I’m a bit concerned about my anti-NCSoft stance on games lately. It seems that the experiences I’ve had with the lacklustre gaming content in Aion has really affected me. I’m usually not this emotionally charged when it comes to disliking a game but I guess Aion really got under my skin. So when I was playing Aion the other day, an online friend of mine thought he’d mention NCSoft’s new game in development called ‘Blade and Soul’. He described it as a Martial Arts adventure MMO where you can do “killing blows that kick people’s asses!”. My initial response to this in vent was “Oooooo” but I can’t recall if I was being serious at the time or just being a smarty pants. Any game that has the propensity for senseless violence against another gamer online always gets the “Oooooo” reaction from me! Apparently, I’m easily excitable

Annnnywho, so there I am checking out a few websites and find myself at Wikipedia looking up Blade and Soul. There is only one link for the game which is the official website that displays a video clip of the developers from the ‘Bloodlust’ development team at NCSoft. I am guessing that after watching this video clip and reading the subtitled text where they talk about the success of Aion, the guys in the clip are responsible for the game I am beginning to despise. So then I ask myself, “Why am I here again… and why am I watching this?” Well, quite simply, it’s what I do…

Sigh, the things I do for gaming. Ahem. So Blade and Soul is an MMO which focuses on classes that practically kick the crap out of each other whenever they are together. Sounds good. The classes however, not so great. The only class I liked the look of at all was the Force Master which again is a casting class that uses magic or arcane arts to battle their foes. There was also a Blade Master which looked reasonably interesting, a Kung Fu Master and the Destroyer. The races looked kinda boring – the Tun race in particular just looked silly to me. I mean honestly, what is it with cutesy looking child-like dolls running around with weapons twice their size? How is that at all appealing? Apparently, it is to many gamers out there… gulp.

If I managed to score myself a beta code to test this or even better, an actual copy of the game when it releases from the distributor, I might be able to blog a little more indepth and I might be able to shed more light on the intricacies of the gameplay mechanics, character classes and races. But the video clip didn’t do a whole lot to persuade me that Blade and Soul is going to be the successor to Aion. If it’s anything like Aion in the sense that it’s full of bots, possesses an economy that would rival that of any fascist nation, gives mediocre rewards for hours of painful grinding and lacks any sort of REAL PvP content, I for one, will not be signing up when it releases.