Fights, friendships, passions and pugs: At Black Desert's 10th anniversary event, we asked players about why they're still obsessed with the MMO

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Cosplayers at Black Desert�s 10th anniversary event.

Here, hundreds of Black Desert players have gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the popular Korean MMO. Beynac is the inspiration for Black Desert’s in-game city of Heidel, and as such makes an ideal venue for the occasion. For one cloudy Saturday in June, reality and fiction collide. The castle is adorned with Black Desert banners, while the village’s precipitous streets have been temporarily redubbed “the adventurer’s path.”

It’s on this path where I spent much of the day, speaking to the players, guildmasters, streamers, and cosplayers about their experiences in Black Desert. Across the day, I hear stories of epic wars, murderous outlaws, record breakers, virtual meet-cutes, and a small dog who became the symbol of a nation.

The cosplayers

The day starts, somewhat unceremoniously, in a car park at the foot of Beynac. As everyone signed in for the event, I spot two reserved-looking guys sat on a wall near the riverbank, away from the larger crowd, and went over to chat. They introduced themselves as Lotus and Setheal. Lotus has been playing Black Desert for two months, Setheal for nearly a decade. In fact, Setheal has been playing since before the game was available in the West, joining a Korean server via VPN. “It was not really allowed,” he says. “The first thing I saw was actually a leak from the game in 2013, and I was like ‘that’s the best-looking MMO I have ever seen’, and that’s why I joined the Korean server first.”

While the two men clearly get on, their vast gulf in their game experience makes them an odd pairing. That is, until I ask Setheal what his favourite memory from the game is:

“Probably the fact that I met my girlfriend thanks to Black Desert.”

Kazy, Lotus, and friend and fellow cosplayer Rhian.(Image credit: Future / Photographer: Rick Lane)

Kazy, Lotus, and friend and fellow cosplayer Rhian

Both Setheal and Lotus, it turns out, are partners with two of the event’s professional cosplayers—DrawMeACosplay, and Kazy.

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(Image credit: Future / Photographer: Rick Lane)

DrawMeACosplay and Setheal.

While DrawMeACosplay met Setheal online, they largely play individually. “I like to do my own thing because I’m really a casual player,” she says. They both work together on the cosplays, however. The costume she’s wearing at the event—the Ranger class—took 18 months to complete. “I wanted to find challenging costumes, because I see all the details on that and I knew I was probably going to learn so many skills because of that costume,” she says. “A second reason was probably to honour my relationship with my boyfriend, because Black Desert is so precious to us.”

The PvP players

Trekking up the streets of Beynac, I come to a raised dais with a stone bench that looks out across the valley, where I take a short rest. A group of players are descending from the castle, and a cheery American voice calls out “You’re almost halfway!”

This turns out to be Blue Squadron, a streamer and content creator for Black Desert. A player for eight years, Blue Squadron formerly ran a hardcore PvP guild for the community. “The most active communities in the game are all the PvP communities,” he says. “Node wars, siege wars, large-scale PvP, small-scale PvP, everybody’s in the battle arena all the time.”

Blue Squadron is visiting Beynac with his friend and former guildmate Layfonda, who tells me his favourite memories of the game are the “old-school PvP days” running with the Guild. “You would have like 30v30 people, 40v40 people. And it’s just a ball fight, it’s just a mess. You don’t know what’s happening. You just have Blue Squadron going ‘guys come on, push up to the frontlines!'”

(Image credit: Future / Photographer: Rick Lane)

The village of Beynac-et-Cazenac

Blue Squadron says he stopped running his PvP guild because managing it could be like a full-time job. “HR issues are a big deal,” he says. “Making sure the community is active, people have a voice. People are talking, people are happy, right? Like, if you have a bad fight, you have to worry about the morale of the guild.” Blue Squadron now runs a more general PvX guild, as well as running his channel full time.

HR issues are a big deal … If you have a bad fight, you have to worry about the morale of the guild.Blue Squadron

HR issues are a big deal … If you have a bad fight, you have to worry about the morale of the guild.

Layfonda, meanwhile, is more critical of how Black Desert has altered the status of PvP in the game over the years. “There’s more people, but because of the more people, a lot of them don’t like the PvP aspect,” he says. “So it’s taking the approach of the more casual gamer.” He says the game is still a “blast to play”, but clearly misses the days when PvP was less regimented, and more of a free-for-all.

“Very good. Very good,” he says. “Again, I’ve been playing since the start of BDO, and what they mentioned there was the prime time BDO, where I loved it. It’s going to be phenomenal and I cannot wait.”

Cosplayers at Black Desert’s 10th anniversary event.

The dog

As the village of Beynac falls away and the castle walls rear up alongside me, I encounter another group of PvP players, who all belong to a guild called Barcode. With an alliance of 150 players, Barcode specialises in “endgame” PvP, specifically “node wars” and siege wars. The former see guilds fighting over individual points on a map, whereas the latter involve capturing multiple nodes to occupy entire in-game continents, known as territories.

Afuaru, the guild’s GM, tells me about the most notable event in the guild’s history, namely its participation in the “Game of Guilds”. This occurred when the three main servers in North America were merged, resulting in a huge war between Barcode and another Guild called Manup. “Once they all got into one server, we’re like ‘Ok, now we got to duke it out for who’s top dog?'”

The result was a huge clash between Barcode’s team of rangers and Manup’s warrior-focussed ranks. “They were just naturally stronger. And we clashed and Manup ended up beating us, and they kind of muscled us for a while.” The war in game also spilled out into an online meme war, the remnants of which are still visible on YouTube.

Also present in the Barcode group are husband and wife duo Thail and Blacksoul, the latter of whom relates an anecdote from their time playing Black Desert. “There was one time when we both, the guild we were in won one of the territories.”

