Blade & Soul’s Upcoming “Frontier World” Unreal Engine 4 Overhaul

I’m finally getting around to doing this. I’ve done a video discussing Blade & Soul’s upcoming Unreal Engine 4 update in the past, but that was back when information was scarce.
So if you weren’t already aware, earlier this month it was revealed that Blade & Soul’s Unreal Engine 4 update wouldn’t just be a graphical overhaul. Instead, South Korea would be providing a brand new set of servers, titled “Frontier World” with which to roll out the updates onto.
Yup – they’re actually introducing entirely new servers for the content. The Frontier World servers are overhauling quite a few features of the game, including the combat system and your character itself.
However, while those changes have been announced, it’s unclear exactly what alterations are being made to either classes or the combat, and considering the combat is one of Blade & Soul’s biggest appeals, it’s unusual to claim changes are being made but offer nothing for players to leave feedback on.
Additionally, at least pertaining to the South Korean version of Blade & Soul, they revealed the third spec for the Force Master. The class, which is shown off in teaser-form only looks pretty sick, but it’s hard to really get a gauge for a class from a trailer.

Now, to follow this up, a week or so later, Nico Coutant – who’s name I guarantee I butchered saying out loud – revealed in the latest Producer’s Letter that the Western incarnation of Blade & Soul will definitely be receiving the Unreal Engine 4 update, including all of the updated systems.
While he couldn’t reveal specifics as to when the update would hit the live servers over here, he did make the promise that it would be arriving this year.
Personally, I feel as though that’s being a little optimistic. Updates tend to take a while to be localized from South Korea, and I’ve never seen an update overhaul this much content in a foreign MMO. Especially not one that looks like Blade & Soul.
Included in the Producer’s Letter was a roadmap for 2020, featuring content planned up until June currently.
March will see a new Heroic dungeon added, new gear, a Hongmoon Level cap increase and updates to current skills.
April will see a continuation of the Rise of Silversteel story along with the new Silversteel raid, and new gear.
May will see part 2 of the Silversteel raid and a new weapon tier.
June will feature the third specialization for the Force Master, Act 11’s story, a new Heroic dungeon, clan renewal, PvP renewal, new gear and a new accessory enhancement system.
As is clearly evident, there’s going to be a decent amount of content to look forward to over the course of the next 4 months. July through December has yet to be elaborated on but I’m assuming that’s due to the fact that they’re not certain themselves exactly what form content releases are going to take.

Interestingly, the game, after having the Frontier World servers go live, will feature two different, concurrent-run versions of the game. Frontier will run on its own servers, and the old servers will remain online as “Live World” servers.
Apparently, both versions of the game will be running on Unreal Engine 4.
Honestly I’m not sure why, after successfully launching Frontier World, they don’t just apply the updates to the Live World servers, effectively upgrading the game and the entirety of its servers to Frontier World but I guess the more servers it has open, the more money they essentially earn from players playing on both.

South Korea sure seem to like overhauling their games, huh? Black Desert Remastered, Lineage 2: Remastered, Blade & Soul: Frontier World. I know they’re a little obsessed with having the best graphics imaginable, but I feel like there are other areas that they could focus on.
Not Blade & Soul specifically, but pretty much all South Korean MMOs and developers.

Nevertheless, I feel like this is kind of a cool update. It’s a shame that it’s going to take a while to hit our servers, definitely, but at the same time, we got a lot to look forward to already.
I’m very interested in seeing the combat changes – and what specifically is being changed regarding it. I’ve never dedicated enough time to the game to notice the class changes, but I look forward to replaying through the game when the Unreal Engine 4 update goes live.