Greetings, Warriors of the Earthen Realm!

I hope you’re enjoying our recently released Shroud of the Assassin update introducing the new third class specialization for the Assassin class as well as the new Blade & Soulmate event! We’ve wrapped up our 4th anniversary festivities, hopefully you all got to claim your exclusive Aurealis Shimmer Outfit and Passion Illusion Weapon, collected some good items, and congrats to the lucky few who won the Blade & Soul 4th Anniversary custom sneakers. We’ve also really appreciated the amazing entries for the loading screen art contest, and you’ll be able to see the winners’ art in-game soon!

Looking back on Year 3, we had some great updates. The Zen Archer was an extremely popular class for players to pick up; we had some big things happening as Mushin made his move in Act 10 of the epic story, and we introduced some new high-level dungeons with new and interesting mechanics. For statistics fans, we pulled a few stats you might be interested in: In 2019, players leveled up 12,718,550 times; 1,983,842 brave warriors lost their lives in PVP battles; and players completed 11,462,141 daily challenges. The most important statistic, as I think you’ll agree, is that 51,662,322 fish were caught, thanks largely in part to the introduction of auto-fishing!

As we look on to Year 4, we have a lot of exciting updates planned. Speaking of 4, the topic that’s been on everyone’s mind since it was announced—the Unreal Engine 4 update. Korea has announced they are launching their Frontier World at the end of February, and we can’t wait to see how players react to this new take on the Blade & Soul world. Frontier World is a new service that takes us back to the roots of the game. After the Korean launch of Frontier World, we’ll be able to better assess the timing for the Unreal Engine 4 service launch in the west, but rest assured, we are still aiming to launch Unreal Engine 4 content this year!

As we look at the upcoming roadmap for 2020, we have a lot of things to highlight for you. This includes the third specialization upgrade for the Force Master, slated for June. We’ll also be concluding the ongoing epic story arc this year with Act 11, and we’ll be adding lots of new dungeons for players to attempt. To reveal a little more information on what’s coming from the Blade & Soul development team, we had some interview questions answered by two key members of the team: Jaehong Kim, the head of Blade & Soul’s service for North America and Europe and Seunghwan Jeon, the Blade & Soul development director. You can watch the video here:

We have a lot of other things in store for 2020, and that includes stepping up our cadence of events, adding new and increased rewards to them as well as different ways to participate. When we have more info on this year’s PVP changes, you’ll be the first to know! In the meantime, here’s a quick peek of upcoming content coming between now and June.

There’s lots of excitement in store for Blade & Soul in 2020, and we can’t want to share it all with you. We appreciate your continued support and feedback as we prepare for a big year of amazing Blade & Soul content.

Fight on, brave warriors of the Earthen Realm!

Sincerely,

Nico Coutant

Blade & Soul Senior Producer