Yesterday, NCsoft Taiwan held a special fans forum over in Taipei for Blade & Soul. It was revealed that the Final Test phase will begin on 23rd October, though no launch schedule was announced. The lucky fans who got selected for the event got some exclusive Blade & Soul merchandise.
According to the representative from NCsoft Taiwan, the stamina system will be removed (much to the live crowd’s delight), permanent costume drops (account or character bound it seems) and also removing the “failure” option when growing the equipments. What a treat!
Exclusive game balancing will be made for Taiwan as well, as the team “underestimated” the gamers during the previous beta phases. As for the business model, NCsoft Taiwan stated that they are currently planning something different from the P2P (Korea) and F2P (China) models.
The image below highlights and summarizes the 5 main features for the upcoming Taiwan server. Here is a short translation and explanation.
1. Game balancing – 1 of the dungeons, which the development team set at 3 minutes to complete, was conquered in seconds in the previous beta phases. The team will continue to balance and make the game more challenging.
2. Stamina removal – The stamina restriction will be removed permanently after receiving feedback from the players.
3. Content update – As the Taiwan server is launching later than Korea and China, updates are being planned to be implemented at a much faster pace.
4. Permanent costumes – These will drop from monsters, similar to the Korean server. It seems they will be tied to the “wardrobe” system.
5. Upgrade failure removal – Upgrading (or growing) equipments will not have the “failure” option in the Taiwan server. It basically means each upgrade will be a success. I am guessing the experience gained will be random.
