Many MMOs have come out over the years, and few have made a mark in the gaming community as much as Black Desert Online and The Elder Scrolls Online.
If you’re looking to pick one of the two, but you’re not quite sure about which MMO you should choose, this is the article for you.
Here are 6 Black Desert Online vs. Elder Scrolls Online comparisons:
Table of Contents
Combat
Black Desert Online’s combat is fast-paced, energizing and quite unique.
Unlike most MMOs that have you target an enemy and repetitively use your skills that automatically hit the target (tab targeting), Black Desert Online has action-based combat with manual attack aiming, lots of dodging, and lots of combining your skills together.
And The Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t fall behind. It also employs high-action playability, with aiming, dodging, different non-skill actions (Light Attack, Heavy Attack, Interrupting, etc.)
I would say the only drawback ESO has is its combat
Character Creation
Black Desert Online lets you choose between an astonishing 18 different classes, and each class has its own awakening that significantly changes the class. The classes are:
- Dark Knight
- Striker
- Mystic
- Warrior
- Sorceress
- Ranger
- Berserker
- Tamer
- Ninja
- Musa
- Maehwa
- Valkyrie
- Wizard
- Witch
- Kunoichi
- Lahn
- Archer
- Shai
But that’s not even the best part about the character creation.
The genuinely unforgettable part about Black Desert Online’s character creation is the amount of customization you can give your character’s looks.
You can sink in hours and days, just having fun with the character creator. You can make your character look like absolutely anything you want.
Want to be a beautiful and magical girl? You can do it.
Want to have the appearance of a beloved celebrity? You can do it.
Do you want to create an ugly abomination that makes other people look away? Well, you can do that too.
Black Desert Online’s character creation does have a flaw though, some classes are gender-locked, such as the Warrior (male-only) and Dark Knight (female-only)
The Elder Scrolls Online is entirely lacking in class options when compared to Black Desert online, with only six playable classes, two of which are DLC-exclusive. They are:
• Dragonknight
• Nightblade
• Sorcerer
• Templar
• Necromancer (Elsweyr DLC-exclusive)
• Warden (Morrowind DLC-exclusive)
Although this may look disappointing, two significant differences make up for it!
One, each class has a lot more customization and build options.
Not only does each class have a bunch of different skills and skill lines, but every class in the game can use any weapon or armor type in the game, which leads to a lot of different and unique playstyles.
The second point is the race. The Elder Scrolls Online has 10 playable races (One of them is DLC-exclusive though). Every race has unique racial skills that further increase the number of different playstyles and strategies.
Each DLC race is part of a more prominent Faction. They are:
• Daggerfall Covenant, which is comprised of Bretons, Redguards, and Orsimers (Orcs)
• Ebonheart Pact that is made up of Nords, Argonians, and Dunmers (Dark Elves)
• Aldmeri Dominion, which has Khajits, Bosmers (Wood Elves) and Altmers (High Elves)
The only race that isn’t a part of a Faction are the Imperials, the DLC race, they are independent.
Crafting and Professions
No MMO is complete without having the stuff to do in the downtime.
Collecting herbs for potions, relaxing with some fishing or mining precious ores for your next epic weapon.
In Black Desert Online, Professions are called Life Skills, and there are 10 of them. They are:
- Alchemy
- Cooking
- Farming
- Fishing
- Gathering
- Hunting
- Processing
- Sailing
- Trading
- Training
You can do none or all of them if you want, and every time that you participate in a Life Skill, you’ll increase that Life Skill Level, and therefore, your Life Skill Mastery, which is the sum of all your Life Skill Levels.
Some Life Skills, like Fishing and Cooking, can be done while you’re AFK (Away From Keyboard). In fact, the main benefit of Black Desert Online’s professions is that you can make money with them whenever you can’t play since you can just AFK practice them.
The Elder Scrolls Online offers an engaging profession system. You can’t use it to AFK farm, but it does have benefits besides making money, such as cooking Food or Drinks that buffs you.
It has seven different Crafting Professions, they are:
- Alchemy
- Blacksmithing
- Clothier
- Enchanting
- Jewelry Crafting
- Provisioning
- Woodworking
Although you can level every single Crafting Profession to the maximum level, doing so is extremely difficult, and most players focus on just one or two professions, making professions an extra choice you have to prepare for your character.
