Rumor: Blade & Soul testing postponed until 2012

Fans of Korean MMORPGs have a lot to look forward to over the next year, what with the impending release of Bluehole Studios' TERA and Jake Song's ArcheAge Online currently undergoing closed beta testing. One title that won't be seeing the light of day any time soon is NCsoft's Blade & Soul. CFO Jaeho Lee recently indicated that "Blade & Soul is expected to launch [its] first test in 2012."

The fantasy martial-arts MMORPG is being developed by Team Bloodlust and Hyung-tae Kim, and looks to be taking a page out of The Old Republic's (and TERA's) book by focusing on story rather than grinding.

[Update: We've marked this as a rumor because of no official source link from MMOsite. Thanks to everyone who so kindly notified us of that fact. Do you kiss your mothers with those mouths?]

Reader Comments (17)

Good reason. lol

I hear this is fake news, any source to back it up?

Whoa, that guy is hot... and that woman is cold (lol).

lol. I see what you did there.

C'mon, it's an NCSoft game. Learn from Aion, guys.

That being said, the art style is freaking gorgeous.

Damnit.

Maybe NCsoft learned from Aion :P here's hoping.

very disappointed with you guys here at massively. Mmosite.com isn't a very reliable source, don't you find it strange they didn't use any citation. Why don't you guys go listen to the Ncsoft quarterly report for yourself, before putting something like this on your website.

They have two years to get that woman a bra.

Disappointing, but I was pretty much expecting it in 2012 anyway. Hopefully they will change things from examining Aion.

So the designated cash cow "Aion" is running dry and cannot finance Blade & Soul any more, so they have to postpone it. NCSoft put to much hopes that the EU/NA market will fall for a badly design , starved of content game (yes talking about Aion) and they will have the money to finance the next crap MMO.

Sorry Georgio, Aion is doing just fine, quarterly report show sales up from previous quarter and Aion accounts for 44% of NCSoft's sales. The Korean devs continue to improve things (although some of the PvP still needs a rethink).

You are clearly just trolling NCSoft products; so clearly you don't even know what you are talking about. NCSoft is very profitable and has more than enough monies to finance several more new games, cover any possible legal payouts to lame former devs, etc. Troll elsewhere, please, or at least stick to valid complaints, like NCWest's fail moves.

I have zero interest in B&S, but was expecting it in 2012 at the earliest.

"so clearly you don't even know what you are talking about."
I have to concur.
Zorndorf (or here known under his sockpuppet titles Georgio and Bossy) knows exactly what he's talking about and what kind of missinformation he is spreading about concurrent products, publisher or producer of Blizzard.

This time he even carfully avoided to do his usal "calculations" and point at the latest "facts" that are supposed to proof his point (and usally never do) like the sales reports to avoid more people get hold of the news of Aions sales increase even before the increased growth after 2.0 in the west, which completely contradict his slander and bad-rumor milling.

Pitty. This game looked gorgeous and the gameplay seemed very different from the average MMO gameplay.

Taking a page from The old Republic and Tera really?I believe that Blade and Soul was in development long before either of those

I doubt it. TERA was in development before Aion. Maybe around the same time.

Aion - first announced and previewed in May 2006

Blade & Soul (then called Project M) - first revealed around July 31st, 2008

Bluehole Studio (TERA devs) founded March 2007 by former NCSoft employees that had been working on Lineage III, including the director of Lineage III. On April 27, 2007 Seoul Metropolitan Police reported 7 employees of Bluehole Studio are suspected of trying to sell Lineage III code to a Japanese game company.

In 2009 Bluehole Studio were found guilty in both criminal and civil trials of stealing NCSoft intellectual property and code, and applying said stolen items to their game TERA. The head of Bluehole was jailed and they had to pay 2 Billion Won (about $1.7 million US at the time). Supposedly, Bluehole has since removed all Lineage III code and IP from TERA. So if that is true, I guess you'd say TERA has only been in development since 2009, although clearly it is based on Lineage III ideas to start with. Both Aion and Lineage III were heavily influenced by the previous Lineage games, of course. B&S seems to be more a martial arts type game, with a Final Fantasy look, at least to my eyes.

So that would put Aion before the others by a good bit, with Lineage III / TERA, followed by Blade & Soul. Or put TERA after all the others if they did start from scratch in 2009. *cough yeah right cough*

Rumor: Blade & Soul testing postponed until 2012

Reader Comments (17)

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 12:05PM Valentina said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 12:51PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 12:52PM Monkey D Luffy said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 9:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 1:27PM Solp said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 1:30PM Syesta said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 2:46PM Valentina said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 3:11PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 3:48PM shiningfury said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:21PM Liltawen said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:09PM Georgio said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 6:29PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 10:13PM Sukiyaki said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:12PM Gaugamela said

Posted: Nov 5th 2010 9:02PM alucard3000 said

Posted: Nov 6th 2010 4:35AM Somnicide said

Posted: Nov 6th 2010 11:17AM (Unverified) said

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