Streamer Spotlight: PvtWiggles

PvtWiggles is a full time streamer from the United Kingdom (Hail Britannia!) who not only streams Black Desert Online, but is also creating guides for it on his Youtube channel. 

He is a very approachable and friendly streamer with a growing community and is always eager to answer beginner player questions in his chat. If you are looking for that Black Desert fix as you wait for the next beta to begin, you can't go wrong with PvtWiggles! You can find his stream at www.twitch.tv/pvtwiggles.

Design a Beast!

The Beast Character Creation event starts today. With the only guideline being to make the ugliest character possible, I am sure we will be seeing a lot of interesting designs.

You can win a T-Shirt, Beta Access, and Pearls (the in game purchasable currency in in Black Desert). You have until the 5th of February to submit a character.

Resources for Black Desert Online players

Sadly, there aren't many web resources currently available for Black Desert Online. Because of this, I wanted to compile a list of sites that are available for those trying to find out everything they can about the game.  While many of these sites have been active for quite some time and some of their older content may or not be relevant to the Western release, they still can provide you with a wealth of information about the game. If you feel there is anything I might have missed, please be sure to comment below, and I will update the list.

Black Desert Online

Actually fairly new, the official news and forums of Black Desert Online.

Black Desert Tome

Black Desert Tome is a website that is largely responsible for the amount of players that have been able to experience the Korean version of the game. They host the English Patch that allows players to play the Korean client in English. I have personally used their patch and am awed at the amount of effort that was put into the translation. They also host a Wiki full of information, Maps of the World, and intend on having a Database for Black Desert once the game goes live.

Black-Desert.com

Black-Desert.com is host to the first forums available for English fans of the game. They have a great community and provide news updates for all versions of the game.

Black Desert Reddit Community

While I have found subreddits to be hit or miss, I have nothing but praise for the /r/blackdesertonline reddit community. With fantastic moderators and friendly members, I highly suggest hopping over and subscribing.

Twitch

Twitch has a variety of Streamers that play Black Desert from a variety of regions. This number is only going to grow once the game is released. The link directly goes to all users currently streaming the game. If you have questions and want quick answers, I have never been disappointed by the Twitch Streamer community.

Blackdesert-online.de

A German fan site for Black Desert. While sadly I cannot read German and therefore cannot enjoy its content first hand, it does come highly recommended by some of my German friends.

Black Desert World

A French fan site for Black Desert. Alas, my French is only ever so slightly better than my German, so I don’t have experience directly with the site. It does come highly recommended to me by one of our French viewers.

Closed Beta 2 Starts February 18th! Character Generator Online.

We have just one month to go before closed beta 2 starts! This time around, anyone who has pre-ordered either the the Explorer's or Conquerer's pack will have a chance to take a journey into the world of Black Desert Online.

In addition, the Black Desert Character generator is available for download. Even better, you will be able to save your creations for later import!

Cash Shop Thoughts

Recently over at the official Black Desert forums Belsazar went into details on what we can expect to see in both the Cash and the Miles shops at the launch of Black Desert Online. Let me tell you right up front that I very happy with what I’ve seen thus far. After my experiences with other foreign games being brought to the West and having my hopes dashed when the Pay-2-Win became apparent (Archeage….Cough), I am excited with the direction Daum is taking with this game.

There are the typical things you see in a cash shop, such as inventory expansion, skill resets, costumes, some pets, and furniture for your house. However there are no experience potions in the cash shop, something I would normally label as a “convenience” item but with Black Desert’s soft experience cap (you can exceed the game’s cap of level 50, but progression becomes glacial), there was a pay to win element. Instead you find such potions in the Miles shop.

The Miles Shop has its own set of items ranging from potions and boss scrolls to items that also appear in the cash shop (giving you two ways to acquire them)  including storage, skill resets, and even additional character slots (typically you always need to pay for those with real money). You will earn 100 Miles per day as login rewards (No word as yet if you will receive your Miles all at once or over a certain number of hours played each day–like the Daily Dash in the newly released Blade and Soul). Another important thing to note is you will not receive Miles for buying things with Pearls (the cash shop currency), you literally just get them for logging in and playing the game.

There are still elements that could have a pay to win aspect associated with them such as costumes with stats on them (this has not been confirmed, but the Korean costumes come with minor buffs), and pets that can only be purchased via the pet shop (pets have skills such as the ability to warn you when another player flags in your vicinity, and they will pick up your loot making farming easier), but they don’t bother me nearly as much as the dreaded lockboxes most free to play games have.

I don’t necessarily take issue with lockboxes in a game provided the items you can win are simple cosmetic items or boosts (as in Star Wars: The Old Republic), but if the lockboxes offer gameplay improvements or can destabilize the economy, they can over time destroy an MMO (especially if your odds of winning the item are very low).

Another announcement that has been made is that you will not be able to sell items purchased from the cash shop on the Auction House. This means that you can’t drop large sums of money to get the best items in the game. Daum has said they intend to monitor things so it is possible we could see cash shop items in the AH at some point down the road, but personally I would prefer things to stay as they are.

That’s the thing about MMO’s they can change over time. Sometimes for the better, like when we get new content, and sadly sometimes for the worse. While no one can guarantee that we won’t see questionable items make it into the cash shop in the future, I sincerely hope Black Desert does well enough in the Western market so that Daum can keep the game free of Pay-2-Win elements, particularly in a game that has such a wonderful sandbox experience.

