About 4 years ago, NCSoft announced that they were working on a MMORPG game called Blade & Soul. This wasn’t some run-of-the mill MMO, this was to be a MMO that would have the masses “going gorrilla” with it’s fast-paced action, deep combat, and character designs by the amazingly talented Hyung Tae Kim. Seriously, if you’re not familiar with his work, hit up Google and educate yourself. You’ll be glad that you did.
That was 4 long years ago. Along with that announcement, a trailer (of epic proportions) was released and nary a word was mentioned after that. That all changed a few days ago when NCsoft launched the English language version of the Blade & Soul site. Information is scarce right now, but the game does look like it’s using some form of the Unreal engine, most likely Unreal 3.
What we do know is that if the game-play from some of the trailers actually translate to the final game, then this is going to be an MMO for the history books. NCsoft is really playing up the action and more specifically, the combos of each class. There are 6 classes: Destroyer, Blademaster, Summoner, Kung-Fu Master, Force Master, and Assassain, and all are extremely deadly. We noticed that the combos shown off in the game-play trailer aren’t quite as fantastic as some of the pre-choreographed fight, but they were still very impressive (and acrobatic).
Like we said, details are practically nonexistant right now, so pricing and timing are very much up in the air. Based on what we know of NCsoft’s other major MMO’s, Aion and Guild Wars, Blade & Soul can either be a Free-to-Play game or pay for the physical game and there won’t be a subscription fee. While we are always fans of free, we have the distinct feeling that this will be a free subscription game only. We’re not complainingg though.
For more info on the 4 races, character classes, and the like head over to http://us.bladeandsoul.com/en/ and poke around. We’ll leave you with the official trailer released a few days ago.