The MMORPG Bless Online launched in 2018 with a lot of attention in Europe but failed to meet expectations. Now the game is closing its servers in another region, and things are not looking good in the West either.
What happened in Japan? Looking at the regions where Bless Online was released, it had the best run in Japan for a long time. The MMORPG was released there on November 2, 2017, and had some additional content that never made it to the West.
However, even in this region, Bless Online is coming to an end. From July 10, 2019, no new registrations will be accepted, and the servers will finally close on August 8, 2019.
The developers stated that they could no longer provide updates of the size that would help the game. Recently, there were only minimal content expansions and otherwise just improvements to the game systems.
How is Bless Online doing in other regions? Bless was released in Russia in December 2016. But already on May 25, 2017, just after about 6 months, Bless was taken offline there.
In South Korea, the homeland of Bless Online and developer Neowiz, the game ran for at least two and a half years. There, the servers closed in November 2018.
Currently, Bless Online is still running for us in the West on Steam. But here too, the outlook looks bleak.
Few Players, Haven’t Heard Anything New for a Long Time
How many players does Bless have on Steam? In May 2019, according to Steamcharts, there were an average of 221 players playing Bless Online. At peak, there were 410 players. This continues a long downward trend.
The numbers are significantly below the release month of June, when an average of 8,548 players were online, and also behind the Free2Play release in November 2018, where at least 1,557 players played Bless Online.
What is currently happening in Bless? The declining player numbers can also be explained by the fact that there have been no major innovations in Bless Online for a long time.
While there are regular bug fixes and events, there haven’t been any significant updates in quite some time. On March 27, a balance patch was released, and mid-February saw the last new dungeon. Aside from that, not much happened in 2019.
What does the future hold for Bless? The current development in the West resembles that in Japan. In recent months, there have only been bug fixes and no real innovations.
Adding to the difficulty, the developer studio, which was specifically founded by Neowiz for Bless Online, will be integrated back into the parent company on June 19.
To what extent Bless will still be worked on after this integration is not yet known.
Update 8.6. 11:21 AM: It is official. The MMORPG Bless is closing in Europe too.
Bless Unleashed as the Last Hope? Anyone who still wants to hold on to the basic gameplay of Bless can look forward to Bless Unleashed.
The MMORPG takes place in the same universe, but some time later. There are many similarities, but there are also said to be many improvements, as some testers report.
Bless Unleashed is expected to be released in 2019, but only for Xbox One. However, the MMORPG is set to have a rough start:
