Black Desert (formerly Black Desert Online) is a sandbox MMO first released in the West in 2016. As a Korean MMO, it has an in-depth character builder, above-average combat, and a reputation for biting. extreme. Although it is free in Korea and a few other countries, on Steam (opens in a new tab) it would normally cost you $10. To celebrate the release of its Eternal Winter expansion, Black Desert is available for free (opens in a new tab) until April 13.

Grabbing it for free gets you The Traveler Edition, which includes the Eternal Winter expansion. Black Desert’s biggest expansion to date, it adds the Mountain of Eternal Winter region and a new class called Drakania, who wield a fairly long sword and armor forged from the scales of slain dragons. There are new boss fights, endgame locations, and also ice fishing. Additionally, there is a season server for new players, which will apparently speed up progression with a variety of rewards and buffs to help newbies access the latest additions.

In 2017, Austin Wood wrote that Black Desert isn’t a great MMO, but it’s a great sandbox RPG, saying “Black Desert lacks a lot of what you might expect from a modern MMO, but what he has in spades is agency. This is a game about building an empire, closer to Civilization than World of Warcraft. At least it is for me. For you, it could be purely an action-RPG with more fluid and frenetic combat than any other MMO. For many others, it’s an engaging role-playing tool powered by a rich character creator and a richly detailed world.”

A few years of updates later, Black Desert finally made our list of the best MMOs in the sandbox section, where we noted, “It can be just as rewarding to spend an evening tweaking your farms and evolving your workers as it is. take down one of the brutal world bosses in Black Desert Online. And if that’s not your thing, the node system is also the basis for weekly Guild Wars, where guilds race to conquer various nodes for special bonuses, which makes BDO a great choice if you like PVP too. .”