Blue Protocol: Everything You Need to Know – Closed Beta, Free to Play, PvP, Dungeons, Raids & More

I know you guys have a lot of questions that need answering. Yes, Bandai Namco have begun to send out Closed Beta keys and yes I’m going to elaborate on that and quite a bit more in this article.

We’re heading into Closed Beta during April, so it’s best you guys know the kind of game Blue Protocol is, right?

If you’re looking to get a Closed Beta key, then we have a subreddit dedicated to Blue Protocol with thousands of active members. Some of which got accepted into the Beta test with extra keys to give away.
Who knows – maybe you’ll be lucky enough to nab one for yourself. The link to the subreddit will be included in the description and pinned comment below! Don’t worry, we don’t bite.

Let’s start this off by talking about the Closed Beta, since right now you’re all more interested in that than anything else.
On March 30th Bandai Namco announced they had confirmed all players who were chosen to receive Closed Beta keys. Supposedly, emails were sent out or at the very least would continue to be sent out over the course of a several day period.
However, if you’re waiting to see if you got into the Closed Beta – then if you log into the official Blue Protocol website it’ll show at the top right of the webpage whether you got accepted or not.
If the text is orange, like mine is, then you applied but weren’t accepted. If the text is red, then you were accepted into this phase of the Beta test.
The Closed Beta test will take place on April 23rd and will last through until April 26th.
The game will become available for pre-download on April 20th, and after the Closed Beta period ends on the 26th, there will be another questionnaire for players to fill out.

Over the last couple weeks the Blue Protocol team have been slowly releasing class-trailers, showcasing various skills and general gameplay for the Aegis Fighter, Twin Striker, Blast Archer and finally the Spell Caster.
I feel like this was necessary, as there really isn’t a whole lot of gameplay – well, there isn’t any gameplay footage captured after the Closed Alpha test last year.
Unless you count the dungeon footage that they showcased in the livestream last month.
Speaking of dungeons, instead of dungeons functioning like they do traditionally: All monsters being within a level or two of one another, instead, Blue Protocol’s dungeons are going to scale throughout meaning that a dungeon might begin with monsters at level 10 but end with monsters at level 30.
I’m uncertain of how damage will scale both from and towards monsters but it’s an interesting take. It’s also unconfirmed if raids will function in more or less the same way.
Raids will be 20-players in size, however according to the team it’s possible they’ll increase this up to 30-players if the community wants it badly enough.

Other than dungeons and raids, players will be able to take Missions, which act more or less like Quests with greater rewards and more difficult content.
There will be PvP in-game but not in the form you’re used to. Instead of PvP being an acronym for Player vs Player, in Blue Protocol it stands for Party vs Party.
PvP will pit players against waves of incoming monsters in an arena – which will be a means of competitive play, considering there is going to be a leaderboard added showing the top parties times’.
I don’t know if rewards are greater the faster you clear or the higher you are on the leaderboard.
While there isn’t Player vs Player content in-game, that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually have it. They stated that “This hasn’t been planned yet,” not that “There won’t be PvP.”

Unfortunately for some people, there is a single race available to players to create your avatar with: Human.
I know that’s a generic race, sure, but there will be a surplus of customization options both with which to create your character and in the form of accessories.
They’ve shown, on multiple occasions thus far, that you can make adorable Neko girls using accessories, with there being a grand total of 7 different slots, one being specific to “ears.”
They’ve not confirmed any additional races going into the future, and considering what we see are generally Human NPCs, it seems unlikely but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a possibility down the line.

They have plans to implement additional social features in the future like a functional guild system as currently at the point in development we’re at, there isn’t one present.
Additionally, with regards to being in a guild, the team went on to state that they didn’t want to make players feel as if they were obligated to have to join a guild to participate in content or gate content behind needing to party with other players.
With this in mind, while guilds and parties are preferred, the game is also designed with solo-play in mind for those of us that want to tackle content alone.