I’ve included the contents of both the Pearl Cash Shop and the Miles Shop for your review. Sadly, we don’t have the costs of the individual items yet, but at least you can see the direction Daum is moving.

Cash Shop
Main	Shop	Sub	Item Function
Convenience	Storage	Inventories 1/4/8	Increases inventory space by 1/4/8 slots
		Weight 50/100/150	Increases player carry weight by 50/100/150 LT
		Region Storage 1/4/8	Increase warehouse space in a specific region by 1/4/8 slots
	Support / Boost	Horse EXP booster	Increases Horse EXP by +20% for 1 hour.
		Partial Skill Reset	Resets the selected combat skill and retrieves its skill point.
		Family Name Change Ticket	Allows you to change your family name.
		Horse name change ticket	Allows you to change your horse’s name.
		Character Slot	Expand the character creation slots by 1 slot.
		Revive Potion	Allows you to resurrect immediately.
		Life Skill stats transfer ticket	Allows you to transfer specific life skill EXP to another character.
		Stable expansion ticket	Increase stable space in a specific city by 1
		Worker's lodging expansion	Increase worker space in a specific city by 1
Vanity	Beauty	Costume + Weapon Skin Package	Full set of armor skills with weapon and off-hand skin
		Weapon Skin	Cosmetic Skin for main-hand weapon.
		Costume Set	Cosmetic Skin for armor slots.
		Costume Single Pieces	Individual cosmetic item.
		Accessories	Glasses and facial jewelry.
		Underwear	Cosmetic underwear with luck bonus.
		Dye box sets (1/3/10) / Bleach	Contains random dye from specific color range.
		Appearance change scroll	Allows you to change the appearance of one character one time.
	Housing	Floor & Wall, Chandelier, Furniture set, Bedside Table, Dresser, Closet, Dining Table, Table, Chair, Sofa, Bookshelf, Bed	Adds aesthetic value to a home, as well as beds restore energy when used.
	Horse	Horse set	Box containing full set of costume armor for a horse.
		Horse Face Mask, Horse Bard, Horse Saddle, Horse Stirrup	Individual cosmetic items for horses.
		Horse skill initialization ticket	Change the skill of a horse.
		Horse Breeding  Reset	Resets the number of times a horse has been breed to allow more breeding.,
		Horse Whistle (1/7/30 days/permanent)	Allows user to call horse from further away for 1/7/30 days.
		Horse appearance change scroll	Allows the user to change the appearance of their horse one time.
	Pets	Pets (cats/dogs/birds/special)	Gathers monster loot items for the player.

Mileage
	Items	Item Function	Attribute
Offered via Cash & Miles	Partial Skill Reset	Resets the selected combat skill and retrieves its skill point.	All Mileage Items: - Character Bound - No trade - No sell on MP - repetitively purchasable - except weight +50, which will only be possible to be re-purchased 4 times
	Storage +1	Increase warehouse space in a specific region by 1/4/8 slots
	Inventory +1	Increases inventory space by 1 slot
	Weight +50	Increases player carry weight by 50 LT
	Horse EXP Booster	Increases Horse EXP by +20% for 1 hour.
	Revive Potion	Allows you to resurrect immediately.
	Character Slot	Expand the character creation slots by 1 slot.
Only via Miles Shop	Blessing of Kamasylvia 1 day	Increase Energy Regen +2 & Increase item drop by 20%
	Energy Potion (S)	Restores 10 energy.
	Tech EXP Booster	Increases Skill EXP by +10% for 1 hour.
	Life Skill EXP Booster	Increases Life Skill EXP +10% for 1 hour.
	Combat EXP Booster	Combat EXP +50% for 1 hour.
	Mana Scroll	Increases Max MP by +100 for 1 hour.
	Health Scroll	Increases Max HP by +100 for 1 hour.
Game Items	Boss Scrolls (Witch/Tree/Bheg)	Summons a greater boss.
	Boss Scrolls (Imp/Goblin/RedNose)	Summons a lesser boss.

Streamer Spotlight: Docgotgame

Docgotgame is a two year+ partnered Twitch variety MMO Streamer. He is known for his high energy, poor dance skills, and tons of interaction with his community. He is first of all an entertainer, and a very good one at that.

While Doc isn’t currently streaming Black Desert Online from another region (Booo!) he has participated in several of the Betas, including Closed Beta 1 last month. As a seven year veteran of Eve Online, I expect he will be charging right into Black Desert at launch. You can check out his channel (i.e. watching him get killed) at twitch.tv/docgotgame. If you manage to kill him in game, eat some bread over his corpse!

Project Manager Diary unveils Cash Shop and More

Over at the official forums, Belsazar has provided a substantial update of the game's localization changes, which discuss the Cash Shop, PVP Bounty System, and Voice Acting (for the Western localization).

We are going to be running a series of articles with our thoughts on the PM Diary, and we hope you come back to see what we have to say. Overall, we are excited about the direction things are moving and are eagerly anticipating for final release!

We are Back!

We are Back!

We are are back from vacation and are already hard at work preparing to deliver you the latest news and content for Black Desert Online! While there hasn't been a lot of news the last couple of weeks, we are preparing several guides we hope to have available in time for Closed Beta 2 (which is hopefully soon). We also have a large website update coming in the beginning of February (sometime during the first week), with a new layout I think the community will prefer.

Finally, we are introducing a new column on streamers that either stream Black Desert Online currently (with one of the foreign clients), or will be once the game releases. I hope to have the first column ready later this evening, so please keep an eye out for it!