AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Blade and soul online release na3/14/2023 ![]() This too will be familiar to anyone who's tested the waters of Guild Wars 2's dynamic skill system, which changes the abilities you can access based on your character's weapon of choice, and brings a certain amount of skill to the art of maniacal keyboard thumping. PvP carries with it a similar rough-and-tumble tone. Combat is based around combo attacks, made from a combination of around 40 abilities - closer to what you'd find in fighting games than in a typical MMO arena glassing. Watch a tournament play out between two duelling Blade and Soulers and tell me it isn’t a bloodied ballet. A convoluted Hero’s Journey narrative wraps around a structure of twitch-like, real-time battle systems, similar in style to its cousin Guild Wars 2. ![]() It’s had three years to cultivate an eSports audience in the East, and even has a television show in Japan – an anime series by the animators of the brilliant Afro Samurai: Resurrection.įor its Western outing, the game launches fully-formed with three years’ worth of content. In South Korea it toppled Diablo 3 on the PC Bang charts at launch. In China it got 1.5 million concurrent users at its peak. NCsoft West's senior vice president of publishing John Burns is calling this one of the most successful games in Asia, an eSports marvel that you’ve probably never even heard of – but trust me, the game’s got more countrymen than the whole of Zhanjiang. But in a genre as unruly as this one, perhaps this is a glimpse into MMO development for the 21st century: a ready-made heavyweight, imported in from a continent afar. In other words, NCsoft are essentially reheating an old hit. It’s free – no gated content and no strings attached. ![]() We decided to take a closer look.īlade and Soul already has a huge following in the East, senior community manager Mark Hulmes tells me. The publishers have announced today that they're localizing Blade And Soul, its three-year-old free-to-play MMO, for North America and Europe this year, making this the fifth title from the company to launch in Asia before it releases in the West. But somehow NCsoft have managed to keep a stable of these games in their portfolio for years. What exactly is the incentive for a studio to bring another free-to-play MMO to the West?Įven among fans of these here grind-machines, the approval-rating of MMOs rises and falls with a steadiness usually reserved for politicians. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |