Black Desert open beta trailer is amazing, more customization

Daum Games and Pearl Abyss finally spilled the beans on the much awaited Black Desert open beta, with all the details that you need to know in case you live in Korea or know how to work your way around IP block. The Black Desert open beta begins December 17, 2014, but you can download the client on December 10 and create your character from December 12 to December 15. Since Black Desert features what is undoubtedly one of the most – if not THE most – advanced character creation system ever made, you're bound to spend quite a few hours tinkering with all the options.

No more doubts about the Black Desert business model in Korea: this MMORPG will be free-to-play and offers the usual cash shop. We're betting that armor dye will be some of the cash shop items but we hope that Pearl Abyss really manages to stay away from balance breaking (aka pay-to-win) items, something that the studio is promising to do.

The open beta will bring the following regions to the game: Valenos, Serendia and Kalpeon. Some stats shown reveal that we'll meet more than 10 thousand NPCs and over 40 thousand monsters, quite the impressive numbers.

If there's one disappointment – so to speak – for this beta, it's that we're still restricted to the 4 classes that we've known since the first closed beta: Warrior, Sorceress, Giant and Female Ranger. We would love to get our hands on a new class, either the Blader or the Tamer, as well as others such as the Wizard, Male Ranger or the Valkyrie. Apparently they will be released during 2015 as more of the game unlocks, and probably one class at a time.

While Korean players will enjoy Black Desert in its final release really soon, North American and European players shouldn't despair – the Black Desert Western beta is scheduled for early 2015. The Russian version is also free-to-play and it's highly likely that the Western versions will feature the same business model.

Here's the Black Desert open beta trailer, where you can see the new additions to the customization (including shiny teeth and big smiles) as well as some combat gameplay from the four classes. If you want to know our opinion on Black Desert so far, then take a look at Black Desert Online final Korean closed beta hands-on impressions