MMOEXP: To celebrate the launch of Blade and Soul NEO
BnS NEO Divine Gems is a re-release of NCSoft's action MMO, bringing the world back to its original state with a healthy number of quality of life changes and significant gameplay additions to make the whole experience a bit smoother. It's a cool idea, perhaps inspired somewhat by Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Classic, and has certainly convinced me to jump back on board and give the game a try later this month.
However, despite what appears to be a grand opportunity to get as many new folks into Blade and Soul as possible, the game will not be launching on Steam. Instead, the game will solely be available on NCSoft's own platform: Purple. This was revealed during a press preview and QandA held last week, in which NC America's Andrew Long (senior producer) and Andrew Gant (community manager) provided some insight into the game and its goals. The following answers were provided in an interview shortly after that preview.
We want to grab people who maybe played Blade and Soul at launch, who maybe left over the past nine years. So we want to target those users, we have a large user pool too! We also want to target new audiences! We want to get people who've heard about Blade and Soul, but maybve don't know what it is, and want to explore it now. So we want to make sure both Blade and Soul live and Neo are supported, but with Neo tap into lapsed users, new users, anyone who wants to enjoy our product.
I think there are unique challenges to having cheap BnS Classic Divine Gems your own launcher. Steam is a juggernaught in the industry, and when we do, we'll reach out over platforms for expansion, areas to grow. So, it's something we're aware of, but we're confident in our launch and plan on Purple.