Bless Starts Giving Away Level Boosts in Korea

February 18, 2017 Erhan Altay Comments

While we here in the West were busy with the 9Dragons Steam launch on Valentine's Day, Neowiz used the auspicious holiday to try and boost sagging player numbers for Bless, the Korean studio's high fantasy MMORPG. The 'Up Project' event kicked off on February 16th and is offering both new and veteran players many reasons to check the game out.

New players will be given free level 45 equipment (presumably usable right away) along with other benefits such as increased experience and gold drop rates. Those who are already at the previous level cap of 45 will get potions that immediately boost their character to the new level cap of 50. The Up Project event includes a whole host of other features and in-game events including a new referral system in which players are rewarded for bringing new players to the game.

Released just a year ago (Korean OBT started Jan 27 2016), Bless has already had several rounds of server mergers leaving it with just 2 live servers. Its not uncommon for MMORPGs to do server mergers, offer level boosts, and increased experience rates -- some of the most popular titles like World of Warcraft and MapleStory do it. The only brow-raiser here is how quickly Bless has had to resort to these sorts of tactics. With only 5 new levels and only one year in service, its not like any of the content is outdated.

Its not clear whether Bless Online's troubles in its home market are effecting the Western release schedule. Aeria Games first announced a publishing agreement with Neowiz back in April 2016 and had to reiterate its plans in December when rumors that the project was abandoned spread across the internet. Officially, Aeria and Neowiz are working to improve the game's combat system and performance issues. Personally, I had no qualms with the tab-targetting combat in Bless during my time with the Russian version of the game. Performance, on the other hand, is a serious issue. Despite being one of the most expensive to develop MMORPGs in history ($61 million), Bless caused constant technical issues on my top tier gaming PC. Frame drops to the low teens, black screening, and other issues required me to terminate the process and restart once every few hours. If Aeria can force Neowiz to fix these issues, the wait may be worth it. But its a race against the clock.