Blade & Soul

[Winnow]

This game is only in beta in Korea which means it will arrive in the U.S. around 2020 but it's the prettiest MMORPG yet and the game play looks like fun.

Asian MMORPG haters are going to hate but for the rest of you, check out these beta vids

First of all: boobies. This game is shameless. Tits and ass. If given the choice and all other things being equal, I prefer barely clothed female avatars with boob physics in my MMOs.

This is a cut scene mixed in with some actual game play:

http://youtu.be/ol9jAEiZYRw?hd=1

Not too many MMO's have Bayonetta type cut scenes. This looks like a game that makes the quests and cut scenes interesting compared to some of the full stuff you see in many of the MMOs.

A 35 minute tour of Blade and Soul's level 1-20 zone:

http://youtu.be/3pg_JyVHXQU?hd=1

It's pretty. It's huge. For a single zone it has like 10 different atmospheres in it. Impressive. If you can't stay for the full 35 minute ride around the zone, skip around the video to get an idea of how diverse it is.

Flying/gliding around in a zone:

http://youtu.be/euOLxHFZ1rI?hd=1

Seems like fun! Six minutes of this is a little much but watch a little to get an idea.

Looks like fun game play (not much of it in these videos but the combat looks good in other videos I've seen) The only bummer is how long it will take to get to us. Tera won't be here until April 2012 which is like a year after release in Korea. Blade and Soul may be a little faster since it's NCSoft.

The female characters are a bit distorted looking. They come straight from the mind of artist HyungTae Kim. He tends to draw women with monster (Kwon would love) asses, tiny feet and top halves.

I posted some of his work on my site:

http://see.pixelpeepshow.com/?p=1729

You might recognize his style from the Magna Carta game.

[Canelek]

Pretty graphics. Looks boring though, unless you are into standing in light beams and then jumping/gliding to the next light beam.

[Winnow]

Pretty graphics. Looks boring though, unless you are into standing in light beams and then jumping/gliding to the next light beam.

None of these videos are meant to demonstrate combat.

[Winnow]

I've been playing Blade & Soul for a few weeks and have come away very impressed.

First, I'm impressed that some guy was able to put up his own server using the source for Closed Beta 2 for Blade & Soul that hasn't even been released yet in Korea. Second, I'm impressed that he's been able to translate all the cut scenes, the UI and pretty much all of the newbie area into English.

This video will give you and idea of how the characters move around, the quality of the cut scenes, and a little combat:

http://youtu.be/ol9jAEiZYRw?hd=1

I've played a Force Master mostly so far which is similar to a caster. There will also be a Summoner class on the magic side of things. You then have your Gunner (ranged), Blade Master, Destroyer, and Kung Fu Master Classes.


The beta/hack server is surprisingly stable and this game isn't coming Stateside anytime soon so it's worth checking out out if you can follow directions (and download it from Pirate Bay) I give later in this post.

The game boots fast and I haven't experienced lag. Just don't choose the Destroyer class. It's selectable but you can't complete the quest to get off newbie Island as at the time, the class wasn't developed.

There's pantyshots galore in this game and the world is beautiful so it's right up my alley. Thankfully, the actual combat and attention to detail is also there as a bonus!

It's a blast to use your turbo speed to run around, do super jumps, and glide around. Running on water is fun as well. You really need to stop and enjoy the scenery in this game. Take the time to pan your camera up as the designers took the time and attention to detail to make things that maybe only a handful of players take the time to stop and view look great, which is appreciated.

It's an action MMO so it handles like Tera with no cursor on the screen by default (think FPS. like Global Agenda as well I guess). Unlike Tera, you can go to the (highly polished for a beta) Settings and switch to "classic" mode if you're a screen icon clicker type. I suggest getting used to the other style as it's much easier to dodge and use your turbo run/jump abilities. I programed my Saitek controller but you could also program an Xbox controller using Xpadder or Pinnacle. There's an option for "joystick" in the settings but it's not implemented yet so you need to do the programming yourself.

Here's a few screens I took just to show that the UI really is in English as well as a lot of the Quest info. Subtitles are in all cut scenes and the cutscenes are actually interesting. My playing partner mentioned she got bored with Star Wars cut scenes pretty fast but watches every one of them in Blade & Soul. I mostly enjoyed Star Wars cut scenes (well on the sith side at least) but these are better imo.



Impressive the guy took the time to translate the UI so well.



The new area (before chapter 1) is all in English, after that, the titles are in English but the names are in Korean, etc.



Just another example of the UI and English parts.



Kinda have to see if for yourself but the world is beautiful, especially around the ocean and water areas.



Lots of attention to detail and animations. Those birds in the picture fly away when you approach, eventually they come back if you stay still. Small things like when you pick something to eat out of your inventory to restore health, you actually eat that item. When you have a delivery quest, you actually pick up the thing you need to deliver. In an early quest, my little munchkin character here had to carry a human sized body, was pretty funny to watch.

