massive, and will provide so many reasons to come back and experience what could arguably be described as one of the best Korean-inspired expansions for any MMO to date.
But this is just for PC. Last week, the Maegu class and Spring Season servers were released on to console, in addition to these releases saw the game also get a pretty sizable discount for players looking to purchase it on either PlayStation or Xbox. This discount will become unavailable come April 20th, though.
I don’t particularly feel like discussing Black Desert Mobile as I feel like it’s an entirely different game, with different content, a different update schedule. Admittedly, I do believe it’s one of the better mobile MMOs out there but the bar for that isn’t particularly high.

Back in February, Pearl Abyss released its 4th Quarter financials, comprising the months of October, November and December 2022. Pearl Abyss has repeatedly expressed their interest in the overseas market – outside of Korea, with them directly confirming 81% of its sales since 2012 have been from Western players.
Although in the last few years, Pearl Abyss as a whole have been underperforming. This isn’t specific to a singular game or platform, with annual revenue for 2022 being at roughly $300 million dollars. Honestly an incredible number, given it makes more than most Gacha games do in the same frame of time.
However this is down significantly since 2019, which saw annual revenue topping $400 million dollars. But we can attribute the large influx of earnings to the fact that Pearl Abyss released Black Desert onto consoles, and Black Desert Mobile within the same year.
Pearl Abyss confirm that as of the end of the 4th Quarter of 2022, Black Desert Online has an overwhelming 50 million total players, spread across every platform. 20 million players play the game via PC, 35 million players play via Mobile – which is actually rather surprising to me. And 4.1 million play via Console.
Since releasing, it has earned the company $1.6 billion dollars, with 77% coming exclusively from the PC version. To put this into perspective, in a single year, Genshin Impact makes more money than Black Desert Online has earned in 7 years.
EVE Online was mentioned, but not really elaborated on. DokeV, Plan8 and Crimson Desert are listed as “upcoming” MMOs, but Black Desert continues to be the driving force behind the studio.

In terms of total active players, as their claim of 50 million is total players – that have registered and played at one point since the game’s launch, it seems as though estimates put BDO at anywhere from 300,000 to 700,000 players.
Many of these are no doubt bots, like most MMOs are plagued with, but the game averages roughly half a million active players all year round. Despites its lows, and in spite of its highs, Black Desert Online continues to remain an MMO that players return to, every year.
I’ve been recording footage of their newest class over the last week and I’ve been having a lotta fun back in the game. It’s been about a year and a half since I last stepped foot in-game, and every year I return, things have changed.
At times for the better, and at times.. for the worst. Right now, I’m playing through an entirely new area with new story, new characters, and a new class. This is an introductory experience I haven’t had the pleasure of witnessing – and I didn’t know they had implemented.
Furthering my point that Pearl Abyss are always ardently working on the introduction of new content. Putting them vastly ahead of all of their competition, with the exception of Final Fantasy XIV and WoW. But then again, how do you compete with those?

Is Black Desert Online worth starting in 2023? Or, if you’ve already played, is it worth returning to? I guess it depends what you want from the game.
Black Desert Online is still very much the same game it has been for the last few years. Sure, they’ve made alterations to the game. Introduced new features, new content. But the core of what the game is remains much the same: It’s an MMO that requires a large time-investment.
It’s a game with a lot of grinding, but also a lot of freedom, with regards to life skilling, leveling, exploring. There’s more to do – more to see – more to find in this game than most MMOs.
But I nevertheless always find myself growing tired of the repetitious grind – like I to in every MMO, so I stop playing after a period. Sometimes a week, sometimes a month.
Yet even so, I continue to find myself coming back, due to everything it provides me that I just can’t find anywhere else.

I think BDO is worth playing. So long as you’re not off-put by tedious grinds. And I think many other people feel much the same, otherwise it wouldn’t have garnered the active playerbase it has.

Black Desert Online is currently 100% free to play right now. Black Desert is one of the most popular MMOs available right now, and today, I’m going to walk you through how you can obtain the game completely free. And if you redeem it before the 13th – you’ll be able to keep it indefinitely.
This is probably one of the most requested games whenever I do a giveaway, and I completely understand why. This game is gorgeous, and is by far one of the most polished, engaging and entertaining games to play.
Just.. not necessarily long-term as I grow bored with the repetitious nature of it relatively quickly.

Alright, so if you navigate on over to the official Black Desert Online website, you’ll notice there’s an event currently going on. Pearl Abyss made a Blog post titled “Play Black Desert for FREE,”

There are 2 categories here, just as there are 2 different platforms with which players can play the game. Via their official website, or through the Steam client. The event allows players to play for free beginning April 6th regardless of which platform you choose, but they have different methods required to claim your free game.
If you’re playing directly through the Pearl Abyss website, it’s as simple as navigating on over to the official store, where you’ll see the Traveler Edition, Explorer Edition, Conqueror Edition, and Eternal Winter Edition. After selecting the Traveler Edition from the store, you’ll then proceed to register or login, download the game, and open the launcher. Bam, you have the game completely free.

Now the steam version is much more difficult to obtain. First, you’ll want to open the Black Desert steam page, then you’ll want to add it to your account. Then it’s yours. Forever, if the Steam page is to be believed.

The reason they’re offering the game completely free right now is because they just rolled out their Eternal Winter update, introducing a new class, new regions, new monsters, bosses, gear.
Honestly, what better opportunity to bolster their community then to invite a large sum of new players to the game to consume the new content, right?

