One of the challenges facing many Korean MMOs here in the West is the just sheer difference in consumer expectations when it comes to microtransactions and Blade and Soul NEO Classic Divine Gems what those microtransactions can provide. We generally abhor anything here in the West that feels even borderline what is perceived to be pay-to-win, while there are some elements that are just normal and expected in Asian markets. Balancing the two has always been a tough assignment, though it should be noted that JJ has a history of helping a large company navigate such struggles.

Black Desert Online was accused heavily of being overly microtransaction-heavy and leaning almost headfirst into pay-to-win territory when it first launched in the West eight years ago. However, over those years, I noticed the pay-to-win elements here in the West were slowly reduced, with those microtransactions often being cosmetic or simply convenience items. It’s hard to say it’s completely gone, and the amount of microtransactions available in Black Desert has certainly not gone down over the years. Still, one thing JJ’s team at Pearl Abyss America did, in my view, was help headquarters better understand what the audience here wanted out of its in-game store.

She has the same task ahead of her here at NC America, especially as more titles are being published in Korea first. While NCSOFT’s most recent MMORPG, Throne and Liberty, is being published by Amazon here in the West, with that team taking the lead at formulating the microtransactions to be more akin to what we’d expect out here, JJ’s team had to do this with Blade and Soul Neo. For gameplay, JJ says there isn’t much being changed in Neo from its Korean version. However, she does tell me that her team is paying close attention to the business model, especially whether it’ll be accepted here in the West.

We are not changing a lot of things for Blade and Soul Neo. When we played buy BnS Classic Divine Gems here in the office, I think the dev team really wanted to make it work well for the global audience. So I think those were the learnings from our past experience. Unfortunately, some of our titles - or most of our titles - had a pay-to-win reputation. So there’s a big awareness now about that internally. I think even for the business models, the devs wanted to make sure this is better, this is going to be well accepted in the West. So we’re learning from our live service experience.