Bless Online struggles with downtime on its first day, offers refunds and plans for the future

If you thought that everything was going to go great for Bless Online’s headstart yesterday, what with the lack of preloading and everyone trying to buy it on Steam at the same time yesterday, then I have to wonder where you’ve been for the last two decades of disastrous MMORPG launches because that is just not how this works.

For those on the outside watching patiently, Neowiz’s official Twitter account and Steam feed were littered with crash, maintenance, and downtime notices throughout the day as the developer worked to stabilize the game. The addition of new servers – and the blockade on some servers for rolling new toons – as the crush of players swarmed in might also have been a clue that a hella lotta people were trying to play. (It could be worse, though – you could be in Russia afflicted by the Telegram mess.)

Neowiz Executive Producer Sungjin Ko penned a producer letter yesterday welcoming everyone to the fun and discussing what participants can expect.

“During Early Access, there will be both English (text and voice overs) and German (text only) localization, but while the English is almost done, we will be continuing to add to and improve the German throughout EA. We aim to provide content update patches at least once a month (or even more frequently) during Early Access in addition to regular localization updates. We will be eagerly awaiting the community opinion on all aspects. However, as we want to make sure the start of Early Access goes as smoothly as possible, we plan to first monitor the stability of the situation and then adjust and extend the content update schedule accordingly.”

As far as content, he teases new classes, dungeons, battlefields, world events, field bosses, raids, better guild systems, hunting spots, quests, and character advancement. He also reiterates Neowiz’s commitment to “provide content updates every month, with a large-scale update every 3 months.”

One extra thing to note: We’d originally had reports that only the cheapest package was refundable through Steam. That appears to no longer be the case; multiple MOP readers have now confirmed they were able to receive full refunds on even the top-end preorder bundle.