Neoclassical - Giving Blade&Soul Another Go

 I don't, by and large, suffer from FOMO. I can let all kinds of things slide without worrying about it. I do, however, have something of a curiosity problem. I can't keep my nose out of things that don't really concern me.

A case in point is the current Stars Reach pre-alpha. I've been fairly convinced from the moment I first heard about the project that it wasn't likely to be a game for me and very little I've heard, seen or read about it since, including a dozen hours hands-on with what there is of the game so far, has given me cause to change my mind. I think it's very likely to turn into something a lot of people will enjoy and I  hope for their sakes (And the developers, of course.) that it does but I can't see any real likelihood I'll be spending much time there.

And yet I still applied to test it and, having been accepted, have tried to do my best to log in and give my feedback, on the rare occasions I've been able. Granted, I always had in mind the potential the testing program offered for blog posts, so it wasn't entirely out of idle curiosity that I filled out the application, but although it's given me something new to write abnout, since I've been posting about the progress of the pre-alpha and the Kickstarter I've seen precious little sign that more than one or two people who read this blog are particularly interested. Indeed, the few comments I've had have come from people also in the test or who applied and didn't get in.

This wasn't going to be (And still isn't.) a post about Stars Reach but since the Kickstarter has come up, let's talk about that for a moment. What is going with it? I tend to think it's some smart marketing but it could certainly be read as something a lot less favorable. Panic, even.

There's a trick to building anticipation and my estimation is that for now Playable Worlds have just about managed to stay on the right side of the line. Sentiment towards there even being a Kickstarter was weak when it was first announced but by leveraging the whole thing to turn it into a kind of loyalty test with pre-alpha access as a reward it does seem most of the negativity has been replaced with a puppyish eagerness to be included.

Whether that will translate to dollars in ther bank when the actual Pledges are finally revealed, which may or may not be sometime next week, is the part I find the most interesting right now. At one point I was very curious to see what the rewards on offer would be but we have a kind of idea about that after last week's press release so the big question is whether it will be enough. It certainly didn't sound appealing to me but then, as I've said, I really am not the target market.

That's just an aside to the main subject of this post, though, which is why am I sitting here, typing this while Blade & Soul Neo downloads in the background? Or, I should say, fails to download but I'll get to that later.

I should begin by saying that I like the original Blade & Soul quite a lot. There are twenty-eight posts here tagged "Blade and Soul" (Or "Blade&Soul", because I can never remember which way NCSoft style it.) I played it a for a few weeks when it launched in "Western Territories" in 2016 and I've had several shorter runs at it since. It's on the longish list of games I often think about going back to but mostly don't.

When I read that NCSoft was repackaging the whole thing under a new name - more accurately the old name with "Neo" stuck on the end - I was interested enough to follow the news to see what it meant. What I learned surprised me a little. 

If you haven't been keeping up with the story, B&SNeo is neither a sequel nor a relaunch. It's kind of a "Classic" version that's starting over at the beginning but it's also a bit like what happened to The Secret World when Funcom decided to try to give it more popular appeal by streamlining, modernizing and re-promoting it as Secret World Legends.  

NCSoft, luckily, are handling the whole thing a lot better than Funcom did. When Neo opens for business in just under two weeks on 25 February, Blade & Soul will simply carry on as before. You'll still be able to play it and as far as I know you'll still be able to start playing it as well. The two games will continue in parallel, although I wouldn't like to say how much onward development the original will get, if the revamped version is a success.

Who'd have thought it'd be NCSoft that would be caught doing the right thing, eh? I guess maybe they learned something from the City of Heroes debacle after all. I'm pretty sure Funcom haven't learned anything from SWL, although I suppose they haven't shuttered anything else since and TSW is technically still playable - I think. I haven't tried to log in for a long time.

Getting back to the point, when I read all of this, my original feeling was that it might push me to patch up B&S and have another go but I had no interest in Neo, which looked like it was just going to be a graphical update with a few tweaks. I always found B&S to be a very good-looking game with an aesthetic that's aged well so I wasn't feeling the need for a visual upgrade.

Then I read this piece by Michael Byrne at MMOBomb in which he goes into some detail about just what's different about the new game. He focuses mostly on the monetization, something that never really affected me since I didn't play long enough to hit any of the pay walls, but he also mentions several changes to things like cosmetics and outfits being available not only through the cash shop but through gameplay and a revision of the really annoying weapon upgrade system to make it much more straightforward.

Those were two of the things that I didn't much like about B&S so the thought of being able to play dress-up and not have to upgrade all my gear seven hundred thousand times does carry some weight. 

On the other hand, Neo will follow exactly the same storyline, which might be a problem. Believe it or not, I can actually remember quite a lot of the story, even though it's been a few years since I played. That speaks well in favor of its quality but it also means I might not want to go through it all over again.  

If I'm realistic about it, it's not likely to become much of a problem. The chances of my getting anywhere close to where I was when I stopped is minimal. I may not have been at the level cap - not even the original one - but I was in the thirties or forties somewhere and it took me quite while to get that far. I don't imagine I'll be doing it again.

Still, when I got an email from NCSoft this morning, inviting me to pre-download the new client, I thought "Why not?" The thought of starting over is at least as attractive as going back to my old character, who was somewhat bogged down in a part of the story that she was having a little trouble getting past. And as has been discussed many times around this part of the blogosphere, going back to MMORPGs after a long lay-off comes with all kinds of problems of its own. If nothing else, starting afresh would certainly be less of a hassle.

So that's what I'm planning to do. NCSoft has made it relatively easy although, as Michael Byrne points out, they're doing themselves no favors by insisting on the use of their own portal, the oddly-named Purple, rather than adding the game to an existing one like Steam or Epic. 

At least the Purple launcher is easy to install. NCSoft offer a host of options to link it to other services. I used my old Gmail account that I have the original B&S tied to so with a bit of luck I'll be able to use Purple to swap between them, should I ever want to. Which I won't.

The download itself seems very slow, something not helped by the way it didn't save progress when my internet briefly hiccupped just after I started writing this post. If it makes me restart every time that happens I'll never get to play because my ISP is going through a flaky stage just now.  

With luck and a following wind I'll get the whole thing downloaded and installed before the twenty-fifth. All I'll have to do then is find time to play. I noticed when I was registering with Purple that NCSoft has its own cloud gaming service through the platform, which might be interesting. If I can play Neo in the cloud on my laptop that would seriously increase the chances of my playing it at all.

We'll see at the end of the month. If I do end up playing, you can guarantee I'll be posting about it.