We are now into the third week since Bless Online’s Steam launch, and while things are still heated between Neowiz and the player base, there have been improvements. Over the past seven days, developers Neowiz have been patching and updating the game constantly. Among the things they’ve fixed are damage nerfs, localization (translation) issues and revamping the low level experience. The latter is very much welcome, as mob and monster health pools have been reduced to offer a smoother leveling and questing experience. The XP rewards are also adjusted to ensure that progression from quest to quest feels natural.

As for players with Founders Packs, they’ve now u-turned on their decision to make these exclusive items go from per character to account wide and reclaimable. On the surface, these are great improvements based on player feedback but lets be honest, these things should have been done before launch. One can’t help but feel the last two weeks have been nothing but a paid open beta, with Neowiz wanting a guarantee of profits for their investment before making changes to the game which will incur further cost. Fun fact: They have invested 60 million for the global release. Nonetheless, credit is given where it is due, and at the very least they are listening to feedback and are making adjustments accordingly.

Keep in mind however, that there are still a lot of things that need to improve before this MMORPG can be forgiven for it’s terrible launch. Quality of life issues, questing and most importantly optimization are all things that needs priority fixes. Class stats and balance are also an on-going process, and the rate that they are patching these weekly means that it will be a long time before classes are stable enough to keep players satisfied.  And if you’re wondering if Bless’s early days are the worst in a long time, it isn’t.

The Elder Scrolls Online’s launch back in 2014 wasn’t Grade A either. A host of server issues and gameplay bugs made things unplayable for many. This led to some big names in the industry crucifying it on the first week – like Angry Joe did in one of his Angry Reviews – and like most cases, this was justified. But where Neowiz can learn from ESO’s developers Zenimax, is how to turn the game around and win back the players it had lost. The key thing to note here is that these weren’t ‘quick win’ fixes. These were heavy updates and investments that took a further year to implement. ESO has addressed major issues and implemented gameplay changes and ideas that have made it one of the top Buy to Play MMORPGs out there today, with over 10 million players on both PC and Console. These things take time.

And remember Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s launch in 2013? It got so bad, the developers shut the game down, rebuilt it up from scratch and re-relased the game. Sure it had the large budget backing of being an iconic franchise name to do that, but that’s pretty drastic nonetheless. The key lessons here are the open dialogues between studio and players, and the clear communication of what the plans are and how long they will take. That open communication is key in this day and age for game development, and Neowiz can definitely improve that moving forward.

Bless have had this issue before. The game didn’t succeed in two regions and had to be shut down. As a result, most of us are looking at this global launch as a last resort for Bless, and it’s why I think they need to buck it up big time for this one, as they can’t afford the global release to fail as well. Should they pull this off, in a year or two we could be looking at another MMORPG that did right by its early backers, and not the game that tried to emulate Black Desert Online for a quick buck and failed.

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The past two days have been rocky for Neowiz, studio behind the Korean MMORPG Bless Online. The game has just launched globally on Steam, featuring a new combat system and payment model. Unfortunately, everyone that got one of the three Founders Packs to get into the head start have been terrible experiences. What are the issues so far?

• Server instability due to the small amount of servers at launch. They have added in more, but the damage is done as players are separated from their guilds.
• Premium items claimed on a character which cannot be accessed on a heavy load server, no alts will get the same items.
• Optimization issues rampant, with most players having lag in-game, low FPS rates, crashes and even getting stuck on the loading screen with no official fix.
• Localization issues, which include poor translation, text, dialogue and more.

And these are just the widely reported ones. Today, there’s even talk of a duping bug which Neowiz have not even come out to confirm or deny. So what are Bless apologizing for now that it’s out of Advanced Access and fully launched? Let’s take a look:

The Apology

“I would like to address the connection, login, and server crash issues from the large influx of players that some of you have been experiencing. First of all, we would like to sincerely apologize to everyone who participated our Head Start as Founders for the recent issues which resulted in long waits and many inconveniences.”

The entire development team is committed to identifying and addressing the causes of current performance issues and we are doing our best to solve them as our TOP PRIORITY.

• We prepared three NA servers and two EU servers for our Advanced Access, but the number of players increased very rapidly and all three NA servers were maxed out in the first three hours of AA. While this was happening, it was difficult for us to add more servers as quickly as you expected and it led to the waiting queue. Now we have expanded to six NA servers and four EU servers.
• There was also a recurring client crash caused by using Player Duels in-game. We identified the cause and resolved it.
• The issue with the launcher loading stopping at 40% or being delayed is now fixed.

• The issue with getting stuck on the “BLESS” loading screen issues has now been fixed. Authentication failure was identified as the issue between STEAM and BLESS servers when players attempted to log-in. We will closely monitor the situation after the patch.
• We experienced database I/O delay due to the large influx of players. This caused a lot of the lag you experienced with looting, quests, and other actions. With the urgent maintenance, we upgraded database system/storage to top-end models in order to solve I/O delay. This should improve the lag players see during crowded server times.
• For Early Access, we prepared an additional six NA servers and five EU servers that can be added instantly without maintenance. In addition, we reinforced our in-game logs to help identify the cause of server crash issues.

“Again, I would like to sincerely apologize to all the players who experienced any inconveniences due to server problems or connection errors. We will be a development team that communicates with you.

We know that these issues are just a few of the things that need to be worked on with the Early Access of Bless Online. We chose the Early Access format on Steam because the development and release of content for Bless will be a many-layered process throughout the EA period. We understand that many players are disappointed that not all of the content they expected to be in at Early Access launch is there.

Along with the performance issues, our top priority is addressing the reported potential item duplication bug. Once we can replicate this issue and solve it, we will let all of our players know. 

Most importantly, we know that there is end-game content missing that many of you expected in this first Early Access build, given what’s available in the other versions of the game. Additions like the 15v15 PVP and new high-level dungeons will be added in 1-2 weeks’ time, with more to come soon after.

Bless Online’s Early Access was always intended to be a growing experience, with systems and content being added in the weeks and months ahead; this is why we chose the Steam Early Access program. We are sincerely sorry that our players were led to believe otherwise, and we are happy to allow refunds for those who feel they cannot wait for the new content to arrive. We hope that you will return to the world of Bless when the features you expect are in the game and ready for your participation.”

Sincerely,
Sungjin Ko, Executive Producer

The Verdict

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