Black Desert Online is a 2014 Korean MMORPG that recently had a Worldwide release in March 2016. Dynamic day and night cycles, player housing, and detailed character customization seemed to really sell the game for Western audiences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS75XlHmA2o
But there’s a problem brewing, when it comes to the pay-to-win system for the game. First, we need to understand how things got to this point.
What’s the Pearl Shop for? Black Desert Online‘s Pearl Shop is the end result of exchanging the Daum cash you buy for the game in turn for Pearl units of money. Simply put, you can buy a variety of character costumes, weapons, and accessories, among other things. In itself that would seem pretty standard for a pay-to-win MMO situation to crop up, but those concerns are magnified more with the inclusion of things like furniture, mounts, and pets (whole list of stuff is over here). Pets are specially important, as they give bonuses: penguins boost your fishing speed, hawks mark elite enemy mobs, and cats/dogs detect points of interest for the player. Further, when it comes to the costumes and content like that, it’s not purely cosmetic in this game. There’s a whole degree of stat bonuses at play here.
The concerns began when something called the Value Pack was added to stores. It gives Black Desert Online players a set of added bonuses for 30 days, effectively making the game a subscription based MMO. The cash shop had be criticized in the past for their relatively high prices, ultimately giving the game an identity crisis between Buy2Play and Free2Play.
But then this Value Pack added Pay2Win/Subscription types of benefits to the equation. Which to the community seemed like too much.
The final straw seemed to have occurred this past Thursday, when one of the forum administrators announced the changes to accessibility of Pearl Shop items. As quoted by them:
Greetings Adventurers,Today we are writing you to provide insight into a new mechanic you can expect to see next week, following the normally scheduled maintenance. As many of you are aware, the Value Package was recently introduced to our Pearl Store. After detailed discussions with the Developers at Pearl Abyss, it has been decided that the Value Pack as well as other Pearl Shop Items will be made available via the Market Place over the next series of updates.– Players might be allowed to register maximum of 5 Pearl Shop Items per week on the Market Place.We understand that this change will spark discussions, and have asked Pearl Abyss to share their thoughts behind this decision.Pearl Abyss considers in-game accessibility to Pearl Items necessary in Black Desert.Regardless of the region, there will always be players who, for whatever reason, do not get to experience all the features Black Desert offers including Pearl Shop Items. Adding a mechanic that grants access to Pearl Shop Items with in game currency will allow more players to enjoy such content more easily.For the same reason, the players of other regions like Korea, Japan and Russia are preferring those features since it allows them better accessibility to Pearl Shop Items.We are open to the community’s feedback and we encourage you to share your thoughts and concerns in a constructive manner on this change.
