After reading this interview with Bless Online’s game director Jae-hoon Jeon, I’ve come to the conclusion that this game will not have a very long life once it releases on Steam.
The pertinent part is in relation to the “quality standards” of the game (when Aeria pulled out). The fact is it has had known technical issues (resulting in the closure of the Russian server) as well as a sheer lack of content (by this, I mean the open world felt devoid of even mobs except for the questing areas), were red flags to any sane publisher where the end result was Neowiz having to self-publish the game. Bottomline, they are running into cash flow problems that is preventing them from designing and producing enough new content.
And what about existing game content like pet taming, large scale sieges, 100v100 battlegrounds, smaller PvP arenas, etc? That’s the portions that may or may not be part of the rebuild (by all indications, most of these haven’t been changed where they remain complicated, convoluted, or plain unfun). Most players will stop doing unfun content effectively turning it into non-content.
With how long this game has gone through various failed starts, the correct thing would have been to start over from scratch. That is how Square Enix turned Final Fantasy XIV around with “A Realm Reborn”; they completely scrapped the original design and started over. By contrast, Neowiz have taken this bandaid approach with this “rebuild” project.
Why? Lack of money. This is an attempt at salvaging already produced content including all of the production with character animations and combat effects. My premise has always been that you need to build ANYTHING on a solid core foundation. And that to me has been a prime cause of concern with how long this game will last once it launches on Steam.
Sure, this is something I’ve been looking forward to (as mentioned before, gorgeous world environment) but I also see it as a last attempt at a cash grab on “those western suckers”. How they will monetize the game (that includes how they handle early access and what type of “founders” style packages are offered) is one of the first things I will be looking at. If they do go buy 2 play, I’ll be looking at what type of double dipping will be involved with the in-game cash shop.
The game (rebuild version) has already de-populated in both Korea and Japan. That obviously isn’t a good sign. I guess one “positive” thing is that Trion Worlds isn’t involved with Bless Online because if they were, they would drive it into the ground at a much faster pace.
