Interview: Blade and Soul NEO wants to bring you back to better days.

1 day ago 31

There has been something of a movement in the realm of established MMOs in recent years, with many of them deciding to take a look backward into their own history to plunder the past for a way to bring back players who may have fled the fold, and it’s working well for many of them.

Old School Runescape took a little while to find its feet, but now it’s home to millions of players who love to spend their time there instead of the more modern version. World of Warcraft Classic has been a tremendous success for Blizzard, and I’ve personally seen people who swore off the Blizz product years ago be pulled back into the Classic charm.

One of the uniting factors for these games was that it wasn’t enough to just relaunch old products, they truly came to life and found purpose when the developers realized that the time machines they had invented also allowed them to poke and prod at the cogs, adding new features, quests, and content. What if we were not just revisiting the past? What if we were trying to make it better? It’s not enough to just bait the hook of nostalgia and draw people back with fuzzy memories; you need to fix flaws.

This is something that Blade and Soul NEO developers NC America appear to have taken quite seriously when it comes to releasing their upcoming classic version of the long-running MMO to us eager players in the west. After sitting down with Senior Producer Andrew Long and Community Manager Andrew Grant, I’m happy to say that nostalgia is definitely a factor here for the developers, but not in a bad way.

“I think it’s definitely a feeling of nostalgia, you know. We love this game, and we grew up with it and we kind of want to re-experience it with the new generation as well. We think there’s going to be a lot of people that were there from launch and over the last nine years kind of moved away. And then also there’s going to hopefully be a new wave of users that get to kind of experience this game for the first time,” says Andrew Long.

And there in lies the often unconsidered aspect of all these projects that seek to bring back a classic version of an established MMO. You will only ever win back a percentage of your old players with a project like this. You have to find ways to make it appeal to new players, too. One way to do both things is to track down parts of the original that might have landed poorly with fans and fix them. Passionate veterans will then inspire curious newcomers; it’s just the way of the world.

Long, as both Senior Producer and someone who is hugely emotionally invested in Blade and Soul as a fan, is happy that they put this kind of player focus front and center in their approach. “We looked at a lot of things that players were giving us feedback on, and we tried to make it so it’s going to feel like you’re playing Blade and Soul again, but also where we’re going is in the direction you might have wanted it to go that we didn’t in the past.”

Impressively, the developers were not shy about discussing one big issue that Blade and Soul has had for many players, and that was broached many times by questions from those in attendance at the preview event we got to join. Monetization. Unpopular player power systems of the past are gone, replaced instead with the more classic idea of random drops and farming to gain the specific items that you need and a battle pass limited to cosmetics and some minor xp boosts. Things like Treasure Trove, a controversial way to get player power in the past, are no more. If you were interested in Blade and Soul NEO but felt that this issue might stop you from diving in, you can be safe in the knowledge that it won’t be a problem.

It can be hard for developers to look back and correctly figure out where something went wrong with a release like this because that means taking on the pressure of trying to do it the right way this time, which comes with its own unique set of worries, but it’s something that the team was eager to do.

“We have the nine years of history, so we know like, hey, at this point, maybe this is when we kind of took the game in a direction that the data is telling us wasn’t the best. We want to make sure that we get back to that point, and by the time we get back to that point, the game’s in a better spot,” says Long.

“So we really wanted to make sure that these changes that we added, like, you know, changing the gear upgrade system, which was very harsh, and we would feel like maybe someone’s not gonna want to go through that again. They love Blade and Soul, they love the combat, they love the boss fights, the PvP, but the grind is something they don’t want to experience again.”

Blade and Soul NEO will launch with a very focused experience, mimicking the content offering of the original as regards the story, playable races, and the original seven starting classes. Further updates will roll out over the following months, but no timeline has been confirmed regarding what might appear and when. While some folks might feel the game should include more at launch, the simple truth is that MMO nostalgia is more than just one sharp shock; it’s also about revisiting anticipation. If you are just barrelling through everything right from the get-go, are you truly exploring your own nostalgia, or are you just speed-running it?

An aspect of such releases that I broached with Community Manager Andrew Grant is that a lot of the people that will come back to this game, their lives will have changed in the years since they moved on from it. New families, new jobs, and new responsibilities. Others might be going through rougher times, in need of a connection to happier days that is non-exploitative, offering a new way to escape for those who need it. There is, in a way, a duty to approach their nostalgic leanings with care.

“I feel like a lot of games that are this old do have a user base that is going through, you know, changes in their life, having families, having kids, and you do see that in our other games like Aion and Lineage, from a community standpoint. That’s happening, but at the same time, in our Discord, you know, every day, we have new types of players come in, people that are hearing about it. It is very fun to see people revisiting older MMOs, and for Blade and Soul specifically.”

Such considerations even have to extend to the geography of the game, the actual locations that you explore and experience while playing through quests and story missions. People have spent so much time there, often with friends, and the validity of those environments as important homes to cherished memories can’t be understated. It’s why you’ll sometimes recoil a little to see a game that suddenly looks so different from the original or has strange new structures or landscapes shoved into it, seemingly for no reason other than the fact that it could be done.

“I mean, we’re talking about very memorable areas that many people tie a lot of memories to, so every design change was scrutinized very heavily. I don’t think there are that many dramatic changes where entire things have been removed or added. A remaster is a perfect term for it. So, you will find only small changes over lesser areas of the game, I would say, and then it’s just very beautiful texture, lighting enhancements, and stuff like that,” says Grant.

One change to the game that has already caused a lot of joy for players might sound simple but is also indicative of the overall approach the developers have taken to Blade and Soul NEO. Stamina is no longer an issue, which means infinite windwalking. It’s the perfect example of examining the game and finding something that was interfering with the potential fun players could have, so removing it made sense. Grant is particularly effusive about this change.

“One of my favorite things to do is in this starter area, in Bamboo Village, is a beach with a big beautiful ocean out there. Playing Blade and Soul Live you could run out there a little bit, and your stamina would run out, and then you fall in the ocean, and you have to swim back. In NEO, the first thing I did was just run out on that ocean you can windwalk across it, and it’s beautiful. I can just go on forever and just imagine myself walking across the ocean just for fun, just cause I can.”

It’s hard to tell before diving into the game, but from what I have seen so far, this is the most telling aspect of the design approach to Blade and Soul NEO. What would be fun? What would respect the audience? What would fix simple issues from the past?

We will all get to find out how well this comes together when Blade and Soul NEO launches in North America and Europe on February 25th. I’ll see you in the servers.

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