SMMOll Talk: A big heartfelt welcome to Bless Online?

As you probably know, things that are true one day could turn out to be false the next one. Real life has certainly shown that to you a few times already, but you don't need to look any further than videogames for some examples. And one of the latest, perhaps more exciting and/or terrifying is the Bless Online soap opera, which has just known some new and interesting developments. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First of all, let's recap on the main events that led to where we are today.

Bless Online is the creation of South Korean studio Neowiz and was seven years in the making. A beautiful world running on the Unreal Engine 3 that draws inspiration from distinct sources such as medieval Europe and the Grand Canyon, Bless Online looked set to follow on the success of other eastern MMORPGs such as TERA or Aion. It took a while for a western publisher to jump in and grab the rights for a North American and European release, but it was German studio Aeria Games that won the race for this ambitious MMORPG. Perfect, we're getting the game! What could go wrong now?

A lot, it seems. In what we would qualify as an unusual move, Aeria Games requested a number of improvements to the developer before releasing Bless Online to western players, and Neowiz obliged. Months went by and the devs were working on combat and in-game performance improvements, along with things such as a better tutorial and faster loading times.

And then, the bomb dropped – Aeria Games and Neowiz decided to part ways and the German publisher was no longer going to publish this MMORPG in the west, mentioning failure to meet “quality standards”. Fast forward a week and Neowiz steps up its game, pretty much hinting that the South Korean developer is going the distance alone and self-publishing Bless Online in the west. We're guessing Steam, but there's no info on this yet.

This is just a short recap of the major Bless Online developments, but besides this there's also the Russian version that was closed for revisions during an indefinite period, and the Korean version mergers that are a signal of a low playerbase.

And now for the million dollar questions:
• Are you still expecting Bless Online?
• Is the hype deserved for a game that seems to get so much criticism?
• And when it eventually happens, probably sometime during 2018, isn't it already too late?

Let us know your opinion about this mess in the comments below.

SMMOll Talk (or Small Talk in case it escaped you) is a section where we build up on some of the hottest topics surrounding MMOs and free-to-play games in general. Each time we ask your opinion on a specific theme and we count on your comments to expand on the subject.