First thing I noticed:
Loli characters like TERA has
But I think its only NPCs, you can't play as them.
And the game calls them "woman" like their adults, but look like really young kids lol.
Granted, there is a particular class (witch) that people tend to make look like a young teen...seen that quite a lot in the game thus far.
The wizard looks epic though if you like the gandalf look
Though I suppose for the loli race, that is a cultural thing, as I know the japanese (and maybe chinese/koreans dunno) are really into that lol. The western world tends to look down on it...so just a cultural difference.
It also has energy like ArcheAge has labor points. But I'm actually not finding it annoying at all. You start with less, but you can do stuff to raise the maximum cap of it, and it recharges pretty fast. Plus your alts share the energy cap (so if your "main" has 40 energy from quests or talking to npcs or whatever, then your alts will too.)
Community on the server I chose is pretty good. Really good for a newly released MMO where the community tends to be at its worst and especially with a more PvP focused game. I chose Orwen, which is the unofficial PvE and RP server...I hopped on Edan and instantly left cause community there sucked lol. But thats where all the PvP guilds went for most part, and the hardcore PvP communities tend to be pretty bad. Like in WoW, the PvE and RP servers are WAY friendlier and have vastly less trolls than the PvP servers have. Though with that said, there aren't server types in Black Desert...just "unofficial" server types. But pretty much almost everyone in chat on Orwen has been really friendly and mature, haven't seen many trolls like I have other new released MMOs.
Granted, when people type in server chat (called "channel), you do lose energy doing it. Which I'm perfectly fine with, deals with gold sellers just like that. I haven't seen one annoying gold seller in chat. People still use "channel" (global chat really) a lot, but it does prevent a lot of spam and annoyance.
Voice acting is a bit weird, and doesn't match what the text says when you talk to NPCs. Its not bad (to me), but it goes from okay to thats sorta good I guess, thus far. I don't like that the voice acting is different than the text though, that really really annoyed me about Aion (pretty sure it was Aion, but probably a lot of MMOs are like that). I'd rather have all text and no voice instead like FFXIV, or voice with accurate text....not voice that has nothing to do with the text lol. Huge annoyance of mine, to where its almost game breaking (but not enough to not play if other parts of the game are vastly better)
For gameplay, I tried a Sorcerer but didn't like the melee focus it had. So I switched to the Witch (which I believe is pretty much exactly like a Wizard but a jailbait version instead lol...which actually...old lonely wizard...young jailbait teen witch...I see what they did there! They aren't fooling me!) and its way more fun.
Really loving playing the Witch. Nice dazzling effects lol...probably too showy for some people, but I like it
Bigger explosions=more fun
Like a michael bay movie...but he needs even more and bigger explosions. Just a movie all about explosions...but continuing on with black desert
There is a lot of emotes in the game...most are level locked for some reason. Dunno what that is about, never played an MMO where emotes were level locked lol, like some kind of "reward". Not a big deal, just funny and random lol. Its like "wooo an unlock for no reason at all, now I know how to bow or kneel" or whatever the emote is cause it doesn't even tell you what it does lol, just tells you when you unlock it. The most weirdest thing to level unlock. Maybe in asia, mere peasants aren't allowed to bow or kneel until they are of proper age and seen fit for it
I dunno lol...but that is how the game is with their emotes
There are TONS of people already at level 50, which means leveling is probably really really fast...even WoW's extra 10 levels per expansion don't go nearly that fast, and while some hit level cap fast, not a huge portion of the population does in WoW. Most people take a lot longer. For a sandbox MMO, that isn't a very good sign. HOWEVER, it does vastly slow down once you hit level 50...so there is that.
Guilds are cool though, you'll want to join a guild really early. They are more like "mercenary" companies. You "sign" a "contract" and then each day you are in the guild you get paid whatever the guild offers to pay out. Forgot how much my guild pays each day, thought it was 7k or something. But you have to pay to break the contract if I recall, which I actually DO like. Granted that be bad if you join a shitty guild and need to pay to leave lol. Though with that said, maybe I read the popup thing wrong, but pretty sure you have to pay to leave. Also all alts on the server are part of the same "guild" (really its a mercenary company lol).
Also I like the naming system. Finally an MMO without a shitty crappy outdated special-ed naming system that almost every MMO uses like its the year 1999. Heck, most MUDs (you know those old text based games) have better naming systems than whatever craptastic cheap ass made MMO has for their naming system that they threw up lol. But in Black Desert, you got a family name, which is fine, guess its like a last name or whatever. But the family name isn't used in chat or anything.
So like my family name is Edith_Massey, and my character is NobodyEven, and in-game it just shows NobodyEven in chat. In guild it shows family name, and probably if someone looks at my character. Other than that, not used that much as far as I've seen. And while no spaces are allowed (which would be nice), you can separate names with a _. I find that suitable enough and a good enough way to separate names. Personally, I prefer two words combined and capitalize where the second name should be
Where the naming system comes to place as I've described it, that I DO like, is I can have a name like "SmithJones" (or NobodyEven in my case) and the capital J and E is actually capitalized in-game. Can't use other characters besides _, which is fine as I wouldn't like seeing names like J@yJ@y" lol. Though granted, since people can use numbers in their names and kinda do funky things, some people probably will make lame names. But I have found it to be way better than other naming systems, and people in real life make dumb idiotic, stupid, high on meth names for their babies anyway and also use numbers in their names lol. So its realistic
Plus most MMOs allow numbers in their names anyway.
Haven't really touched on combat much in the post, but I found sorcerer to be hard to play since have to be up close (and don't tend to like being up close to begin with) and didn't seem to take much hits or was very powerful. Probably because was still early on, but heh. Took ages just to kill a wolf. Even if she becomes good later, still not my type of class. My witch fights a wolf, doesn't get touched and pwns the wolf lol AND with awesome effects. But the game is more PvP focused, and supposedly Witch isn't good 1 on 1, but shines in group PvP.
Haven't gotten to crafting yet, but harvesting drains energy. Crafting probably certainly does too. So there is that. But I'm probably gonna mostly do cooking and fishing, my favorite professions in any game lol. And fishing doesn't drain energy. Too relaxing ;P
And thats about my first impressions. There is a lot more to the game. Mostly been raising my energy cap with quests and stuff.
Oh and finally, I wasn't aware of this till a bit ago. But there is no level requirement to equipment (that is what I heard anyway). A level 1 can have same weapon as a level 50. So you can probably make epic Twink characters lol. Dunno fully if that is a thing though.