Black Desert is a great game. It has its fault – a lot of fault. Like, so many fault I can’t begin to list them all in a single video.
But while it has its fault, no game is infallible. Every game has faults, some are just.. more damaging than others. And even with its faults, it continues to be an incredibly fun game with an even more fun combat system.

And they’re giving us the opportunity to fully play the game – forever – completely free. Anyone that wanted to play the game, can. There’s no need to purchase anything.
Not many developers can say they offered their community their premium title free of charge. And worst case scenario? You don’t like the game, and.. well, you don’t play it. And what did you waste? A little of your time.

Now if you’re interested in my general thoughts on BDO while – I dunno, the game is downloading? You can go ahead and find those over here. You know what to do to watch.

Black Desert Online is a realistic medieval fantasy MMORPG. This means when creating your character you’ll have access to a traditional selection of races: Human. You won’t see Gnomes, Dwarves, Trolls, Goblins or anything like that in this game… oh what’s that? You DO encounter those races, you just can’t play as them? Well that seems a little lazy.
Evidently there are a lot of classes to choose from. Almost too many, now that I’m taking a moment to think about it. Can you imagine the difficulty of having to balance each and every one of these so none of them are vastly superior to the other? Yeah, I’m glad that’s not my job.
Evidently it isn’t Pearl Abyss’s either. But I digress.

This game features a deep, intricate character creator – arguably one of, if not the most extensive in terms of raw options. The options are almost limitless.
You can spend hours adjusting every little slider to slowly perfect your creation.. only to come to the realization that the Beauty Album offers something exponentially better than anything you could’ve come up with.
So you begrudgingly select a pre-made character, you take a few moments to adjust something like the hair style or eye color, and then pretend you spent hours on it. Which I’m not saying I did.

Then you’re thrown into the magical world of.. actually, the Wiki for BDO lists it as an “unnamed world,” which means we can just call it whatever? Can we call it Bob? “What on Bob is going on here?” I mean Bob might not like it but I find it amusing.
The world of Black Desert Online is immense. Bob is filled with a surplus of different enemy monsters of varying levels. What sets this game apart from its main competition – games like Guild Wars 2, The Elder Scrolls Online or Final Fantasy XIV, is that Bob itself has no loading screens.
You’re fully capable of running from one side of Bob to the other. Then sailing right back around. This is a great activity to do when you’re bored.
There are absolutely no limitations imposed on where players can go or what players can reach. Except stamina. When sprinting in this game I feel like an asthmatic cast member of that TLC show “My 600lb Life.” But that’s what mounts in this game are for.
Mounts function more or less the same as in any MMO. Except in Black Desert they have stamina. And they wander into enemy camps of monsters while you’re grinding and try to get themselves killed, forcing you to rush back and save them, lest you be forced to run – on foot, all the way back to a stable keeper.
Yet while Bob is large and filled with monsters to engage.. there really isn’t very much that populates it. That warrants actual exploration. You’re required to talk to NPCs to gain pieces of knowledge, there are occasional chests scattered around, world bosses, fishing spots.
But coming from MMOs like Guild Wars 2, with its dynamic questing system, or Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft, with their plethora of unlockable dungeons and raids, I just feel as though Bob often feels empty.
It’s a gorgeous world, and for what it’s worth, it accomplishes that sense of grandeur.

Speaking of dungeons and raids, Black Desert Online doesn’t have any instanced content. Or, okay, let me rephrase. It didn’t have any instanced content for the last several years, with the inclusion of Atoraxxion, their first large-scale dungeon in a recent patch.
I’m about as big a fan of dungeons and raids as the next guy. There’s something.. oddly reminiscent about fighting the same boss every day for months between patch cycles. It’s almost like being in a relationship. You see each other every day. You spend hours doing things with one another. They win every fight you have. Oh, that’s just Mrs Stix?
While there have been players that have expressed excitement for the addition of new PvE options such as dungeons, Black Desert has built the entire foundation of their game on a non-instanced world. With every activity taking place out in the open.
Every MMO has dungeons and raids. BDO wanted to do something different. And honestly? It worked. Players who wanted to avoid the repetitious cycle of farming new instanced fights every 3 months to replace the gear they worked tirelessly towards over the last 3 months had an alternative.
And while this game is the very definition of repetition: Grinding the same monsters for an entire hour for single digits of percentage towards leveling up, it allowed for players to enjoy a different experience. And that’s the point of new MMOs: To offer a different experience for players.

As noted earlier, Black Desert has quite the number of available classes. But it wasn’t always this way. Pearl Abyss have maintained a level of update frequency that I haven’t seen anywhere outside of Final Fantasy XIV, with multiple updates per year introducing entirely new classes to the game.
While many of the classes share distinct similarities: Like dollar store Cloud (Striker) who – in a world where people can shoot massive fireballs from their hands.. runs in to punch and kick you. And of course his little sister. Cloud with Booba (Mystic.)
Or Gandalf and… and.. you know what? I can’t even insult the Witch. She’s adorable. You wanna know exactly HOW similar these two classes are, though? The description for both reads: “Burn, freeze and shatter enemies with the power of natural elements to vanquish their foes.” Yup.
So many of the classes share similarities, but at the same time excel in different areas. Just because the Warrior and Valkyrie both use a sword and shield doesn’t mean they have the same playstyle, and that’s part of what makes this game fun to play.
Every class looks and feels fairly unique.

