Blade&Soul: The Game that Comes Too Late, If at All
Blade&Soul is one of many Asian imports on our list. In contrast to all other games, B&S has been on the market for a long time and has been playable everywhere in the world except here in the West for years.
And that’s the problem: Blade&Soul, an action MMO with typical Asian elements, was a revelation five or six years ago when the first screens appeared. Back then, we in the West were still playing WoW during the Lich King era. However, we have become accustomed to different graphics since then.
Furthermore, the port to the West is still dragging on and being delayed. Allegedly, WildStar was to blame for this. At NCSoft, they preferred WildStar over a Western port of Blade&Soul. How it really was remains unknown. NCSoft’s communication with the West has been fraught with challenges. In 2013, they simply stopped maintaining Western communication channels. The English Blade&Soul homepage still promises that new information will be forthcoming soon. The last update was in December 2013.
Update on February 14, 2016: Blade & Soul has now been released in Europe and has been doing quite well.. Interest on our side has been noticeably increasing over the past few weeks. Recommended reading: Blade and Soul: MMO of the Month January 2016. Anyone who wants to try the Asian MMO can register and play for free on the official Blade & Soul website.
The mood for Blade and Soul has noticeably cooled. Hardcore fans who really wanted to play it have managed to do so under adventurous circumstances on Korean servers, while the rest have given up waiting.
If we do get B&S in the West, it will probably only be the sexually toned-down version for the Chinese market. Whether the game with the typical Asian elements can make an impact here is another question. Asian games with their high grind and random elements, open PvP and a unique aesthetic certainly have an audience in the West. How big that audience really is, has not been assessed by any AAA MMO since Tera. Even with TERA, there were significant difficulties that prevented the game from truly flourishing. Additionally, the audience for such an Asian MMO has since become fragmented and is disappointed and skeptical due to the delays with Blade&Soul.
Conclusion: B&S will probably come out sometime later in 2015. For a success story, it seems too late. Perhaps the game will achieve a modest success, but probably not much more.
Update March 19, 2016: Blade and Soul has now been released in the West, has been out for a while, has garnered a lot of fan support, but received relatively mixed reviews from the press. Currently, it is noticeable that NCSoft is picking up the pace with patches. They apparently are trying to keep fans engaged with new content from Korea and want to catch up with the Asian version as quickly as possible.
