In the fantasy MMORPG Blade and Soul, there is little new from the official side, which some fans passionately take over.
On the Blade and Soul fan site “Dojo” it seems there are two hobbies:
- Complaining about NCSoft West, who have already postponed the release of the game multiple times and whose information policy is, well… non-existent
- And observing LinkedIn profiles of NCSoft employees to get hints on whether localization is being worked on. On the “LinkedIn” page, people in the digital age keep their resume publicly fresh to recommend themselves for new projects or employers.
And surprise: It seems that work is being done on the Western release of Blade&Soul, but everything is quite mysterious. Sometimes “Blade and Soul” disappears as a name and turns into “Unannounced MMO Project”. Perhaps because the employee noticed that everything is still “strictly confidential”.
If we believe all the profiles and data here, NCSoft West has been working on the localization of “Blade and Soul” since at least 2014 and doing so with considerable dedication. A particularly dedicated employee has ensured in the side project that the localization is “culturally sensitive” – also in sexual matters.
Authors have the localization in their resume, among Sales Managers from NCSoft, Blade&Soul is mentioned. So it seems safe, even though we hear so little from the official side. A nightmare scenario would be if they decided last minute to stop the advanced localization and therefore announced nothing, but that would be painting the devil on the wall.
Fans are expecting a big announcement for the Western release at E3 in Los Angeles. NCSoft has rented a booth there. They hope that they will finally announce Blade and Soul for the West here. Admittedly, 10 months ago we thought it would happen at Gamescom in August, but at least there were infos, even if they weren’t exactly super-official. E3 takes place from June 16 to June 18.
Find out more about the game and its tumultuous history on our topic page about Blade and Soul. Despite all the problems, delays, and difficulties, it has made it into our list of the 5 top MMORPGs in 2015/2016.
