I've spent the last few hours in Black Desert Online not plunking arrows into orcs or testing my skill against other players, but in attempting to tame horses. It's something I fondly remember from real-world experiences in my teens, and I thus admire that such an option even exists in this expansive sandbox-style MMORPG. But like so much else in Black Desert Online, something about how the system works seems ever so slightly off. The loop in the catch-rope I cast is laughably too small, for instance, and I can't even tell the gender of the horse for breeding it with other horses until I've caught it. But there's always a moment of quiet joy when I managed to win one over with a handful of sugar. I can think of no other contemporary massively multiplayer online RPG that grants me that same satisfaction.
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I say that in part because few other MMORPGs’ worlds feel quite so real as Black Desert Online’s. Horse taming is but the tip of what it offers. There are fantasy staples like elves here, but they're subtle, with their ears usually hidden beneath luxurious hairstyles. There's an (unplayable) race of otter folk, but they blend with the low-fantasy ambience as comfortably as saguaros in Arizona. That cozy realism reveals itself in the Witcher-esque detail of the world, where carefully maintained vineyards hold vigil alongside wind-tossed grasses and weatherworn fenceways. There's a price for that detail—the highest settings challenged my GeForce GTX 980 in crowded areas—but I never tired of the way Black Desert Online uses it to create a believable world where humble Tuscan cottages stand in for the outlandish castles we usually see in this genre.
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But as with the horse taming, that realism also springs from the wealth and depth of its many secondary systems. Instead of the mindless rush to the level cap that characterizes many of its competitors, Black Desert Online thrives on a vaguely sandboxy design. Using a refundable secondary XP system of sorts based on "contribution points," it emphasizes activities like establishing trade routes with hired workers, fishing on docks or skinning animals for profit, and even renting out farmland as much as simply duking it out. If I want to grow a crop like carrots for my horse, I'll have to take into consideration factors like the humidity, groundwater availability, and temperature of an area. Or you can rush to the soft cap of level 50, if you’re so inclined.