Early Access Review – Is the 3rd Time the Charm? - Bless Review - MMORPG.com

SBFord · June 2018

Early Access Review – Is the 3rd Time the Charm? - Bless Review - MMORPG.com

After two weeks and one first impressions article later, much has happened and even more has changed in the highly critiqued roller coaster launch of Neowiz’s western early access launch of Bless Online. In its current state, Bless online offers a modicum of subtle victories hidden behind ostentatious gameplay, features that rarely hit the mark. With two prior rocky launches is Bless Online worth the cost for entrance now, or should buyers beware?

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Whiteshade92 · June 2018

Great final score 5.5/5

TheDarkrayne · June 2018

I'm hearing nothing but bad things about this game. I definitely won't be checking it out.

Viper482 · June 2018

Stay away....far away. I am hoping it will be a better game in about a year, but until then it is absolute shit.

Octagon7711 · June 2018

I see why they had so many problems with exploits. All their time went into just getting the game out the door even when they knew it was in an alpha state.

Scot · June 2018

I am thinking back to the posters who thought the prereview/first week review(?) was not telling people how bad it was. Well that piece did just not shouting like a shouty man. This one puts a figure on it and 5.5 says it all.

hyllyh · June 2018

as steam dedicaced discussion page moderator just delete all post against the game and delete post from players finding exploit/cheat and saying it's just crap, i'll avoid it at 100%
it stay a beautiful milk machine in a time without new mmo
i'm not a "hater" or someone like, i just want to play and pay for nice game (ah pillar of eternity II, thanks!)
this one is really an empty shell and my eyes bleed on their stream white knight!

ah to finish, a beautiful video hard to find from all steam post:

Leiloni · June 2018

Why is this the only Early Access game that gets a review? That's a bit unfair. The devs have been clear for months that game was unfinished and would need a lot of work before being ready for official release. How about letting them go through that development process before reviewing it like you do for every other game?

I'm very disappointed in you MMORPG for doing this and Bill for letting it happen. I used to respect you guys for writing about a wide variety of games with a wide variety of opinions, but this is just jumping on the hate train for a game that is like any other at this stage of development.

Krayka · June 2018

Leiloni said:

Why is this the only Early Access game that gets a review? That's a bit unfair. The devs have been clear for months that game was unfinished and would need a lot of work before being ready for official release. How about letting them go through that development process before reviewing it like you do for every other game?

I'm very disappointed in you MMORPG for doing this and Bill for letting it happen. I used to respect you guys for writing about a wide variety of games with a wide variety of opinions, but this is just jumping on the hate train for a game that is like any other at this stage of development.

Uhhhh. You realize the game has been out for a long time in other regions and still has persistent bugs that have been around just as long, yet they’re still not fixed in any region. You’re jaded if you think this game will ever be great. It’s a cheap cash grab.

AnnaTS · June 2018

Leiloni said:

Why is this the only Early Access game that gets a review? That's a bit unfair. The devs have been clear for months that game was unfinished and would need a lot of work before being ready for official release. How about letting them go through that development process before reviewing it like you do for every other game?

I'm very disappointed in you MMORPG for doing this and Bill for letting it happen. I used to respect you guys for writing about a wide variety of games with a wide variety of opinions, but this is just jumping on the hate train for a game that is like any other at this stage of development.

I think it's fair that people do reviews on the game, People have to pay to play the game, So reviews help people decide whether to spend their money or not, Even though you can get a refund after 2 hours on Steam, That 2 hours isn't enough to know whether the game is worth buying right now, Seeing as you won't get to play most of the game in that 2 hours.

StevenWeber · June 2018

Hi @Leiloni

This isn't the only Early Access review that MMORPG.com has done, in fact, they are fairly common. It's actually a great indicator for new players on whether they should buy the game now, but even better when the game finally launches, it shows how far the game has come once the launch review hits, and whether or not the developers have delivered on their game.

I personally believe that when Bless is revisited after August, it will be a much better game than it is now, but in terms of an Early Access experience, I feel it still has a long way to go. I hope that explains a little about how MMORPG.com does reviews, and despite the score I'll still be hopping into Bless Online and keeping up with their development.

