BDO has officially been open to western players for a week (opened 3/3/2016). People are giving out opinions like they pass along a cold. Massively Overpowered presents 9 takes on the game opinions. See: Black Desert Impressions from Around the MMO Blogosphere.

Everyone seems to love the graphics and beauty of BDO. One can press Ctrl-U to hide the user interface and take screen shots. Pressing Prt Scr will send a screen capture to your My Documents/Black Desert folder.

From the Korean version people say, sit down (Q) and press Ctrl-R to enter into spectator/observer mode. That doesn’t seem to work for me.

Supposedly the keys to know are:

• Ctrl-U key: Hide user interface (toggle) – works.
• Prt Scn key: Capture screen shot – works.
• Ctrl-R key: Enter spectator (observer) mode – not working US version (?).
• Shift+Arrow keys: Controls the Filters/Noise grain/Rotation – filters?
• Ctrl+Arrow keys: Controls the DoF and Focus – works.
• Alt+Arrow keys: Controls Camera X/Y position – works.
• Press U for slow motion – haven’t tried.

Mostly move the camera with mouse, no buttons and RMB. I have a lot of experimenting to do…

There are supposed to be ‘filters’ for capturing effects in the screen shots. But, I doubt BDO has anything like Second Life’s Windlight.

I agree, BDO is gorgeous and I’m running at medium graphics.

I don’t see people agreeing on much else. I find their opinions tell me more about them than the game. But, I do notice people finding the game hard to learn. I have found inventory to be the most annoying aspect of the game. Being used to having unlimited inventory in Second Life™ I am nearly constantly fighting inventory limits in BDO. I’ve thrown away so much good stuff…

Reviews on the GRIND are mixed. Some find it minimal others find it a game stopper. I am finding the quests fun. The grinds for all but combat can be relegated to slav… doh!… workers. Then I just have to keep the workers fed. My current worker only seems to need food every 3^rd day? You have to feed your horses, pets, and self too. But, I don’t have to clean up after them.

Lag… BDO has lag. I don’t hear people talking about it. There is play-lag and render-lag, I’m not being technically accurate. Those terms are my attempt to be descriptive. Rendering happens faster in BDO than in Second Life. But, I had to spend 4 hours downloading 35±gb content that will seldom change. So, render-lag is minimal, but LoD and distance affect when things render. As the servers get busy things at a distance are slow to appear. When they do appear they fully render quickly, tens-of-a-second.

Play-lag is there too. But, even in ‘overrun’ areas (lots of players) combat proceeds with little if any lag. I can’t blame dying on lag. But, the game may freeze. That seems to happen most often when I’m AFK and traveling from place to place. I suspect it is the games screen saver that kicks in at 5 (?) minutes AFK. Now and then it comes back. Sometimes I have to kill the process and relog. I use System Explorer (free) so that isn’t as painful as having to use Window’s tools.

Avoid running Chrome and BDO at the same time…

BDO is a challenge to learn. The learning is a puzzle. I’m figuring out how to handle storage and play the talk-to-NPC-mini-game. It took way long to learn how to setup my Quickslots. Some are complaining about how hard it is to find information. The Korean to English manuals… they’re OK. But, skip the really basic stuff, leaving me asking, what f’n key?

People do comment about the learning challenge. But, it doesn’t seem to matter to most players. May be they are embarrassed to say… But, I don’t see many ‘how do you…’ questions in world chat. I suspect many of the players played in the Korean Beta.

Pets… I love my dog, way cute and cute animations. People freak-out when they get the in-game message monsters are attacking their donkey or horse. I walk to many battles because I can’t find a safe place to leave my horse.

It is too early to have a consensus about BDO. Also, it looks like a lot has changed in BDO for the western release. So, the pre-March reviews are not fully on the BDO we play now.

I’m having fun with BDO, if that tells you anything…