As Black Desert Online celebrates its tenth anniversary, Pearl Abyss reveals the future of its MMO lies thousands of years in the past

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Black Desert Online

It’s an interesting direction for a studio that has, according to Executive Producer Jaehee Kim, spent most of the last decade thinking as far ahead as possible. “[We] wanted to make a game that would be fun in the very far future,” Kim says during a roundtable interview, when I ask him how Black Desert has navigated the often volatile waters of the MMO genre. “The genre was more like a framework for [us].”

Kim explains that Black Desert Online wasn’t designed to appeal to a specific audience, but to be as broad as possible. Players can go around fighting monsters or other players if they wish, but they can equally apply their time to pursuing other activities like sailing, farming, hunting and shipbuilding. “It’s being able to think about the long future that is why [we’re] able to build [Black Desert]”, Kim continues, “because there’s so many elements you can include in that MMO framework.”

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Black Desert Online

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Alongside this, the Seoul expansion introduces ten new bosses to fight, and a new way to fight them—five player coop. This is a direct response to the introduction of the ‘Black Shrine’ system in the first part of the expansion, which replaced the series' traditional ‘grind spots’ with unique bosses that could be defeated in solo or Guild-based co-op. “Players really liked it,” Jin says. “So this time we wanted to bring in another, newer type of gameplay.” These encounters were originally planned as even larger Guild Raids, but were scaled back to increase the sense of camaraderie and personal achievement within the group.

Black Desert Online

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During the livestreamed keynote at the tenth anniversary event, one of the biggest reactions came with the announcement of hardcore PvP servers. In these servers, all players start from level 60 with preset gear. When they die, players are incarcerated in a Call of Duty: Warzone-style prison, where they must either wait to escape, or fight other players in 1v1 duels to earn their freedom.

Black Desert Online

Past lives

Once Land of the Morning Light launches in Korea on August 7 (and after localisation globally) there will be two more expansions added to the base map. Mountain of Dawn Break will see players exploring a new, mountainous region of the map which, when completed, provides access to the final map regions, a 100-floor dungeon known as the Demon Land. The Demon Land realm is built around one massive, sprawling gothic castle, which in screenshots has a serious Souls vibe.

Black Desert Online

Alongside these narrative plans, I ask Jin whether there are any mechanical ideas time-travel affords. A new class built around time-manipulation, for example, seems like a fitting accompaniment to an expansion like this. Jin says there are still a lot of “moving pieces” regarding what systems might be added to the expansion, with nothing set in stone yet. But it does seem like there will be more to this expansion than new areas to explore and stories to pursue.

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Seoul’s born#

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Guild wars#

Past lives#

Seoul’s born

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Guild wars

Past lives