I’m typically a fan of playing mage classes in games. This is especially true for MMOs where you’re going to be required to engage other players in PvP: player vs player combat.
PvP forces you to push yourself to your limit. To put every bit of knowledge you’ve acquired about your class, enemy classes, to the ultimate test.. which you’ll never get to utilize, as players are going to wait until you’re busy grinding, only half-paying attention, and then they’re going to gank you. Then probably dance on your corpse.
Maybe DM you to laugh at you. Or at least that’s been my experience.
Interestingly, there is very little in the way of instanced PvP. There are no traditional Arenas. No battlegrounds. Everything takes place out in the open-world, with the exception of Siege battles, where one guild protects their castle and the other attempts to take it.

Which actually ties into what I want to discuss next: Leveling. Leveling can be a long, tedious process in any MMO. Black Desert simplifies that by providing players 2 options.
Option #1.) Regular servers. You create a character on a regular server and you have no limitations. You can buy gear from the market board, you can equip and upgrade it, and instantly be off to grinding if that’s what you’re into.
Option #2.) Season servers. These are unique servers that provide a much more linear progression system. Sure, you can run out and grind if you want, but it isn’t going to get you anywhere. Much like running from someone in PvP.
Instead, you progress through the story, which provides you gear to equip, upgrade stones to enhance your gear, and subsequently skill points to waste on messing up your build since you didn’t take the time to read a guide, did you? That’s okay, neither did I, which is why I went Guardian. You realistically need to use like.. 3, maybe 4 abilities total.
I opted to roll a Season character because of the more linear style of gameplay, the increased rates for Season characters, and.. okay, honestly? Creating a Season character was completely by accident. I was just clicking around the characters trying to record and didn’t notice it told me I was creating one.
Admittedly, I just wanted to log right into the game, equip some gear and go murder some things. But we can’t all get what we want.
Regardless of which option you ultimately opt for, you’ll hit a point where you’re required to grind. I came into the MMO genre back when Tales of Pirates and Perfect World were popular – so grinding was what I was under the impression the genre was built upon.
Yet after experiencing games like Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft, neither of which necessarily have a traditional form of grinding, I fear I’ve lost the willpower to dedicate large periods of time to cycling through the same monsters numerous times for hours just to see my XP gauge increase by 1%.
I know this isn’t an issue for some people, and some people even actually.. enjoy it. Somehow. But me? Nope. This is one of the main reasons I never stick with Black Desert long-term. I hit that point where I need to grind incessantly, and it always kills any enjoyment I had up until that point.

Despite disliking grinding for long periods of time, you cannot deny the fact that the gameplay in Black Desert is top-tier. In terms of action combat, I’d say Black Desert and TERA are my 2 favorites.
TERA has a much simpler system design – you have a handful of abilities, and you chain those abilities with other, more powerful abilities, meaning you’re not required to remember individual button inputs, just recall which ability they’re chained to.
BDO however is the complete opposite. You have so many abilities bound to varying different keybinds, like Shift+W+E, or Shift+A after dodging an ability. If you wonder why at times I’m flying around the screen hitting walls, it’s because I couldn’t remember what my abilities were and instead have my face on the keyboard rolling left to right.
I feel like that achieves more or less the same thing.

Combat is gorgeous though. It’s fast, it’s very fluid. Your abilities look and feel impactful. You get bloodied up. If only swinging an axe around in real life looked that cool. The last time I swung an axe it rebounded off of the tree and almost took my head off.
The game also utilizes a fairly extensive skill system, allowing for you to level the skills you want – or even more than that, to learn the abilities you want to learn. Both normal, and Awakened.

But what if you’re not into combat? Into dungeons like Atoraxxion, or open-world PvP? Well, you could always take up professions. Professions are actually pretty big in BDO.
There are a multitude of life skills you can obtain and level like Cooking, Alchemy, Gathering, Horse Training, Processing. And then there’s fishing. Which is the bulk of this game. You’ll quickly come to notice there are hundreds of players in every town, every settlement all with their long, hard wood in-hand for hours at a time.
Now at this juncture you might be wondering to yourself, “Stix, why are you not showing these life-skills in action?” And that’s because I hate life-skilling, professions and crafting in my games. If I wanted to craft, I would’ve taken over my father’s carpentry business but I became a gaming Youtuber. Because I’m lazy and want to play video games.
I pay people to craft for me. People like you. Who is judging me right now, I can feel it seething from you.

Alternatively, you can become a home owner, which, admittedly, isn’t at all as fun as it sounds. It’s so expensive! And you have to deal with all these terrible smells. And noisy neighbors. Constant ransacking from bandits. And monsters – monsters are the worst.
You go out to get the newspaper in the morning and some giant spider ejaculates acid all over you. Yup, then your day is ruined. Imagine having to go through the day with spider coom all over you. Nobody is going to appreciate that.
Speaking of spiders – spiders in BDO are the size of people. Actual PEOPLE! Imagine trying to squish a spider in your home! How much bug spray will you go through? See? Expensive. If you’re not dead.

There are 2 common complaints I hear amongst the community: 1.) The RNG for upgrading gear is terrible. And it is. It genuinely, wholeheartedly is. And 2.) The game is heavily pay to win.
Sure, there are some cool things available like pets, mounts, a surplus of different outfits, but come on. It cannot be any more blatant than this.

Gear upgrading on the other hand.. imagine spending days, weeks, months grinding for gear. Then imagine spending time grinding to upgrade that gear. Now take a moment here and smash your PC with a hammer. Because that’s exactly what you’re going to want to do when using the upgrade system in BDO.

