This week’s NCsoft game announcements aren’t going to surprise most of you who’ve been following NCsoft for a while. We’ve known for many moons thanks to investor reports that the company was working on sequels for Aion and Blade & Soul, among other titles, and now, they’ve both been officially revealed at a press event in South Korea, as first reported by MMO Culture.
Worth noting up front is that in August, NCsoft said its PC sales had slowed down and that these games would be tailored to suit the “global market.” That means mobile. And yes, these are mobile titles. The Aion 2 mobile MMORPG is a prequel that features gliding, mass PvP battles, what sounds like an open-skill class system, and no opposing factions.
The Blade & Soul segments are a bit more complicated because there are actually three sequels, all on mobile. Blade & Soul 2 is the one we’ve known about since last year; it’s promising new characters, new zones, ecosystem-driven AI, improved combat, and again, no factions.
Blade & Soul M, however, is what MMO Culture characterizes as a port of the PC game for mobile, but with a bunch of new features, like a story-branching system.
And then there’s Blade & Soul S, a prequel to the PC game, but with a fresh chibi graphic style, a dynamic open world, and hero-collection mechanics.
Wondering about NCsoft big moneymaker, the Lineage franchise? Yet another mobile Lineage title, Lineage 2M, is on the way, a “reinterpretation” of the PC title; it claims to have a “seamless open world” for exploration, as well as RvR battles, raid bosses, and the original 31 classes and then some. Unfortunately, it appears that Project TL aka The Lineage aka Lineage Eternal – was a no-show for the media event. That game has been in production for what seems an eternity and has undergone several transformations and name changes along the way; as of this past summer, it was set for Korean beta (again) before the end of 2018.