Thanks! I'll see you in Game!

valoiz · June 2018

DMKano said:

The score is right on - I think Bless for me (Steam Version) is 5/10

Japan version is about 6.5/10

But great review.

If only Neowiz would have listened to the western publishers about fixing the game before even thinking about bringing it to the western players - but that's all behind us now.

Steam charts for Bless are showing a pretty clear trend - at launch there were 34.3 thousand peak concurrent players - 8 days later - the daily peak concurrent is down to 17.5 thousand - a 50% drop in 9 days.

Ouch

To make the problem worse - there are already servers in both NA/EU that are dead population wise - players can't find groups to complete content and are already asking for server merges - which are needed for those ultra-low pop servers.

Neowiz - mistakes were made

Still looks very healty tho

http://steamcharts.com/app/681660#7d

Krayka · June 2018

hyllyh said:

as steam dedicaced discussion page moderator just delete all post against the game and delete post from players finding exploit/cheat and saying it's just crap, i'll avoid it at 100%

it stay a beautiful milk machine in a time without new mmo

i'm not a "hater" or someone like, i just want to play and pay for nice game (ah pillar of eternity II, thanks!)

this one is really an empty shell and my eyes bleed on their stream white knight!

ah to finish, a beautiful video hard to find from all steam post:

I knew this game was going to be trash after spending 10 minutes reading about it and watching gameplay videos. I’m done with buying every new MMO that gets released on the market because 95% of them are sorry excuses for a game. Unfortunately I feel like MMOs are a dying breed. I started playing vanilla WoW in 2005 and since then there hasn’t been more than 1-2 MMOs that were worth playing for any significant length of time. As I already stated in regards to Bless, I could tell it was going to be trash from a thousand miles away. People need to stop shelling money over for unfinished games as it’s only giving developers bad ideas about how they can get rich quick by marketing an unfinished game and releasing it under the sham title of “early access” while still pulling in massive amounts of money from an unpolished turd.

cheyane · June 2018

I think it is fair to do a review since they are charging money and should expect to be judged on what they have currently plus this game ain't new.

Albatroes · June 2018

I'll be honest, just repopulate Aion.

aslan132 · June 2018

Leiloni said:

Why is this the only Early Access game that gets a review? That's a bit unfair. The devs have been clear for months that game was unfinished and would need a lot of work before being ready for official release. How about letting them go through that development process before reviewing it like you do for every other game?

I'm very disappointed in you MMORPG for doing this and Bill for letting it happen. I used to respect you guys for writing about a wide variety of games with a wide variety of opinions, but this is just jumping on the hate train for a game that is like any other at this stage of development.

Its very common to do reviews of Early Access and Open Betas (same thing). Early access is an excuse, not a justification for mistakes. When a game both a. stops doing any progress wipes and b. charges money to play/cash shop opens it is in a launch state and ready to be reviewed. If they knew it had massive bugs, balance issues and optimization issues they should not be charging money and should still hold a progress wipe / reset once the issues are resolved. Look at the stage of actual development and what the company actions are, not the title they decide to attack to a game.

Hellscream · June 2018

This is what happens in a game that should not have even been released yet but seems greed got the best of these idiots. And the game runs like complete and utter garbage needs some serious Optimization. In Black Desert running 4k i get 60+fps and BDO looks a hell of a lot better then this game. In bless with a 1080Ti i am lucky to see 40fps what a joke. Also what moron releases a game using DX9 in 2018 lets get real here

Vrika · June 2018

valoiz said:

DMKano said:

The score is right on - I think Bless for me (Steam Version) is 5/10

Japan version is about 6.5/10

But great review.

If only Neowiz would have listened to the western publishers about fixing the game before even thinking about bringing it to the western players - but that's all behind us now.

Steam charts for Bless are showing a pretty clear trend - at launch there were 34.3 thousand peak concurrent players - 8 days later - the daily peak concurrent is down to 17.5 thousand - a 50% drop in 9 days.