At the end of the day, Black Desert Online is an absolutely incredible MMORPG for what it is. Pearl Abyss chose to do something different with this – something that was vastly different from what was popular at the time, and it worked for them.
They built something beautiful, something that played better than essentially ALL of its competition. And it has continued to be actively developed, it has continued to grow in size year after year.
Sure, leveling can be tedious – grinding in general, once again, can be a tedious process, but that’s why you play with friends. I helped a friend of mine out, Zarbalos, who was level 61 struggling to find the willpower to hit level 62. And after grinding with me… he obtained that which he had been vying for for months.

Is this the greatest MMO? To some people, maybe. To me? No.

Combat – 10/10 I’d give the combat an easy 10/10. It’s unrivaled.
Graphics – 10/10 Graphically, much of the same.
Narrative – 3/10 The narrative falls below average for me because it just so absent and underwhelming.
World – 7/10 The world is large and open, but a little too empty for my tastes.
Content – 6/10 While there’s plenty to do, it lacks dungeons, raids and other forms of content that might keep me more interested in the game outside of life skills and grinding.
Overall – 36/50 This is an easy 3.5/5 for me. Definitely a far above average game, but held down a little by things that I find are personally lacking. They might not be to you, but this is a review from my perspective.

Black Desert Online has been one of the most popular MMORPGs for the last several years. There’s really no denying the quality the title delivers in terms of visual satisfaction nor the depth of what is arguably one of, if not the best action combat system present within the genre. Depending who you ask, of course.

Today, though? Today we’re here to discuss an email that I just received from Pearl Abyss pertaining to the game breaking records for them.
For those of you that were unaware, Pearl Abyss have been working on what they describe as an “enormous class reboot” for the game, not only rebooting, but also drastically overhauling 17 of the 23 available classes found within the game.
Opinions have been mixed on the update – I’m not going to go into that as I feel as though my opinion personally won’t hold much weight. I’ve really only played 2 classes long-term, neither of which I’ve invested time into since this overhaul took place.

This update though has seen Black Desert Online reach player numbers they’ve never seen before.
Pearl Abyss reported last year that there were a few hundred thousand active players per month – and as of earlier today, it was revealed that since this update went live, there has been a 230% increase in terms of active players logging in via PC in North America and Europe alone.
To put this into perspective, if there were an average 200,000 active players per month several months ago, that means there are 460,000 individual players logging in per month as of this week. If we increase that to 300,000, then the game could be pushing well over 700,000 players logging in and playing.
Guild Wars 2 has in the low hundred thousands of players right now – which, granted, will increase substantially when End of Dragons launches soon, and The Elder Scrolls Online has probably double Guild Wars 2’s population.

This announcement is disregarding console players and countries outside of North America and Europe. However, they did note that including every country globally, the game has seen an increase of 165% in new daily players.
Again, this puts Black Desert ahead of various of its competition: It has more active players now than Guild Wars 2, than The Elder Scrolls Online, than RuneScape.
Final Fantasy XIV still has ridiculous login queues so I doubt it’s dropped under the what, 1.5? 2 million or more active players it had, and WoW is still likely hovering around a million or more active players per month.
Nevertheless, it’s a safe conclusion to come to that Black Desert has – as of this update – become the third most played MMORPG in 2022. That is a gargantuan, monumental achievement – one that I bet the majority of you never saw coming.

Black Desert Online released back in 2015 in South Korea, Japan and Russia, and 2016 in North America and Europe. Meaning a game that is almost a decade old – Final Fantasy XIV, a game that is going on 2 decades old, World of Warcraft and a game that is almost as old as Final Fantasy XIV are the 3 most played MMORPGs right now.
You have to admit, the MMORPG genre has got to be in a pretty dire situation for the 3 most populated games to be games that have already existed for 8 to 15 years.

You can find more info pertaining to each and every class by navigating on over to the official Black Desert website if you’d like, or you can.. you know, log in and try the game out yourself right now.
The game is buy to play after all, and as such, if you’ve purchased it in the past you can log in at any point and pick up right where you left off. I’m in the process of playing Black Desert right now – I come back to this game every year because it’s something I genuinely have fun playing.
It’s a gorgeous game that is a ton of fun to just mash some buttons in. And this update is pushing the game to new heights – allowing for it to shatter every record it had set up until this point.
Pearl Abyss has a lot planned for the future of the game, both on PC and consoles, and I look forward to being here to cover it every step of the way.

For those of you that have tested out the rebooted classes, though, what’re your thoughts on them and how they compare to their original incarnations?

It’s difficult finding an MMORPG to devote time to. Games either don’t live up to the unrealistic hype that other people create for them, or you happen across one you genuinely enjoy and it turns out nobody else does. The game’s empty.
And with so many MMOs having come out this year: PSO2 New Genesis, Swords of Legends Online, Bless Unleashed, Crowfall, Elyon, New World. Have the top 10 most played MMOs shifted? Is there something better out there that everyone is devoting their time to? Let’s find out. Together.
Especially given next month is the beginning of 2022, and you’re going to want something big to play, right?

