Just One Day After Launch, More ‘Blade & Soul’ Servers Opening Soon Due To Demand

With 10 North American servers and 12 European servers, Blade & Soul opened its doors yesterday with seemingly plenty of room for interested players. After increasing server capacity and locking character creation on certain servers, developers of the martial arts MMORPG announced today that more Blade & Soul servers will be opening soon.

Several measures have been put forth to alleviate server congestion on Blade & Soul; however, many players are still encountering lengthy queues. Like most MMORPG releases, there just is not enough space for all the player demand at the time of launch. Auto-kicking players away from their computers for a considerable amount of time, free transfers off of high population servers, and other methods for handling overpopulated launch servers have not completely rectified the problem. At this point, NCSoft and the Blade & Soul team have opted to open more servers within the next 48 hours.

To continue to help with queue times, we're adding new servers. More info here: https://t.co/T7D9VhbWlF pic.twitter.com/9ePx8eLoJN

— Blade & Soul (@bladeandsoul) January 20, 2016

According to the official forum post, several new servers will be opening over the next couple of days. Blade & Soul players just starting out are encouraged to create their characters on less populated servers if they wish to not encounter a queue. Details on the server names, availability, and any downtime that will accompany their opening will be announced soon. The additional servers might not relieve all queues, but they should spread the player base out more for less congestion.

Launch congestion is rather common for MMORPGs with gaining popularity and a traditional server structure. Sometimes, creation on newly created servers is risky because they are often the first to go if the game downsizes on servers later or merges them into day one launch servers. Naming limitations and other concerns are also a point of contention when considering what server to select. Of course, there is no guarantee that these new Blade & Soul servers will suffer the same migration issues down the road.

Players that are fortunate enough to be able to play Blade & Soul right now can enjoy four races, seven classes, and two warring factions in the Wuxia tale of betrayal and intrigue. Although the game’s Founder’s Packs were retired at launch, new Signature Packs are now available. These packs give players a leg up on leveling with several convenience items. Players can purchase these new packs with NCoin, the same currency used in the free-to-play game’s in-game store.

Of the two Signature Packs, the Student Bundle is the cheaper option at 399 NCoin. The Duelist Bundle contains many more items and costs more at 2,699 NCoin. The Student Bundle includes seven days of Premium Membership, cosmetic glasses, and other items. The Duelist Bundle includes 30 days of Premium Membership, consumable food that increases experience, and special lockbox keys. As the Inquisitr reported, each pack can only be purchased once and the Premium Membership included will begin immediately upon purchase.

Although Blade & Soul is a free-to-play game, players can choose to support the game with purchases like the aforementioned bundles or by buying items in the in-game store. Additionally, an optional subscription service is also available. Premium Membership gives the subscriber a number of benefits like more gold earned, more experience earned, more marketplace slots, reduced fees for in-game features, faster Chi recovery, and many more. Spending money on Blade & Soul grants players Premium Points which increase the benefits from Premium Membership while subscribed. The more Premium Points a player has accumulated, the higher their membership tier is while their Premium Membership is active. A higher tier makes the benefits of membership stronger. Letting a Premium Membership lapse will stop the benefits it grants; however, any Premium Points and gained membership rank will remain until the player subscribes again.

[Image via NCSoft]