Black Desert Online: Grind-fest with paywall... No thanks!

Anytime I see the word "free" next to a game that obviously took some time to make, I approach it was a huge level of trepidation. Lately, the PS Store has been featuring Black Desert Online rather regularly and at the grand price tag of zero I figured why the hell not check it out.

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The graphics are incredible for an MMO, I would argue that they are some of the best, if not the best in the industry. Gameplay mechanics are tight, controls are very responsive, and unlike other MMO's where it seems as though everything is just on a cooldown timer this seems more like a Devil May Cry experience with fast-past combat where positioning is actually important.

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I mean look at that! That is almost Witcher 3 levels of graphical awesomeness, right?

The level of customization on your character's look is almost endless and therefore there are very few people out there in the game that end up looking as though they are just cookie cutters of one another. I never pay much attention to this but I do realize that this is very important to a lot of people out there in the gaming world.

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Group play against massive and tough enemies is also a focus of the game and there is certainly plenty of people LFG at any given point in time although a rather large portion of the player base do appear to be non-English speaking so it can be difficult at times.

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So far all of this sounds great but here comes the bad part that is evident in game after you have played it for just a little while: The best stuff in game are things that you can buy using micro transaction or you can grind for hours and hours and hours and hours in order to get said item or pet.

This is something that has always annoyed me about any free or near free game of any sort. There is no such thing as free and anyone who claims to have a product like that is lying to you. This is true in ANY free MMO. They are going to get money from you somehow in the form of in-game currency purchase using real word credit cards, or by way of simply purchasing such an add on in the PS store.

If you have a Playstation 4 (or 5) then head over to the PS store and type in "Black Desert Online." The section with all the add ons for the game is absolutely immense. Sure, many of these things are purely cosmetic the same way that Guild Wars 2 promised that in game purchases would always be cosmetic but this isn't entirely true. Just like in GW2 there are certain things such as storage capacity that can in theory be expanded by grinding in game..... or you can spend a few dollars of real world money and get it immediately.

I know that I used to justify spending $10 here and $20 there in GW2 because the alternative was to grind for absolute ages to acquire the money necessary to purchase said item. In the 2 days it would take me to get that item by in-game means, I could just work an hour at a job. This is how I, and many other justify these micro transactions and I think that just about any MMO has the same line of thinking behind it.

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I was only playing the game for about 20 hours when it became apparent to me that if I wanted any of the "good stuff" in the game I was going to have to pay for it with real world money or park my ass somewhere for 2 days hoping for the drop (almost never happens) or to rack up enough in-game currency to buy it.

There are reports from people who are far more dedicated to MMO's that have reported that getting the really good gear will take thousands of hours of your time to accomplish. No thanks.

This is what I hate about almost all MMO's, especially the ones that claim to be free - They aren't free... nothing is in life is free and Black Desert is just another one of those games that I am going to bail out on before I get hooked into reaching for my credit card in the first place.