A decent article but I think it avoids the more interesting topics, here.
Let's say we have 250,000 unique purchases (which I feel is a lowball)... it's respectable but it's a long way from coming on gangbusters.
BDO is having to overcome a huge amount of distrust (both recent and long-term) in the western market toward eastern MMOs and publishers. It doesn't help that BDO is an outwardly eastern game and you don't need need to know anything about Daum to get a slightly uneasy feeling about it.
PVP mmos carry similar stigma. I don't believe PVP MMOs are fundamentally unpopular... in fact purely PVE mmos don't tend to do that great, either. It's just that PVPers have been stiffed time and time again by shoddy products, terrible design and P2W sellouts.
On the other hand, Daum has a golden ticket.
A chance to release a hugely polished game. Other publishers look on with absolute envy.
They have months (probably years, paced well) of content and updates backlogged, ready to hit the western servers.
They have almost no serious competition. WoW and GW2 are experiencing large dips in enthusiasm. Other recent MMO releases have essentially squandered their chances, already.
The B2P model is really damn good for most consumers.
Nobody in the wider community expects them to go the distance.
The last point sounds bad but it's the best of all. BDO have a lot of eyes on them from non-purchasers and from the industry in general. If Daum manage to keep their heads and avoid self-sabotage, they will be newsworthy just for existing. Keep servers stable, avoid P2W and build a happy community and I think BDO is can experience very steady sales from the previously-wary.
Of course this doesn't help the fact that BDO, as the article says, offers something very different to what most westerners see as an MMO. There's no sugarcoating it... people will be put off. But the flipside is that there must be plenty of westerners yet to even get into MMOs because when someone told them they could play alongside hundreds of others... repeatedly queuing for a 5man instance isn't what they imagined.
It's a storm that can be weathered by BDO with decent management.