Crafting and gathering are both present in-game. I’m not sure how extensive the crafting system is, you could craft weapons during the Alpha test and could harvest ore and various types of herbs.
While they don’t have fishing yet, it is a planned feature in the future, along with player housing. Honestly, Anime MMOs don’t typically tend to have player housing.
I’m not sure if it’s due to the limitations of the engines used or the fact that the target audience just isn’t interested in it. If I recall, Soul Worker had a kind of housing system where you could decorate an apartment room but that’s the only Anime MMO I recall having it.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a total of 4 classes: The Aegis Fighter, Blast Archer, Spell Caster and Twin Striker.
When the game was first announced, it was revealed that there would be 4 classes total and that they had no plans to release additional classes.
However, as per their latest livestreams, they’ve confirmed that they’re already hard at work developing new classes.
Whether those will be present when the game launches later this year remains to be seen, but at the very least they’re working on having them ready in some capacity somewhere down the line regardless of how long they take to finish.
I’ll be real with you guys though, I’d prefer a well-thought out class or two than a handful of copy-paste classes that are unbalanced and boring to play.
Classes will have their own unique skill-trees allowing for players to customize their builds. You’ll have skill points to spend on different skills which can be obtained in a variety of ways but this allows for a little more personality in what you play.
At the end of the day the classes will likely still have cookie-cutter builds but you don’t always have to play what everyone else does. Sometimes having fun isn’t all about min-maxing.

Blue Protocol is going to be completely free-to-play. There will be no purchase necessary to play the game, there are going to be no paid DLCs or paid expansions.
A cash shop will be present in-game selling what they claim will be cosmetic items, which remains to be seen – as you should always be a little bit pessimistic of cash shop claims.
There will also be an additional Season Pass which will act similarly to how it does in Battle Royale games and will offer small premium incentives that they promise won’t give any player an advantage over others.

Blue Protocol is a beautiful, incredibly high quality AAA Japanese MMORPG being developed by Bandai Namco.
The game is built on Unreal Engine 4 and has a fast, dynamic combat system similar to KurtzPel or Soul Worker. It utilizes a beautiful cel-shaded graphical style and is perhaps one of the best looking Anime MMOs I’ve ever seen.
The game is scheduled for release this year in Japan. While the game might end up delayed by a few months due to the situation going on in the world right now, Bandai Namco haven’t expressed any intention of delaying the game at all.
Back in early February, Bandai Namco went ahead and posted a job opening for a “Localization Director,” that will be in charge of localizing the game.
At the time, we had no confirmations of a Western release, all we had to go off of was that the job posting required you speak fluent English.
You can bet the kind of speculation that came from that. After some people claimed the game would never release outside of Japan, Bandai Namco proceeded to register the “Blue Protocol” trademark within both North America and Europe.
This further went on to confirm the companies stance on releasing the game within these regions.
In their final livestream, the devs finally answered concerns regarding a global release. “Expanding globally is definitely in the works,” and they’re in the process of “hiring people to aid in that endeavor.”
Currently, they’re focused on the upcoming Japanese Closed Beta, but the game is actually being developed with “global expansion in mind.”
According to the dev team, they never had intentions of keeping the game as a Japanese exclusive, and were building it to accommodate both East and West.

While this Closed Beta is scheduled within Japan, I don’t believe they have an IP block in place for the game nor its Beta test.
However, in the off chance they do – or if they choose to release in Japan a year or more ahead of the rest of the world, I happen to know that ExitLag, which is a VPN provider actually fully supports Blue Protocol.
Meaning that you’ll be able to play the game even if they chose to IP block the game. And heck, since the Japanese servers will be located within Japan, this’ll actually even go as far as improving your connection to the server!

I know a lot of you didn’t get into the Closed Beta. That was to be expected, they were sending out a mere 50,000 invites to likely well over 10 million potential applicants.
But don’t let that take away from how excited you are for the game. Blue Protocol looks incredible, and I’m beyond excited to play it regardless of whether I get into the Closed Beta or not.
We just have to wait our turn.