At the Nivida event Game24, a representative from NCSoft announced that the MMO Blade & Soul is set to come to the West soon.
Currently, a 24-hour Nvidia event, Game24, is taking place. “Game Reveals” have also been announced. We at mein-mmo.de expected that there would be some news regarding SOEs survival MMO H1Z1, but many have been waiting much longer for Blade & Soul.
Shortly after the introduction of a Dota player and after the two moderators had a laugh about a dozing Skype user, they suddenly announced that NCSoft wanted to make an important announcement.
During a longer prepared segment, one of the Executive Producers from NCSoft, who has worked on many titles from the Korean publisher, presented his works: including Lineage 2 and Blade & Soul. He referred to Blade & Soul as an MMO that focuses primarily on character development. Amid this general showcase, he also mentioned that they want to offer Blade & Soul in English before the end of the year.
Since the stream was live and the presentation was only subtitled in English, and this important statement for fans was found amidst theoretical considerations about the role of an MMO in a standardized society in general and the benefits of Nvidia graphics cards in particular, the nuances of the statement are currently unclear. It will soon be clarified whether this refers to a beta (which is to be expected), what extent the port will take, what the exact timeline looks like, and what the details will be.
At Gamescom in Cologne, a representative from a large Blade&Soul fan site had the opportunity to speak with the Product Manager for the game in the West and already received some information there. Among other things, a confirmation of the port and that a release for the end of 2015 is planned. Officially, however, this was not the case, as they wanted to wait until September.
Apparently, NCSoft has decided to announce this in the context of a live event, which is airing in the USA at a rather late hour.
It is certain that there will be more detailed reports in the next few hours, and hopefully clarity will arise about what exactly was announced.
Update 25.9 1:20: Okay, we have finally found a video of the event. The crucial passage begins around 5:15. And yes: Jan Hyun Bae, the CPO of NCSoft, indeed states that Blade and Soul is set to come to English-speaking countries before next year.
Update 25.9 15:45: NCSoft just contacted us by phone and pointed out that there is likely a translation error in the video. Blade and Soul is no longer set to release in 2014 for Europe and North America. However, it is definitely coming in 2015.
