Ask Massively: Welcome to here edition
If you follow MMO news at all, you probably caught the fact that Star Wars: The Old Republic is going free-to-play this fall. This is news only in the most abstract sense of the word. Seriously, it's been three years since Dungeons & Dragons Online made the switch. Basically every title in the world has now converted over and found out that F2P is more or less a license to print money. Free-to-play is not the future of MMOs; free-to-play is the right now and has been for a while.
This week's installment of Ask Massively does not cover free-to-play conversions, but as you all know, I've never been a fan of strongly linking the opener to the rest of the article. No, this week we're talking about Blade & Soul. If you've got a question for a future installment of the column, leave it in the comments below or mail it to ask@massively.com. Questions may be edited slightly for clarity and/or brevity.
Alice1 asked: When is NCsoft going to release that babe of a game Blade & Soul in English?
Not this year, definitely. It's possible that the studio will opt out of releasing it here altogether, as it happens.
This year is a given; the game is still in testing over in Korea (albeit the sort of testing that might as well be release), and there's no way that NCsoft wants to draw attention away from Guild Wars 2. If it's going to see a US release, it will be next year... which might also be the point at which WildStar is gearing up for release.
The last time that NCsoft spent a lot of money to bring a game over to the US market, that game was Aion. Aion didn't do badly for itself, but it certainly wasn't a breakout crossover hit. So if you're counting cost, there's a case to be made for potentially leaving the game as a curio in its native country, especially when the Korean and US markets have switched their business model preferences.
It's not a given. But at the moment, there's no indication that the game is coming over. That will hopefully change as it did for Phantasy Star Online 2, but it's not a certainty.
ManastuUtakata said: Unless Massively decides to have a pub crawl with the regulars in the future, this is not the place for trash-talk, drunken or otherwise.
Don't tempt me to run the first ever Massively pub crawl at the next PAX East. It will end badly. (Probably for me.)
Looking for some advice on which class is best for soloing in Aion? Not sure who this Raph Koster fellow is? Curious about the release date of NCsoft's newest MMO? You've come to the right place! No one knows MMOs like we do. If there's anything you'd like to know about the MMO genre or the site itself, Ask Massively is here to help every Thursday afternoon. Just ask!