Now, a fun mechanical quirk of Black Desert is that, if a guild wins a territory, they can change the emblems within that territory, flags, tents, walls, to anything they like. At the time, Blacksoul and Thail had a dog named Tuff. “We put a picture of our dog as the emblem, and then all the guards in the town had the picture of our dog’s name.” The picture also happened to depict Tuff wearing a crown, a fitting embodiment of the guild’s triumph.

Tuff, sadly, has since passed away. But let the record state that, once upon a time, he symbolised victory for an entire continent.

A castle.

The red player

Trisiplays and BairogHaan outside the castle gatehouse.(Image credit: Future / Photographer: Rick Lane)

Trisiplays and BairogHaan outside the castle gatehouse.

Trisiplays describes to me the day on which he, as he puts it, “went red”. It happened during a guild war that broke out between two guilds over a disagreement about a particular spot for experience grinding. “My guild leader at the time tasked me to target their protected members,” Trisiplays explains. “You can protect members from guild wars so they can’t get attacked without a penalty. But I was open to take those penalties to take those targets out.”

You’re just an outlaw. You become a murderer, essentially.Trisiplays

You’re just an outlaw. You become a murderer, essentially.

The way Trisiplays explains it, the opposing guild’s PvP players were “literally” hiding behind their protected players. “I didn’t like that, so I was, how do you say, balls to the wall? I [ran] up, killed them all, and I was like ‘well, that’s my life now’.”

In fighting for his guild, Trisiplays essentially cursed himself to a life in exile. He’s been a red player since 2017. But he says he still tries to play in an honourable fashion. “I actually don’t attack if somebody doesn’t attack me first. I used to be much more aggressive, but I toned it down.”

Nonetheless, playing with a red name is significantly more challenging than playing the game regularly. Trisiplays must often resort to elaborate trickery simply to get around. “I definitely walk a lot on the roofs, because down in the streets is just not a thing,” he says.

Black Desert’s 10th anniversary event.

The life skills master

Black Desert is known primarily for its spectacular combat, but it also lets players pursue a more peaceful virtual existence through its life skills. Life skills are in-game pursuits that would be considered side activities in most games, such as fishing, hunting, alchemy, gathering herbs and so forth. But each of these has its own levelling system that lets them become a player’s entire focus if they so choose.

Each life skill is designed to keep players occupied for countless hours, but that hasn’t stopped one player from trying to master all of them. Enter BairogHaan, a streamer and Twitch Partner who has been playing Black Desert since its inception. “Basically, my goal in the game is to get a high level life-skilling in many different life skills.”

Sailing is one of the hardest life skills to level up. It takes literally a hundred years to level up to max level.BairogHaan

Sailing is one of the hardest life skills to level up. It takes literally a hundred years to level up to max level.

Of the ten available life skills in the game, BairogHaan currently has reached the max level of 50 in five of them, a process which has taken him most of the time he’s been playing. He says that his favourite life skill to play was initially gathering “for the first three, four years of BDO”. But this has since changed to hunting “because hunting is much more profitable at the moment.”

Community activities.

I ask BairogHaan what it is about Black Desert’s life skills that intrigue him so much. “It’s part of my daily routine. Time where I can just chill and focus on getting the goals.” Also, while the destination may be unreachable, the journey has amassed BairogHaan quite the following. In the last few years, BairogHaan has built a Twitch account with 20,000 followers. “I know a lot about life-skilling, so they come to ask questions, what is good, what is bad and so on, so I try to teach and help other people.”

The record breaker

That player is RisingSun, aka PvEnvironment. “I’m currently the highest player on combat level in Europe,” he tells me. It’s a record he has set several times, becoming the first player in Europe to reach levels 66, 67 and 68 for combat in Black Desert Online.

PvEnvironment.(Image credit: Future / Photographer: Rick Lane)

PvEnvironment

For PvEnvironment, grinding in Black Desert is a fundamental part of his daily routine. It’s also netted him a small Twitch following, with 4,000 people tuning in to watch him push his combat level ever higher. But that routine was upset last year, when he was unexpectedly banned from the game. The ban was allegedly for macro use, which is a bannable offence in BDO. “There was a banwave,” he says. “They didn’t explain it in detail, but we think it was the anti-cheat programme,” he says.

A lot of people ask me how you can grind more than two hours a day. For me it’s relaxing. I love grinding.PvEnvironment

A lot of people ask me how you can grind more than two hours a day. For me it’s relaxing. I love grinding.

PvEnvironment livestreamed about his ban, and says the stream resulted in a flurry of news stories across specialist media, such as the German site MeinMMO. After 28 days, the ban, which was supposed to be permanent, was lifted.

Drone shot of the village.

Black Desert players.

Since the reinstatement of his account, PvEnvironment has continued to pursue new combat levels, pushing to level 68 and building his Twitch following. “I learned about so many people who [also] have goals like me,” he says. “South America, North America. It was amazing to find these people and we are all kind of friends now.” He’s also part of Black Desert’s Ambassador program, through which experienced players share their knowledge of the game with newcomers. “It’s normal players but they like to help new adventurers,” he says. “It’s a nice community. I really like it.”

As night falls at Beynac, everyone gathers together for dinner, after which a prize draw is held for the community members. For most of the day, I’ve encountered Black Desert’s community as individuals or in small groups, hearing their experiences in the game as disparate, isolated tales. Here though, the passion of the community as a unit becomes clear. As each winner is called forth, the front of the room (where most of the community is sat) explodes with cheering and roaring, entire tables of community members often leaping from their seats. With fans like this, it’s clear why Black Desert has thrived for ten years, and why its creators are confident it’ll be around for ten more.

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The cosplayers#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

The PvP players#

The dog#

The red player#

The life skills master#

The record breaker#