''Bless Online'' () was a

massively multiplayer online role-playing game A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...

developed by

Neowiz Games Neowiz Holdings Corporation () is a holding company headquartered in Seongnam, South Korea. It was founded in 1997 by Sung Kyun Na and is best known for the video game developer and publisher Neowiz. History Neowiz was founded in 1997 by 8 f ...

. The release date was May 28, 2018, for Founder's Pack purchasers and May 30 for Early Access on

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

. ''Bless Online'' uses a

free-to-play "Free-to-play" ("F2P" or "FtP") video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content for free. The term "free-to-play business model" or simply, "free-to-play model", refers collectively to business models tha ...

business model.

Gameplay

''Bless'' is set in a fantasy world. The main story revolves around a decade-long war between two factions, the nation of Hieron and the nation of Unión. The game world is separated by different

climatic Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorolog ...

zones. Players can choose their character's race and class, with race determining which faction they align with. Players can join

PvP Player versus player (PvP) is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between human players. This is often compared to player versus environment (PvE), in which the game itself controls its players' opponents and is usually off ...

castle sieges, to advance their faction power. Winning sieges grants new quests, and resources. Faction and race dependent role-playing scenarios are also available for players to advance their character progress.

Characters

''Bless Online'' features humanoid races for players to choose from when creating a character. The races of Hieron are composed of the Habichts (), the Sylvan Elves (), the wolf-like Lufus (), the Fedayin (), and the Mascu (). The Unión's races consist of the Amistad (), the Aqua Elves (), the catlike Pantera (), the Iblis (), and the Sirens ().

Development

''Bless'' was initially announced as ''BLESS'', back in 2011. ''Bless'' was developed with

Unreal Engine 3 Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) is the third version of Unreal Engine developed by Epic Games. Unreal Engine 3 was one of the first game engines to support multithreading. It used DirectX 9 as its baseline graphics API, simplifying its rendering code. The ...

, a game engine by

Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American Video game developer, video game and software development, software developer and video game publisher, publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney (game developer), Tim Sween ...

. ''Bless western version was cancelled by game publisher

Aeria Games Aeria Games, formerly known as Aeria Games and Entertainment, was an online game publisher. The corporate headquarters were located in Berlin, Germany. Aeria Games was a privately-owned organization by Aeria Games & Entertainment Inc, later a ...

in 2017, however, in response Neowiz plans to self-publish the game. In July 2017, Neowiz Games announced their ''Rebuild Project'' in order to address many game specific components. At

TwitchCon TwitchCon is a semi-annual Convention (meeting), convention for the video livestreaming service Twitch (service), Twitch. It is organized by Twitch Interactive and focuses on the culture of livestreaming, entertainment, esports and internet cultu ...

2017, Neowiz announced that the release date would be sometime in 2018 and that ''Bless'' will become available at

, as part of the

early access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release Software release life cycle, developm ...

program. Steam's early access included localized versions for English, German and Russian languages. Two mobile games based on the ''Bless'' IP were announced, one using

Unreal Engine 4 Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is the fourth version of Unreal Engine developed by Epic Games. UE4 began development in 2003 and was released in March 2014, with the first game using UE4 being released in April 2014. UE4 introduced support for Physically ...

. As of October 2017, Neowiz Games was still assessing in-game monetization options. The last remaining server in Korea was shut down on November 19, 2018.

Beta testing

The first closed beta testing began in 2014 in South Korea. Since August 2017, the open beta phase of ''Bless'' is available on South Korean servers. Japanese closed beta testing began in April and proceeded in October 2017. From December 2016 until May 2017 an open beta version of the ''Bless'' client was hosted on servers located in Russia before being shut down after failing to gain traction.

Final release (United States and Europe)

''Bless Online'' released in Early Access on Steam for Founder's Pack purchasers on May 28, 2018, and Early Access on May 30, 2018. The Steam version closed on September 9, 2019, with its struggling userbase size cited as a main reason by media outlets.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://blessonline.net Fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing games Free-to-play video games Massively multiplayer online role-playing games Unreal Engine 3 games Video games developed in South Korea Windows games Windows-only games Products and services discontinued in 2019 Inactive massively multiplayer online games Neowiz games