I am remaking this thread as the old one is stagnant and lacking relevant information. It can be found here. First time making a thread, so be easy on my horrible thread-making skills. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
What is Blade & Soul? Blade & Soul®, developed by NCsoft®'s Team Bloodlust, tells the story of players' quest for vengeance and redemption against a backdrop of Asian fantasy, set in a beautifully crafted online world drawn from the work of renowned artist Hyung-Tae Kim. Blade & Soul prominently features martial arts inspired combat and Qing Gong "light body" movement, as depicted in classic Asian martial arts adventure films.
What races and classes does Blade & Soul have? There are four races: the towering Gon, the versatile Jin, the female-only Kun, and the diminutive Lyn.
There are six classes in Blade & Soul: the stealthy Assassin, the deadly Blademaster, the axe-wielding Destroyer, the versatile Force Master, the mighty Kung Fu Master, and the elusive Summoner.
Is Blade & Soul PvP, PvE, or some combination of the two? The gameplay of Blade & Soul is initially "player-versus-environment" (PvE), but players can choose a faction, enabling them to participate in "player-versus-player" (PvP) combat.
What makes this different from other Asian fantasy MMOs? Unlike other Asian fantasy MMOs which often imitate Western concepts of fantasy, Blade & Soul draws upon the deep and fascinating mythology of a myriad of Asian cultures, which promises to bring Western players a completely new experience rich with intrigue, mysticism, and high-flying martial arts.
In the words of Art Director Hyung-Tae Kim: "Blade & Soul goes much further to infuse users' experiences and growth--the people they meet and the situations they encounter while playing the game--which we feel ties in much closer to the genre."
How successful has the game been in Korea? Blade & Soul has been received extremely well in the Korean market and immediately jumped to the top of the game charts, upsetting powerhouse games like League of Legends and Diablo III. Since its Korean launch, Blade & Soul has achieved fantastic concurrency rates with more than 230,000 fans playing at a time.
When does the game launch in North America and Europe? We are eagerly working to bring this acclaimed title to Western gamers, and we will launch it when we are confident it is ready.
Which platforms does the game currently support? Blade & Soul is being developed for the Windows PC platform
How much will Blade & Soul cost? Will there be a subscription fee, or will Blade & Soul utilize the microtransaction business model? As the launch date draws nearer, we will have more information to share on price and business models. However NCsoft is actively evaluating what gaming fans in Europe and the United States want, and we are committed to creating a business model that will meet our fans' expectations.
NCsoft®, headquartered in Seoul, Korea, is the world's premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games, including the critically acclaimed Aion®, Blade & Soul, Lineage®, Guild Wars® and WildStar™ franchises. NCsoft West is a division of NCsoft that holds operating responsibilities for North America, Europe, South America and Australia/New Zealand. More information can be found at www.ncsoft.com.
Western gamers want an expanding PvE set of content and Korean MMO's have a penchant for being a grind (standard MMO) followed by a complete abyss of endgame.
MAYBE this one is different. NCSoft does have a very strong MMO record.
That being said the art development is fantastic, but I think Westerners will be turned off by high graphics requirements. I foresee lots of bitching and moaning about why peoples RADEON 9800XT 8xAGP card with 512 MB RAM and pentium 4 can't run this.
I for one am very hyped about it, I do think the graphics will be limiting, but wouldn't that be even MORE of a problem in asain countries then the western market?
Saw randomly a gameplay vid and what drew me were the naruto-like speed and water walking and gliding through the air. If nothing else, it should be fun for a couple weeks.
Why do i feel like this looks like Lineage 2 style gameplay. (a model which doesn't really cater ((work ever)) to the western audience)
Lots of offensive class roles and guilds seems to be dismissing any sort of raiding/instance partying or 'battlegrounds' over zerging raid bosses and large scale world pvp between guilds.
Western game success is all about the rapid 'small work, small reward' adding up over surpassing other players through the amount of hours you put in. Its the reason why league of legends is so successful--each game is fast and you get the reward of winning (hopefully) within ~40 minutes. The other option seems to be dynamic pve stuff that you can have fun with your friends and accomplish something at the end of the night. Honestly, i don't know shit about the game at the moment, so correct me if im wrong, but its just initial impressions of seeing these vids throughout the years.
On September 26 2012 09:42 EMIYA wrote: Why do i feel like this looks like Lineage 2 style gameplay. (a model which doesn't really cater ((work ever)) to the western audience)
Lots of offensive class roles and guilds seems to be dismissing any sort of raiding/instance partying or 'battlegrounds' over zerging raid bosses and large scale world pvp between guilds.
Western game success is all about the rapid 'small work, small reward' adding up over surpassing other players through the amount of hours you put in. Its the reason why league of legends is so successful--each game is fast and you get the reward of winning (hopefully) within ~40 minutes. The other option seems to be dynamic pve stuff that you can have fun with your friends and accomplish something at the end of the night. Honestly, i don't know shit about the game at the moment, so correct me if im wrong, but its just initial impressions of seeing these vids throughout the years.
My impression from other people playing this game is that the game has a heavy PvE component and story elements. A lot of the missions seems to be solo (in fact, the whole game seems to be better played solo anyway.... because there are a lot of one-on-one interactions with mobs).
I might be wrong about this, but I *THINK* the way you are supposed to do the playthrough is as follows. For major story missions you have to play solo, but playing these missions alone are not enough because you will eventually be lacking in level... so you may have to go to other "training" areas to grind your levels...
Going to be trying this on KR for a month and see out it goes. Looks very similar to Tera both art style and both games uses Unreal Engine 3.
On September 27 2012 09:20 LaNague wrote: i hate that korean games are always delayed for over a year in europe. Its really annoying and korean companies lose a lot of profit, too.
another reason to move to asia.
Lol sadly enough I've looked into this, Taiwan is the best central location. Excellent routing to both EU/NA/KR/JP/CN servers.
On October 26 2015 12:58 synapse wrote: Bumping this thread.
Anyone participating in the closed NA beta next weekend? (25 dollar "founders pack" buyin)
I tried the alpha last weekend and had a great time.
Yup, getting pretty antsy about it. Going to primarily be playing with my cousin. I heard that leveling is pretty easy so hopefully I'll have enough time to properly make another character and focus it on community (TL guild perhaps?).
On October 26 2015 12:58 synapse wrote: Bumping this thread.
Anyone participating in the closed NA beta next weekend? (25 dollar "founders pack" buyin)
I tried the alpha last weekend and had a great time.
Yup, getting pretty antsy about it. Going to primarily be playing with my cousin. I heard that leveling is pretty easy so hopefully I'll have enough time to properly make another character and focus it on community (TL guild perhaps?).
leveling is easy, and you have enough skills to properly pvp by lvl 25 (about a day's worth of leveling). the only problem might be that with the influx of players, competing with others for mob drops might be annoying to finish side quests.
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