Black Desert General

Maybe under the rock of not following the game at all?
That was the impression I had because I only heard you had to pay for it.

you do pay for it like a normal game, its just that its a single mandatory purchase. you can do additional micro-transactions, but the game itself has enough content that you do not really need to have micro-transactions(back a year ago, when i got to lv 80, only had completed 52% of the world map, very minimal dungeon runs) unless you wanted primarily cosmetics and like what, lions keys(?)(sorta like the gachapon for GW2, except you get a few playing the game normally)