Let’s start this off with the only Anime MMORPG in this list: MapleStory.
MapleStory released all the way back in 2003. This game has spawned a plethora of other titles under the same intellectual property: MapleStory M which was received with.. moderate enthusiasm, and a sequel, MapleStory 2, that shut down a year after launching.
Neither title truly managed to capture the quirky style that MapleStory employs. This is the only MMO in this list to utilize a horizontal graphical style – you move your character horizontally, left to right, across the screen. You can jump and climb, but the bulk of the game takes place on one level.
You take quests, you venture out, you group with other players, fight for control of the area, and… grind. This game is a grind. An unbelievable grind. Almost grindier than any other MMO I’ve played in the last decade. Thankfully it employs an incredibly fast, often chaotic action combat system to make up for the time you spend engaged in combat.
It’s got an adorable Anime-ish graphical style, and gets updated repeatedly over the course of the year, with new areas, new events and new classes. This brings players coming back to the game, and is what makes it one of Nexon’s highest grossing, most profitable franchises, averaging hundreds of thousands of players across all regions per month.
Yes, this list isn’t including specifically English-speaking countries.

Star Wars The Old Republic released back in 2011 as part of the greater “Star Wars” franchise. Movies, TV series, video games. And while The Old Republic – The MMO, never truly lived up to the potential of the IP, it still eventually found its footing, and allowed for Star Wars fans to channel their inner fan.
Now The Old Republic has had its highs, and its lows. With its low points lasting significantly longer than its high points, but that’s partly due to how the game has been handled up until this point.
This is an open-world MMO, with plenty of different regions – and as you’d expect, plenty of different, highly diverse worlds to explore at your leisure. The Old Republic has one of the deepest, most compelling narratives of any MMO.
And while that’s 2 for 2 thus far, its combat is much less impressive. It utilizes a fairly basic tab-target combat system that definitely looks and feels older than a 2011 MMO should, given RIFT, Aion and TERA.
Star Wars The Old Republic just released their latest expansion – which has garnered quite a bit of attention, and shot the game up to hundreds of thousands of players over the course of the last month. How long this lasts however is another question all together.

The Elder Scrolls Online released in 2014, a mere 7 years ago. It feels like it’s been out longer though, right? Much like Star Wars The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online is set within an already existing franchise: The Elder Scrolls. You know. Morrowind. Oblivion. Skyrim. Yes, I listed the 3 best in order of best to most overrated.
ESO has been pretty steady for the last couple years. It’s never really had any large peaks in terms of growth, but at the same time, it hasn’t sunk very far beneath what it had already established itself as.
The game has a fantastic narrative, a large open world to explore, action combat, a fairly extensive class system allowing you to more or less equip what you want in terms of weapons and armor, while giving you freedom to craft your class – in terms of skills, however you like.
Graphically, the game holds up well. It’s one of the better looking Western MMOs out there, with Guild Wars 2 being the only real competition.
ESO averages a couple hundred thousand unique players per month, and has been averaging roughly a similar amount all year.

Guild Wars 2 was released back in 2012, and has since gone on to become one of the most played free MMOs. More than that, it’s generally considered to have the friendliest community of any MMO online.
The main issue with Guild Wars 2 is that for the last several years, content has been released fairly slowly. This is due to NCSoft being incompetent, and inhibiting ArenaNet from truly making Guild Wars 2 one of the greatest MMORPGs of this generation.
And with slow releases, comes an expected decline in terms of player population. Although with the recent announcement of its latest expansion, “End of Dragons” looming on the horizon, players have come back in droves to play catch-up, and new players are jumping in to see what all the hype is about.
Guild Wars 2 is a gorgeous game with an incredibly large world. It has plenty of class customization, an active PvP community and one of the better narratives out there.
The game utilizes a very high quality hybrid action combat system, allowing for players to change their entire playstyle by merely altering the weapon they have equipped.

Now this one is a little different. See, on the one hand, Star Citizen hasn’t launched yet. It’s an indie MMO that has been in development for years, and has, over the course of its time spent in development, acquired hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding.
More funding than Final Fantasy XIV. More than World of Warcraft. And we’re still years – perhaps decades off from being capable of playing a fully realized game. However, that hasn’t stopped players from playing it in the form it’s available in.
This is a very incomplete game, with very few fully implemented features. Yet last year they reported that they had – at their peak, hundreds of thousands of active players. Which is some of the most ridiculous numbers I’ve ever seen for an unreleased title that is still so far off from being ready.

RuneScape is the oldest title in this list, releasing back in 2001. I’m not entirely certain how this game has retained the playerbase that it has, but I guess this is a testament to how good the game must be, right?
Now I’ve never dedicated much time to the game. I’ll be the first to admit that – not every person will enjoy every MMO, right? It’s asinine to believe that anyone would enjoy every single title in this list.
RuneScape is an enormous game, with more content than you can realistically dream of partaking of if you’re a new player. Sure, it’s very dated – both in terms of how it looks and how it plays. But that’s part of its appeal.
Even though it’s 2 decades old at this juncture, this game – these developers push out more updates than almost any of its competitors, paid or free.
Thankfully player numbers are public, so we can see that there are hundreds of thousands of active players at almost any point in the day. Even if some people claim that half of them are bots.

Black Desert Online released way back in 2014. Yeah, almost 8 years ago. Eight. Years. In all that time, not a single MMORPG released has come close to competing with the game’s dominance over the market in terms of graphics or combat.
To date, BDO is considered to be the “pinnacle of the MMORPG genre,” that one game that every MMO has to live up to. And I can honestly understand why.
Not only is this game absolutely stunning – the world itself, which is completely open, no loading screens at all. Entirely explorable without limitations, whether on land or sea.
But the depth of the character customization is unrivaled. Name one MMO with as good of a creator as BDO. You won’t find one. Couple that with some of the best action combat, and you have what should be the best MMORPG available, yet due to its horrendous pay to win, RNG and grind, falls short.
Pearl Abyss have confirmed hundreds of thousands of active players – on the higher end of the spectrum – which sets it above almost every other MMO in this list.