Ouch

To make the problem worse - there are already servers in both NA/EU that are dead population wise - players can't find groups to complete content and are already asking for server merges - which are needed for those ultra-low pop servers.

Neowiz - mistakes were made

Still looks very healty tho

It's still very healthy number, but the problem is that if you lose more than 5% of your players every day you're going to run out of players very fast.

Raquis · June 2018

i wanted to buy something to keep me busy till Code Vein but Bless just looks so average and on twitch i watched and its just fetch quests.

maskedweasel · June 2018

Raquis said:

i wanted to buy something to keep me busy till Code Vein but Bless just looks so average and on twitch i watched and its just fetch quests.

I'd say about half of the side quests are, the other half are kill or "completion" quests, hunt quests are all kill quests, and there are maybe a handful of actual interesting quests that requires something more.. "out of the box"

MidPrincess · June 2018

Albatroes said:

I'll be honest, just repopulate Aion.

I would love to see that! Trouble here in the West is, you know damn well NC is going to ruin that new 6.0 patch that looks so yummy in Korea. Plus by now, you know the server balances are terribly askew, most of them are either almost all Elyo or all Asmo.

But yeah I feel ya. I miss my SW and my old Glad.

Scot · June 2018

Leiloni said:

Why is this the only Early Access game that gets a review? That's a bit unfair. The devs have been clear for months that game was unfinished and would need a lot of work before being ready for official release. How about letting them go through that development process before reviewing it like you do for every other game?

I'm very disappointed in you MMORPG for doing this and Bill for letting it happen. I used to respect you guys for writing about a wide variety of games with a wide variety of opinions, but this is just jumping on the hate train for a game that is like any other at this stage of development.

I think we all know the way games are being released is changing, if they have said there is going to be no wipe and their is already a cash shop I think it is fair to do an EA review.

BillMurphy · June 2018

I think we all know the way games are being released is changing, if they have said there is going to be no wipe and their is already a cash shop I think it is fair to do an EA review.

This. It's been our policy for "Open Betas" and Early Access for years now. Taking cash, no wipes? Review-able. We'll revisit Bless's score at launch.

Vrika · June 2018

Torval said:

Vrika said:

valoiz said:

DMKano said:

The score is right on - I think Bless for me (Steam Version) is 5/10

Japan version is about 6.5/10

But great review.

If only Neowiz would have listened to the western publishers about fixing the game before even thinking about bringing it to the western players - but that's all behind us now.

Steam charts for Bless are showing a pretty clear trend - at launch there were 34.3 thousand peak concurrent players - 8 days later - the daily peak concurrent is down to 17.5 thousand - a 50% drop in 9 days.

Ouch

To make the problem worse - there are already servers in both NA/EU that are dead population wise - players can't find groups to complete content and are already asking for server merges - which are needed for those ultra-low pop servers.

Neowiz - mistakes were made
Still looks very healty tho

It's still very healthy number, but the problem is that if you lose more than 5% of your players every day you're going to run out of players very fast.

You mean like this? A little context with a competing game is always good for perspective right? I'll just direct you to the All-Time Peak because the anemic weekly numbers might be distracting.

What? No, I meant my message literally that current 24 hour peak of Bless Online is less than:
all_Time_Peak * 0.95 ^ days_After_Launch

Losing players is in itself not an issue, all MMOs lose players over time, and then can regain some of them with big patches, expansions, etc. But if you lose players too quickly then regaining them doesn't work and the game will die.

GrandpaDJ · June 2018

BillMurphy said:

I think we all know the way games are being released is changing, if they have said there is going to be no wipe and their is already a cash shop I think it is fair to do an EA review.

This. It's been our policy for "Open Betas" and Early Access for years now. Taking cash, no wipes? Review-able. We'll revisit Bless's score at launch.

This is the important point. Regardless what the developer says, this game is released. Hiding behind Early Access doesn't work anymore. There are no more wipes and it costs money to play. Review away!

synn · June 2018

Anyone able to confirm that chili exploiters were able to keep their gold? Also, how did neowiz handle the people that were duping?

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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey