I played it for about 100 hours last summer, but I stopped when I got to a point where it just felt like way too much for me. I had a quest where I had to kill 500 ennemies in the desert, but you actually needed to do this in 4 different place to get 4 different stones or whatever, so it was actually killing 2000 ennemies, and then I realized, when I gave back the quest to the NPC, that it was just the first part to unlock the actual item, and that I needed to do the whole thing 3 times, so it would be killing 6000 ennemies...
That's just... I don't know I don't have words for it, I just don't understand it. The gameplay might be more fun than other mmos, doing this is still horrible, insanely repetitive and really long for nothing, it's just a pure waste of time. And when I talked about it in the game's chat, everyone replied to me with answers like "lmao, why are you playing a mmo?" "LOL that's nothing, later you will have to kill 50k ennemies daily, get used to it" and I understand this even less, I don't get why people accept this, it's just boring and repetitive, and it's because players accept this that this is a thing in the first place...
I really liked the world, the visuals and all, but the gameplay loop is too "mmo" for me I guess... I've always been attracted by the "idea" of mmos, being immersed in a virtual world like this, but I never like how they are done, I just hate how mmos always feel like "mmos", if that means anything.
I'm also disappointed that these games don't feel more alive / social in an immersive way, some people talk on the global chat, but no one talk with each other with proximity chat, I don't know I miss the old school style with people chatting with bubbles over their characters, no one does that anymore, but I really liked this, meeting random people, chatting a bit, and maybe doing some stuff together, not necesarilly something 100% role play, but at least some realistic / social interaction, but no, it just feels like everyone is doing their own thing without carring about anyone around them, so it's like playing a single player game and seeing ghosts of other people. This part is for all mmos though (that I tried), not just black desert.