FYI the infamous karma system was implemented later in development, because during korean alpha it was basically a Age-of-Conan-food-chain parade where larger guilds prevented anyone from accessing mobs, NPCs and quests, therefore korean players complained a lot and they designed the karma system to prevent ganking (I might recall it wrong tho).
Currently the karma system, while somewhat allowing limited ganking, prevents abuse while creating other problems like limiting open world PvP and ressource PvP management. There's interesting discussion
herebut it's doubtful they'll get rid of the actual karma system.
I'm all for a no rule system, because I don't care joining big guilds when it's about open world PvP with consequences, but I also understand there's a lot of casual / lonewolf / playing-with-my-family players who just can't be arsed joining a bigger structure. They have most of the time limited playtime and want to get the best of those "45mins haven right after baby went to sleep and wife finishes to watch her silly TV show" and they don't want anyone to ruin their time.
As Tuco said, they probably at some point should have implemented a poopsock server with no karma system, no fixed marketplace and player trading. I've said a lot of bad things about Black Desert but after reading lots of drama between guilds (guilds taking over a grind spot, guilds switching channels to prevent other guilds getting gear, etc) I think Black Desert is a day one MMO guild game. It's really fun declaring war to other guilds for grind / ressource spots. The game has a lot of major flaws but Daum / PA don't seem as retarded as the Trion / Archeage devs alliance was, they keep a nice after release content without major fuckups and from what I see it keeps people playing the game.
