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Blade & Soul Reaches One Million Active Players
Days after launch, NCSoft West's Blade & Soul is already fielding over one million active players. The free-to-play martial arts-centric MMORPG that rose to prominence when it launched years ago in locations like Korea and China is now a available in North America.
Blade & Soul features fast-paced action combat and lets players fly around the world, group up with players to tackle dungeons across servers, and participate in competitive player-vs-player battles. While many aspects are standard MMORPG features like quests, crafting, and weapon drops, the game's complex world of comboing, blocking, parrying, and countering makes the combat stand out.
“The sheer enthusiasm – not to mention volume – of North American and European players that have jumped into Blade & Soul since launch has been tremendous,” says John Burns, senior vice president of Publishing at NCSOFT West.
For more on Blade & Soul, check out our earlier impressions of the game and stay tuned for thoughts on its launch.
Our Take
While it's still quite early in the game's life in the West, the surge of players is promising. However, the more interesting numbers will come months down the road as we see if NCSoft can keep up with the ravenous content hounds that are MMORPG players, and if the endgame, the most critical part of any MMO, is as appealing as the initial honeymoon period. I'm currently quite smitten with the game as a beefy level 45 Destroyer that feels like a combination of Soulcalibur's Astaroth and Street Fighter's Zangief, and the combat is a real blast, maybe the best in any MMORPG I've played, but as alway when it comes to MMOs, we'll see how things feel in a few weeks or months.
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