PvP
Black Desert Online features open-world PvP, meaning you can fight with other players in almost every part of the game, safe for individual settlements and regions.
Players have a PvP mode that can be turned on or off. If someone kills a player that has its PvP mode disabled, that player will accumulate Karma Points. Once your Karma gets too high, your character will get significantly impaired as you will be attacked by NPCs, and you will lose more XP and possibly drop items whenever you die.
The game also features Guild Wars, Caravans, and Sieges.
• Guild Wars: When two guilds start a war, players who kill players from the enemy’s guild won’t be penalized with Karma Points.
• Caravans: Players can use traveling caravans to make money in-game. You can try to steal the caravan of other players, many times forcing them to go to its rescue, forcing a PvP battle.
• Sieges: A massive battle with dozens of players defending/attacking a guild castle. Players can use siege machines to weaken the enemy’s defenses.
The Elder Scrolls Online PvP is divided into four different modes:
• Cyrodil, the heart of the Three Banners War, where the three factions the Daggerfall Covenant, Ebonheart Pact, and Aldmeri Dominion, all fight each other for power. Here, you can represent the Faction you chose in Character Creation in a massive field of battle that can field over 100 players simultaneously.
• Battlegrounds, a system to quickly find PvP battles where you join a team of four players and fight two other teams of four players (4v4v4).
• Imperial City, a DLC-exclusive city that is envied by the three Factions. This PvP mode has not only small-scale PvP action but also PvE fights.
• Duels, you can just invite a nearby player to fight with you.
The game does not have any sort of Open-World Player Killing, or some sort of Karma Points like Black Desert Online does.
Questing
Unlike almost every other MMO to ever come out, Black Desert Online doesn’t reward you Experience Points for completing quests, you only gain them by defeating enemies. In fact, doing quests in Black Desert Online is entirely optional, though they do grant some benefits.
Also, to be completely honest, Black Desert Online’s questlines and stories aren’t particularly engaging or exciting.
The game went all-in on making its combat feel as good and responsive as possible, but not so much its story.
Collect resources, talk to people, and kill monsters. The Elder Scrolls Online has all of the traditional MMO questin experience. You can use it to level up, get powerful items and gold. Not only that, but the game is filled with beautiful and immersive storytelling that will get you to forget you’re not actually inside the game.
Dungeons and Raids
Join your friends, face powerful enemies in a dungeon or raid, and get fantastic rewards.
Dungeons and raids are one of the most quintessential parts of MMOs. Here’s how these two titans of gaming compare in Dungeons and Raids:
Black Desert Online has two dungeons: Aakman Temple and Hystria Temple. However, they are not the traditional instanced dungeons to play in groups. They’re called dungeons, but really, they’re just farming spots.
Black Desert Online is a sandbox with great focus on solo grinding and PvP, not so much PvE (Player vs. Environment) content, as seen in the questing section. As such, it doesn’t have Dungeons and Raids that MMO lovers may be accustomed to.
This is another aspect in which The Elder Scrolls Online is a little more traditional. It has four-player private instances that you can delve into for experience, riches, and items.
They also have something akin MMO Raids, in the form of Trials. Designed for 12-player groups, these Trials will reward you with unique and powerful items and resources, skins, and much more. They also include a leaderboard where you can compete with your 12-player group against other 12-player groups.
So.. Which MMO is Better?
Well… it depends!
One is a Sandbox game with heavy PvP mechanics implemented into the game’s core experience.
The other is a more traditional jack-of-all-trades MMO, with the right mix of PvP and PvE.
It depends on what you’re looking for in an MMO.
Do you want a different MMO experience with constant PvP and super fast-paced combat that is heavily focused on player interaction? Go for Black Desert Online.
Do you want a dependable and traditional MMO that lets you explore dungeons, appreciate story and plot, and maybe even engage in some PvP? Go for The Elder Scrolls Online.
Or you can just… play them both.
Test them out.
See what you prefer.
You might see or experience things you didn’t expect and end up enchanted with one of them.
Enough to have fun for months or even years.
After all, what matters the most is:
What’s the most fun for YOU!
Sources
https://www.blackdesertonline.com
https://wiki.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us
https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Elder+Scrolls+Online+Wiki