Blade & Soul NEO IS Officially Still A Thing And It Will Have A Global Launch This Year

Well look at that. Just a few days after I wrote about the weird scrubbing of Blade & Soul NEO Classic information from the original MMORPG's website, we finally have official news from NCSoft on the game. The update drops the "Classic" from the original name and simply goes by Blade & Soul NEO now, and it seems to have taken over the full B&S site.

Blade & Soul NEO is described as a "modern reinterpretation" of the original MMO and utilizes Unreal Engine 4 to completely revamp the graphical performance, lighting, and animations in game, while also making a number of performance improvements along the way.

While a lot will be changing, expect some things to remain familiar. Blade & Soul NEO will still offer the action "fighting game-esque" combat as the original game did. However, Windwalking (a fast way of moving about the world) was relegated to short burst uses in the original Blade & Soul thanks to a Stamina bar. This movement style will be unlimited in NEO and will be obtained very early in your new adventure.

For PvP fans, certain world zones will be designated to allow for PvP and factions can always kill each other anywhere out in the world provided players have flagged for Faction PvP. Organized 6v6 PvP will also be available at certain times. PvE fans will still have multiple dungeons and raids to explore. 

Story-wise, you'll be treading ground you've already been on before if you played the original B&S, and you'll still have the same 4 races and 7 classes to choose from, but you'll have new options in NEO's updated character creator. 

While all of this looks great, I am very curious about how the game will be monetized. The original Blade & Soul's monetization caused me to leave the game fairly quickly and I'll leave NEO very quickly (despite it being pretty) if they keep the same plan. Given that NCSoft felt the western monetization of Throne and Liberty was "weak," and it played a part in recent layoffs at the company, I don't know if we'll be seeing any real concessions in the global release or not.

You can preregister on the site now for a few additional rewards once we get an actual launch date. Founder's packs are also available with all 3 bundles priced between $9.99 and $59.99, each with more cash shop currency and cosmetics as you spend more.

While the Blade & Soul site is dominated by NEO right now, I did confirm with NCSoft that B&S and B&S NEO will, in fact, both be available whenever NEO launches. You can play one or both if you like. There's even a few rewards for you Blade & Soul players if you pre-register for NEO.