The private server/closed beta 2 will only let you get to level 16 and see a few major areas (although they're good sized areas). I also like that the "dungeons" and instances are handles sort of like Star Wars where you walk through a glowing circle that only you (and maybe your group members depending) can go through to instanced areas. The improvement over Star Wars though is that it's "almost" seamless. There's just a very slight stutter in the graphics as you walk through, but no loading time. It makes for a very open world with seamless transitions to any storyline quest areas. There are some loading times when moving to/from major zone areas.

If you decide to try it:

1. download the updated client here:

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6920870/ ... _Update%5D

2. Follow these instructions to install:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP16GBuM0_0

3. Go here and create a user name and password for the server:

http://bns.atomixro.com/

Have fun! Expect a crash or two here and there but really it's impressively stable for what it is...and if you fall off the newbie island, you'll have to create a new character as there's no fall damage so you fall forever and don't die. Remember to not select the Destroyer Class although you can view them in the char creation screen.

[Chidoro]

eeccchh

wow, tit physics, just what an mmo needs

[Winnow]

eeccchh

wow, tit physics, just what an mmo needs

Definitely skip it if you don't like tit physics! The actual game play is pretty damn fun though.

Kwon will appreciate the Kung Fu class with its counterstrike stills, etc. There is a pretty wide range of difficulty levels for each class. Kung Fu Master is one of the harder classes. I enjoyed the Force Master and haven't played Kung Fu enough to judge it.

[Winnow]

Two and a fucking half years later and this game still hasn't been released in the West. A few months ago this game was released in China and it's ridiculously popular. It's breaking records and they have something like 200 servers for the game.

With my recent addiction to Chinese cloud storage services, I decided to give this game a try again. I have tons of chinese accounts, the most important being a QQ account and blog account on china's most popular blogging service. I created these mostly for adding extra storage on the various chinese cloud services. I'm averaging adding 300+ GB a day of storage just by spinning the wheel on random award thingies. China loves random prizes it seems.

So in order to play Blade and Soul in China with some English UI elements, you need to do the following:

1. Create a QQ count (similar to an internet messenger account)
2. Download the game (can take pretty long coming from Chinese server)
3. Apply windows 8.1 patch if you use Windows 8.1 (simmer down!)
4. Apply the english patch which updates most of the UI to English and some of the quest text
5. Apply the decensor patch if you like the original Korean outfits or don't apply it if you like the more covered up look.

For those insecure people worried about popping a boner due to boob physics, it's turned off on the conservative Chinese servers and requires a hack to turn on. There may be a patch that wraps all players in muslem attire if you feel the need.

Some MMORPG playing house mom actually put together a pretty straight forward guide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdCG2yJwtOs

There's also plenty of help and links to various patches here:

http://www.bladeandsouldojo.com/forum/6 ... iscussion/

The game is Free to Play. It's a rock solid AAA game as good as any released in the past year (Guild Wars 2, etc).

Since playing the hacked beta years back, the game has evolved. It has an amazing character creation system rivaling the best or better than Aion and EVE. If you're into customizing the look of your character you could spend an entire day tweaking them. Mostly traditional MMO game play with a little more emphasis on some of the close combat martial arts and fighting. Fun speed running and gliding through the air, makes travel a little more entertaining than the usual march across a map. I'm playing a Blademaster and appreciate the block/defense skills and counterattacks. Make for a little more fun instead of button smashing.

As with early Aion beta access in China years ago and other asian games, I do this just as much for the challenge of getting things up and running as playing the game. In the case of Blade and Soul though, it's a full blown released game. It seems Asia has forgotten about the West when it comes to MMORPGs. With millions playing it in China, I guess that's Korea's priority now. ArchAge, Blade and Soul, Bless, Black Desert and Black Gold being some of them. The U.S. market is a priority for everything except MMOs.

After several estimates from the “industry analysts”, Tencent Games revealed the actual number for Blade & Soul China earlier today. The highest number of players online at the same time (CCU) is at a record 1,500,000 (rounded down), with around 6 hours of average queue time to enter the game.

There's no queue now but that gives you an idea of the popularity of the game in China.



Check the figure for character creation. Average six hours spent making their character. I mentioned it's a great creator. I didn't spend that long though!

What's cool about Blade and Soul is more interaction with the mobs. Picking them up, throwing them around, etc, using the mob to cause damage to others.

If you're in the mood for a quality MMORPG and don't mind a little Chinese and initial setup effort, Blade & Soul is worth a look. If not, no big deal. You should have stopped reading this post after the first few sentences and moved along. From my two week tear through the Chinese internet, people should start getting used to seeing some Chinese mixed in with their internet, especially if you're a gamer and like MMORPGs.(Korean as well) Thank god (I'm an atheist) for Chrome's built in translation because there's zero chance I'll ever learn to read Chinese. With Blade & Soul having 18 Million users in China alone, not counting original Korean servers, (and growing, that was by the end of December), it blows away even WoW. It's heading to Japan next in March. The good news is that with the game's popularity, an auto update English patch is available that can repatch the game within a few hours of game patch updates.