While New World is less than 2 months old at this moment, it is definitely worth noting that even with all of its issues, all of the exploits, the hacks, the duplication of items, of gold, the lack of endgame, Amazon’s poor handling of all of this, their choice to make the grind even longer in a recent update.. there are still hundreds of thousands of people playing this.
At the time of writing, there was still a peak of 132,000 players concurrently logged in, with likely over a million players still playing over the course of the last month – minimum.
New World features a large, open world – albeit the world itself seems to lack much in diversity – both with regards to the environment, and the monsters found within it.
It utilizes an action combat system that honestly isn’t bad but felt too limiting to me when I played it. There’s an extensive crafting system, a territory system and so much more that is completely overshadowed by how often new exploits are taken advantage of, repeatedly ruining the experience for everyone playing.

World of Warcraft released back in 2004, and up until 2020 was the most populated MMORPG. It was completely unrivaled. Nothing came close to competing with it, especially after WoW Classic launched.
Yet like everything, eventually things fall into obscurity. And while WoW is far from falling into obscurity, with the game still having over a million active players across both Retail and WoW Classic, it’s a far cry from what it once was.
This is evident by the premature end of Shadowlands, in their mad rush to push out something new to re-ignite the playerbase’ passion to play through something new and potentially exciting.
WoW is definitely a dated looking game – for most of it anyway. Newer zones are absolutely gorgeous, and the game features what is arguably the best tab-target combat in the genre. With the exception being maybe Aion or ArcheAge.
It also features more lore than almost any other game I’ve ever seen, but its story has become so disconnected, such a convoluted mess that it’s almost funny trying to keep track of what’s going on.

And finally, Final Fantasy XIV. Final Fantasy XIV released initially back in 2010, and was such a critical failure that they overhauled the game from the ground-up costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
This was the largest undertaking in the entire MMO genre, and has paid off, given it is now the most played, most popular MMORPG. And with Endwalker having just launched into Early Access, and both Mrs Stix and I playing through it, this is probably going to be the largest year for the game to date.
Final Fantasy XIV already confirmed they had hit their highest concurrent player numbers before the mass exodus of WoW players, and the combination of the those additions to the game with fans are going to make queue times unbearable.
Final Fantasy XIV features a large open world, with each expansion introducing even larger areas than the last. It’s a gorgeous game with an incredible narrative. Shadowbringers was by far the best storytelling I’ve seen in an MMO. And I’ve played almost all of them.
Its combat isn’t the best, but it’s good enough that it doesn’t bring the game down – doesn’t hinder it.
The amalgamation of everything that Final Fantasy XIV does right has shown continued success, with the game once being rivaled by Guild Wars 2, and now tripling, maybe quadrupling it in terms of active player numbers.
Nobody ever thought Final Fantasy XIV would dethrone WoW. They thought WoW would to that to itself, and Final Fantasy XIV would continue on the route it was. Boy were we wrong.

And that’s everything. They’re the 10 most played MMORPGs in 2021, moving into 2022. Were they what you expected?

In what is arguably one of its most important updates – pretty much in the history of the entire games life up until this point, Pearl Abyss have revealed the first official dungeon: “The Last Stronghold, Atoraxxion,” a fully fleshed out co-operative dungeon that you can enter and run with other players.

Gone are the days where you spend all your time out in the world farming monsters.. or other players. Welcome to.. Well, okay, there’s only one dungeon right now but the sheer depth of the dungeon looks very promising. It has multiple individual thematic biomes, has an extensive cooperative system in place requiring players solve various puzzles, and large bosses ready to tear into you. Honestly, it’s pretty extensive and honestly gives us a great look into the direction the popular MMO is going.

And it’s a promising future, at that. New classes, new regions, new awakenings. And most importantly.. the addition of actual game features and mechanics, things that are sorely needed to keep player retention at their heights. This dungeon introduction is enough to get both Mrs Stix and I back into the game, for sure.

Kakao Games has been publishing Black Desert Online in the West for years now, bringing the game to the attention of many a player. Millions of players have tried their hands at the popular MMO, with BDO still managing to pull in enough active players to be considered one of the more popular MMOs still available on the market to date.

But this.. this I never saw coming. After years of working together, it turns out Pearl Abyss is taking control over the publishing of the game within North America, Europe and.. pretty much everywhere else in the world. This is due to the sheer amount of success the company has had – which is in no small part due to Black Desert.

Players are excited for this news as Kakao has been disliked by the general BDO playerbase since the game’s inception, in many a players’ words, “making the game progressively more pay to win” as time has gone by. Pearl Abyss very well might be equally as bad – or – god forbid, worse. But on the other hand they could potentially make the game significantly better. At the very least, they’ll have direct control over the game as opposed to Kakao who had no real creative control over anything. If players ran into issues, they would bring it up with Kakao, who would then take these issues to Pearl Abyss, who would then proceed to fix it, let Kakao know, and Kakao would deploy said fix. This way, players have the potential to have direct contact–support with the developers.

Overall, this could spell disaster for the game, or it could be for the game’s best interests. Only time will tell. I’m excited to see where this ultimately ends up going.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. We have a brand new class – and that means it’s about time for Mrs Stix and I to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty again in Black Desert Online.
This time we’re taking a look at the new Hashashin class, an assassin-type character that can turn into a giant tornado. No, seriously, I’m not kidding.

