Bless Online had a catastrophic start, and player complaints piled up after the release. However, positive reviews are increasingly rising and the negative voices are becoming quieter.
Shortly after the release of Bless, there was a huge refund wave on Steam. Players left bad Steam reviews and were angry about their purchase. Only 38% of players rated the game positively on Steam. This was the status on May 30, the official release day.
One week after the release, the situation for Bless looks better: Reviews and positive ratings on Steam have significantly increased. Today, on June 5 (11:30 AM), 54% already leave a positive rating. That’s quite an impressive increase within a few days.
How did this happen?
Neowiz responds quickly to criticism and dissatisfied players stay away
The players who actually enjoyed Bless remained: After the big refund wave, only those players stayed who wanted to give Bless a chance. Because there were not only negative voices. Especially the combat system and animal taming received a lot of praise shortly after the release.
Neowiz receives recognition for quick reaction: It is astonishing the pace at which the developers are currently delivering updates. With each patch, a problem that the community struggled with is fixed. A major topic right now is the balance of the game. Here, Neowiz tirelessly works and responds quickly to player requests and complaints.
The players are largely satisfied with the rapid development and the performance has noticeably improved. The quick response time from the developers may have also led some to view Bless in a more generous light.
The developers apologized and offered compensation: Especially the players who purchased a founder’s package had to deal with significant problems during the head start. Neowiz publicly apologized for the major disappointment they delivered and provided compensation in the form of premium currency. Many viewed this as a nice gesture.
Communication in the Bless community has changed
Anger turns into meta-discussions and feedback: The community portals on Discord or Reddit were still full of anger directly after the release, but this has since adjusted. Initially, these were flooded with complaints about Neowiz and disappointments. Now, players can be found discussing gameplay and opening feedback threads. Complaints still arise, but everything is running a bit less heated.
The actual players are annoyed by the many negative criticisms: The actual players can no longer hear the whining from their own community. They acknowledge that there are still many issues, but they can still enjoy the game. They wish to be left alone in this.
This is what our reader Badoldy writes about the constant negative criticism:
“Just move on, honestly. Go play WoW or BDO. […] Just move on, and I’ll have a smaller queue when I get home from work. Then I can get in faster and enjoy the game. Keyword: Enjoy. Try to discover the world instead of reaching Max-Level in 48 hours.”
What does our Mein-MMO community say? You should wait and see
Last week, we asked you how you feel about Bless. These were the survey results from 1,300 votes:
- I have not formed an opinion yet and am waiting: 29 %
- Good, I am satisfied: 21%
- Bad, this is unacceptable: 19%
- No idea, I am not interested in Bless: 18 %
- So-so, could be better: 13%
The majority of our community remains patient. Most likely want to see if Neowiz can fix all the problems. After that, the good and bad voices are approximately balanced. The satisfied voices slightly outweigh the dissatisfied ones by two percent.
A selection of reader comments
Moritz Heitkamp is positively surprised: “I have already put in some hours of playtime. So far, I am positively surprised. The game really makes me crave for more. Let’s see how it goes with Max-Level and PvP. If a few dungeons, raids, and PvP events come, it could become something great. I found it amazing how quickly the developers addressed and resolved the major problems.”
Erzkanzler is surprised; he recognizes parallels to HDRO: “It’s an advanced Lord of the Rings Online with a dynamic combat system! (…) I spent ages in HdRo and immediately felt at home in Bless. The skill system corresponds to my favorite class from HdRo (good old Rune) and I LOVE it. Wild jumping around like in other ‘action combat systems’ annoys me, and pure tab-targeting alone bores me. (…) Overall, I feel well entertained in Bless. Even the usually mindless ‘kill quests’ manage to excite and motivate me. I tame animals just for the variety and craft voluntarily… a rarity in other MMOs for Erzkanzler.”
Elyth finds the term beta inappropriate: “What is the point of everyone bringing up the ‘beta phase’? This game has existed since 2016 and was released before. Also, they are selling it in the store for 30 euros, with a cash shop, and then hide behind the beta when everything is bad. If it is a beta, they should distribute free keys and let people TEST it. They could build everything on that, as has been the case in other MMOs for decades.”
Nyo finds Bless simply boring: “In conclusion, I can only say that the game does not engage me in any special way. It’s a standard MMORPG that personally reminded me a lot of WoW, but nothing seems particularly coherent to me. For me, at least, it cannot motivate me. Or simply put: It’s just boring.”
EliazVance finds good and bad: “I am currently neither excited nor overly disappointed. The launch was a disaster with countless poor decisions from the developers. But the speed with which many problems are being addressed is exemplary. The game itself feels somewhat old, swinging visually between ugly and quite nice. The performance is terrible. The sound seems cheap and sometimes annoying, aside from the mostly quite good voice acting. BUT: It’s fun.”
Bless is currently dominating the sales charts on Steam. It remains to be seen how developments will progress here. However, the overall mood is already significantly better than shortly after the release.
Note: The reader comments were shortened in some places for better understanding. The content was not altered.
