Black Desert Online will get its previously-announced relocation of the North American servers this week, and Pearl Abyss is warning about the extended downtime to come.
Originally announced back on May 8th, the North American Black Desert Online servers will be relocated from the west coast to somewhere in the central United States. This is being done to support the sizable North American population that plays somewhere around the east coast. For those players, more than 2/3 of the community, lag and server performance issues should be greatly improved. For those who are playing from the west coast, their performance might take a bit of a hit but because it's a smaller population, the team moved the servers to the middle somewhere to try and serve both locations and reduce ping.
The server move is set to take place on May 22nd, along with the weekly maintenance. While the team originally estimated about four hours for the process, they’re now saying to expect an additional two hours’ downtime while they complete the work. This means that, while the work is being done, the BDO login, the Web Central Market, and the ability to send items in web storage to your in-game mailbox will be unavailable.
The update is now set to begin on May 22nd at 11pm PDT/2am EDT through 5am PDT/8am EDT on May 22nd. Along with North American servers being physically moved to another location, the update will also introduce the Node War revamp, with additional Node investment benefits, new buffs, an overhauled reward system, and more. An improved Darkseekers’ Retreat is also expected this week.