So, the Hashashin. Man. I’ve played every new class in the history of the game, and I can happily say that the Hashashin and Guardian are probably my favorites. They’re very different classes, though, with completely different playstyles and aesthetics.
The Hashashin is a very fast close-quarters melee fighter that utilizes.. well as I showed earlier, sandstorms, a huge tornado, I mean I even kick sand in their eyes – how dirty is that? But you know what, instead of talking about the character, which I’ve already done plenty of, how about I just.. show you the character?
Then we’ll talk a little more after.

While there’s still plenty to learn concerning the Hashashin, I can safely say that it has a playstyle that I definitely enjoy. I’m a fan of fast-attacking assassin-type classes like this.
Black Desert Online has arguably some of the best action combat in the market. And with the sheer number of classes, all with their own unique playstyles, strengths and weaknesses, you’re left with almost limitless freedom to play what you want and how you want.
The game features a large, stunning seamless world to explore and one of the best character creators in an MMO. Seriously, if you haven’t tried the game out yet, then you’re missing out on quite an experience.

I know there are a lotta you guys out there that play Black Desert Online. It’s one of the most played MMOs after all – and there are various reasons for that.
Today, I’d like to go ahead and take a slightly different approach to normal. Today, I’d like to go ahead and list 5 reasons why I believe you should play Black Desert in 2020.

If you can think of any other reasons, be sure to go right ahead and include them in a comment below. I’d love to hear back from those of you that actively play!

Whether you love or hate the game, you cannot deny that it has some of the best graphics on the market right now. The game came out back in March 2016 and since then, not a single MMO has come out – fully released, that presents a better aesthetic feel to the world or its characters.
There are very few MMOs where I actively take time out of what I’m doing to just stop and go “wow, that actually looks pretty sick.” Not just that, but the combat – the skill effects specifically are quite a spectacle to behold. Seeing more than a single person fighting a group of monsters feels like a firework show.
The towns, the cities are filled with NPCs wandering around that truly makes the game feel alive, and the varying environmental vistas you get to explore leave you in a constant state of awe.

There aren’t a whole lot of MMOs that provide large, seamless worlds anymore. We have games that are constantly releasing that feature segregated zones or worse yet – are lobby-based. Don’t get me wrong, I love segregated zones.
I also enjoy the occasional hub-based MMO but there’s something about an MMO that has a world without loading screens. A world that you can freely traverse and never feel like you’re really done exploring.
Not only does Black Desert have a truly massive world to explore on land, but it has quite the expansive sea as well.
Mrs Stix and I did a video on the naval features a few months ago, where we sailed around the world, explored tons of what the ocean had to offer, went diving, searched for and ultimately failed to find any hidden treasure, and realized that there’s more to the game than what is available on foot.
The world is truly enormous and provides so much content to really consume in a variety of forms.

Black Desert has an unrivaled character creator tool.
I’ve played plenty of MMORPGs over the course of this channel’s life. Literally almost a thousand different MMOs and there are maybe a handful with customization tools that aren’t better, but come closer than any other game in the genre.
Yup – the sheer amount of customization options in Black Desert make for not only some of the most amazing characters you’ll find, but also some of the most bizarre, most horrifying creations you’ll ever see.
I kid you not, just Google “Black Desert character creation” and you’ll see characters that will give you nightmares for days. About 2 years ago I did a couple videos with my little sister, Wiggy, where the two of us actually attempted to create the best looking characters we could for each class.
While I no doubt won every single competition, you don’t really notice how diverse each class is and how much they vary in individual looks.
No matter how hard you try, you won’t ever create a character that looks remotely like any other class – and that’s kinda cool. At the same time, if you enjoy a plethora of customization options then you’ll probably never have a character that looks anything like any other player, either.

I mean, you guys were obviously expecting this, right? Of course you were. If you love tab-target combat, then clearly this isn’t the game for you but if you’re looking for some of the slickest, fastest action combat in an MMO.. then you have, what, like 2 options?
And Black Desert Online is arguably the better of the two at your disposal. I mean how many classes are there right now? 18?
And somehow, they continue to release class after class with new, unique weapons, new, interesting playstyles.. If there’s one thing that continues to drive players back to the game, it’s how frequently they introduce new classes and how unique–how original they feel.
I believe the newest addition to the game was in the form of the Guardian class. That’s the class you’re watching me play as if you’re paying attention to the video.
I’ve played the Sorceress, the Tamer, the Witch, the Striker and now the Guardian, and I can safely say.. the Guardian is perhaps one of the most badass characters I’ve played in the game. She’s a hulking mass of pure and utter destructive force.
I did enjoy my time with the Striker though – don’t get me wrong. But he felt far too squishy for me while I was out grinding monsters. I’m not really a fan of squishy classes. I prefer the larger, bulkier, harder hitting ones and that’s why the Guardian was right up my alley.
Plus, you know: Thicc thighs save lives.
One interesting thing worth noting is that while every class does in fact have their own unique playstyles and abilities, you’ll never fully be able to learn all of them requiring you decide, in advance, the kind of build you plan on pursuing.
It’ll save you a lot of headaches in the long-term, trust me. I’ve made so many mistakes that these days I just YOLO and go whatever sounds the coolest.

