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While western gamers have been left waiting for several years now to get their chance to check out Blade & Soul, with its official English-language site pretty much abandoned for almost a year and a half now, the game is set to receive its full Japanese release from tomorrow. The martial arts MMORPG is being launched to coincide with the currently-ongoing anime adaptation within Japan, and features some of the best visuals I at least have ever seen in an online game.
Unfortunately for international gamers, it has already been made clear that there will be a region block that should go live when the game goes out of beta testing tomorrow. However for those who reside in Japan or have access to some means of bypassing any potential IP blocks they throw at international gamers – there is also the issue of pricing which has been unveiled.
The game can be enjoyed free for anyone until a level cap of 15 is reached, allowing players to test out a small portion of the game, enjoy the character creation tools as so forth. However to get past that level cap into Lvl.16 and beyond, players will have to fork out 3,000 yen for a 30-day time card and 9,000 yen for a 90 day time card. I am not familiar with the pricing systems for other online games in Japan and could very well be a fair price for the region, but I highly doubt that if subscriptions were that price over here in the West that the game would do so well.
Blade & Soul has been confirmed for an English-release by NCSoft, however its official website has not been updated since December 5th, 2012 – and its official Facebook page since taken down.
