Group Admins
That’s a really good question. I’ve been blown away by our own community in our Discord and our live Blade and Soul NEO Classic Divine Gems player base – they’re really passionate. They’re excited about Neo, they’re still eager to play Live, but will try out Neo for sure. I can’t predict whether they’ll leave Live behind as they’re still so passionate, but of course they’re going to try Neo and make their own decision on what version is right for them. The two versions are wildly different, so that’s a question that’ll be answered shortly.
If we look at the community, a lot of the hype has been from returning users joining our Discord, who maybe tried Blade and Soul back when it launched, have all of these great memories, and they’re back to see what this new game is all about. But also, it’s been interesting to see a lot of new players who have no idea what Blade and Soul is. So we have a lot of potential with people who missed it […] There are new generations that have missed it, they weren’t here for the beginning of the MMO rise, so it’s been important for us to realize there’s a massive market for new players as well.
Also, if I may add to the Purple thing, we’ve been using Purple for a year plus, all three of our games and a mobile game we have all exist on Purple. So it’s kind of an old hat for us, but it’s getting new features that we’re excited to show to a new audience.
It’s an interesting debate, whether or not to keep your own games on a dedicated launcher to create a hub for fans of NCSoft, while taking into account the potential loss of players that decision may bring. It’s especially interesting that Throne and Liberty’s PC release and it’s initial peak of 333,000 players doesn’t appear to have shifted NCSoft’s own philosophy when it comes to other MMO releases. That’s an audience that Amazon clearly wanted to tap into with its involvement in the release, but given that figure has dropped siginificantly since then to a steady 30-ish thousand concurrent, perhaps there’s merit to building your own platform. Would those dedicated Throne and Liberty fans be any less eager if they had to boot up Purple? Something to think about.
Nevertheless, Blade and Soul Neo is launching on Purple on February 25. It’s not touched on in this interview too much, but the game does really seem like a great jumping on point for those unfamiliar. We’ll have another interview feature on cheap BnS NEO Classic Divine Gems out tomorrow, so keep an eye out if you want to read more about the release.