It’s not every day that we get hard numbers out of MMORPG studios, but Pearl Abyss has brought some big ones for Black Desert today.
“Korean developer and publisher Pearl Abyss revealed a new major milestone on Black Desert Online’s eight-year PC anniversary today, amassing more than 55 million registered online players across all platforms and generating over 2 billion euro in revenue since its Korean launch in 2014,” the company announced in its press release. That’s about $2.16B US. MOP’s own Black Desert columnist Carlo just did a retrospective piece covering the game’s progress in its first 3333 days of life, for those curious about it from a player perspective.
The ongoing anniversary and promotional activities mean the first couple of weeks in March are going to be full of new classes for certain players of Black Desert, as console players will get to experience the twin hammer-swinging Scholar on Wednesday, March 6th, while mobile players will get their hands on the awakened Drakania class on Tuesday, March 12th.
For those who perhaps missed out on the news from the PC side of things, the Scholar packs a double wallop with her earth-powered twin hammers and gravity-based attacks, making her easily one of the most combative and aggressive alchemists ever known to MMORPGs. Her upcoming release is heralded with a pair of videos that can be watched below.
The following week on BDO Mobile adds the awakened Drakania to the game. Details are generally thin here save for the March 12th launch date and the teaser trailer below, but fans can get a general idea of what this character has in store by looking at a related class page.
As for the current goings-on in the sandbox MMORPG, the mobile version has opened up a new Forgotten Ruins area of the Battlefield of the Sun, which is intended to feel similar to a node war, along with some boss fight adjustments and UI updates. Meanwhile, the PC version has made some mechanical tweaks to the War of the Roses PvP mode, improved matchmaking and point scoring for guild league fights, and condensed some of the materials needed for PEN V boss gear.