While every other aspect of the game is more than enough of a reason to play Black Desert on its own – this is by far the most important.
Black Desert Online is a buy-to-play MMORPG, meaning that to play it, you’re required to pay a single, one-time fee, much like you would if you were going to buy a normal PS4 RPG.
Where some games are pay-to-play, requiring a one-time purchase, and then a recurring monthly fee on top of that, and then some games are free but lock end-game or late-game content behind paid expansions, Black Desert offers everything after the initial purchase for free.
I know how difficult it can be for players to pay a monthly recurring fee for an MMO, especially in this day and age.
And having a buy-to-play business model provides the developers with an ample source of income to continue to push out additional content year after year. While the game is buy-to-play, it does provide a premium cash shop for players that want to spend money on outfits or items.
It’s also available on a variety of platforms: PC, Playstation and Xbox consoles with each platform sharing servers but not accounts. Meaning that to play on a separate platform, you’re required to purchase it.

People play Black Desert Online for any number of reasons.
Some people enjoy the combat – they like the grind. They believe that the combat is better than any other game they’ve come across on PC and will swear by it, not playing anything else because it just won’t live up to the standards they now have for the game.
Others enjoy the amount of freedom they have to do what they want: They can spend their days fishing, they can grind monsters to gain XP required to level up, they can do their life-skills, they can sail the ocean pretending to be a pirate.
Others spend all their day in the character customization tool – and for good reason. Sometimes it’s impossible to get the exact character you want, and, honestly, some people are just a little too obsessed with creating new characters. For better or for worse.

I would love to hear back from you guys though regarding why you play the game.
For me? It’s a combination of the things I listed above.
I’m not all too fond of free-to-play MMOs so that rules out quite a lot of games. I like having a lot of creative freedom over my character, both in terms of how they look, and what skills and stats they have.
I need a large world filled with content to consume and, thankfully, I enjoy both tab-target and action combat, so that isn’t really too large of an issue for me.

I’m currently playing through the new Guardian, aiming to hit level 60 when I can in my free time and honestly, this is probably the furthest I’ve ever made it.
After getting into my 60s I’ll probably go ahead and draft up another Black Desert video, but until then, I’d love to know what you guys think of this list.

Has it really been that long? Yikes. Man, I remember seeing Black Desert for the first time and buying it when it originally launched for.. $50 I think? Maybe it was a little more, maybe a little less.
I dunno, it really has been that long – I bought this around the time I started the channel I think. Maybe a little before, even.

So the new Guardian class was released recently. I’d wanted to play it but was a little too busy at the time. Thus I chose to begin it just the other day, and I’ll admit it was pretty perfect timing.
I wanted to do a dedicated Black Desert Online video where I talk about not only the Guardian class, but also the state of the game.. and that’s definitely coming. Probably sometime this month.
But this – this is actually a video purely dedicated to the new Guardian class and the 4th Anniversary of the game…

So, first and foremost, the new Guardian class is an axe and shield wielding barbarian badass.
Combat in Black Desert has always been a lot of fun – I don’t think anyone can really object to that but there was something I thoroughly enjoyed about her combat style more than any other class.
And let’s be real here.. she looks amazing. When they released the Dark Knight class I thought to myself “clearly they can’t outdo this – she looks amazing.”
I am now eating my words because the Guardian is by far the best looking class in-game. And that’s saying something, because most the classes look incredible.
I think I made it to around level 54 when I stopped the recording, and hit 55 off-screen while working on this video. I’ve never Awakened a character before, so as I inch ever closer to that I’ll finally be able to experience it first-hand.
However, from what I played up until level 55-ish – and trust me, I’m well aware that I’m not playing my character as efficiently as I could, I fell in love with her playstyle.
She has giant, hulking attacks that while slow at times, deal such a substantial amount of damage that rarely did the monsters I was engaged with survive more than a second hit.
The ones that did had too large of a level advantage over me, which I closed pretty quickly.

The Anniversary event was, or is actually pretty sick. Not only did they give the game away completely free during the week of February 27th through March 2nd, but they’re also providing us a $50 Steam giveaway for our viewers. This is done completely by them and not us.
Additionally, they’re also running an in-game Anniversary event where players can earn or purchase tokens in-game that contribute towards the Save The Wildlife charity, helping support endangered wildlife. Yup, you can jump in-game, do quests or put your Silver towards a good cause offline.
Since launching, Black Desert has amassed tens of millions of players globally, introduced a plethora of new classes for players to play, overhauled the entire graphical engine with their Remastered update, and introduced a surplus of new land and content.
It truly is a marvel that it receives the level of updates it currently does.

Back on the topic of the Guardian though.. I know level 55 isn’t really all that impressive. It’s doable in what, a day, maybe two of grinding if you know what you’re doing?
But I have multiple characters all approximately level 54 to 56, yet she is the only class I’ve ever been able to grind with this efficiently.
I almost felt like a pro while playing and that’s a first for me. The majority of her skills were AoE-oriented allowing for me to essentially sit here smashing my buttons while decimating group after group in rapid succession.
And she’s tanky to boot! I never dipped in HP as I’d outheal the damage being done to me. I don’t think this’ll necessarily work the same way in PvP so I hope to god I don’t get ganked while out grinding.

Regardless of whether you’re a fan or not, you can’t argue the fact that Black Desert has an incredible action combat system while providing some absolutely gorgeous environments, characters and graphics overall.
Its world is large and filled with players and monsters to fight. Yes, it’s very grindy but there’s a very obvious market for that.
I’m going to be leveling, attempting to hit level 60 in the next couple weeks when I hope to do a much more detailed overview of the game.

Until then, once again, if you want to download BDO completely free for 7-days, then I urge you to use my link in the description or pinned comment.
The Anniversary is going to be on-going for a while yet, so make sure if you’re interested in participating, you jump on in!