Greetings Warriors of the Earthen Realm,

We’re halfway through year two of Blade & Soul, and the game and the community has come such a long way! We kicked off 2017 with the Anniversary Event, and shortly after that we released the Wings of the Raven update which gave players the first two raids: Skybreak Spire and Dawn of Khanda Vihar. After that you were able to explore the brand new Gunwon City area and take on a new foe in the epic Act 7 of Blade & Soul’s story arc in the Secrets of the Stratus update in April. And all this is in addition to the huge events, promotions, and other content these updates included.

Quality of life enhancements were a big focus for us this year. So far, we’ve streamlined the Skill tree, added the Hongmoon Training Room, introduced legendary accessory tokens, removable weapon skins, and more. A lot of the decisions made to include these enhancements were directly based on feedback we saw from the community. (We have another major quality of life implement to discuss a little further down the letter—so keep reading!)

Of course, we weren’t without our missteps either, and we’ve had several pain points we’ve needed to correct or are still working on. As we look forward to the rest of 2017 and beyond, I wanted to reassure you of this: The entire Blade & Soul team’s top priority as the game continues to grow and evolve is to ensure we make the best decisions that contribute to its longevity. This means continuing to engage with you, the community, for constructive feedback, and being able to consider and/or act upon it to improve your overall experience.

But, less about the past, and more about the future; Blade & Soul Esports is fast approaching the end of our championship series, and a big thanks to all of the players who contributed to the Golden Lotus. I hope you’ll tune in to watch the European Regional Championships at gamescom on August 24, with North America following at PAX West on September 3. If you’re going to the shows, we hope to see you in the audience! We love seeing all the enthusiasm for the event and we can’t wait to see what our teams do at the world championships later this year!

Immediately ahead of us is the new Fortune Falls update—you’ll be able to explore a new event dungeon, where you can snag an awesome swimsuit set and valuable upgrade materials for a limited time! And on the horizon, you’ll be able to explore a new major update named Dark Origins. It’s got two brand new high level raids, a continuation of our story quests, a new dungeon, systems updates, and LOADS of new gear and cosmetics. Dark Origins will be hitting in August, so make sure you’re ready.

Speaking of raids, we’ve been seeing plenty of community feedback about server populations on specific realms, and the difficulty in finding raiding groups. As more and more players get to endgame content in Blade & Soul, having a thriving raiding population is vital:

To help all players have the ability to experience the new raids, we are consolidating servers on August 9. This will affect both North American and European servers—the end result being that all players will be transferred to two realms for North America (Yura and Zulia) and three for Europe (Jinsoyun, Eisenherz, and Naksun). We’ll have more details in the next few days, but to prepare for this, we’ll be disabling server transfers after the July 26 maintenance.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to ask in the forums and we’ll do our best to respond quickly.

With all that and a new class on the horizon, there’s a lot to look forward to! From myself and all of the members of the Blade & Soul team, we would like to thank you for your love, support, and contributions to the game we love so much—your passion and enthusiasm are an inspiration. Thank you and we’ll see you in-game!

Sincerely,

Jonathan Lien

Producer, Blade & Soul