What Happened to Blue Protocol?

I know you’re waiting for Blue Protocol. Trust me, I do.

Over the last several days though I’ve noticed a trend: Gaming news sites have been asking the question – What happened to Blue Protocol?
Which, naturally, being the main MMOTuber to actually cover Blue Protocol, leaves people coming to me to ask me the very same question.

“Stix, what happened to Blue Protocol?“, “Wasn’t Blue Protocol supposed to come out in 2021?“, “Has Blue Protocol been delayed?“, “Has Blue Protocol been CANCELED?!”
I wish I were joking.

So, what actually happened to Blue Protocol? Honestly, nothing. Bandai Namco haven’t been updating players lately on any platform. Twitter, livestreams.
The last we heard from Bamco via social media was when they revealed their intention to do a small live tech demonstration with regards to how enemy AI within the game function. But that was on October 15th.. it’s now December 10th.
If we disregard their social media pages, the last official post on the official Blue Protocol website was pertaining to the “Matching Load Test Implementation Report,” published on November 18th, 2020. That’s almost 13 months ago.
However it is worth noting that Smilegate, the Korean developers of Lost Ark announced in November that they had finalized discussions to distribute Blue Protocol within Korea. I know Smilegate aren’t the most successful developer, nor are they the most reliable, but that’s a confirmation of expansion outside of Japan.
It was also confirmed that Blue Protocol would be launching in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau hopefully in the near future. This is in anticipation of launching globally around the world.

Many players have taken this as Bamco hiding development process, with a common argument being cited by people being that there are other developers that are significantly more transparent in every step of the development process.
The reality is, yes, Bandai Namco could be much more transparent. There’s absolutely no denying that. However, are they required to be? No, not at all.
These are Japanese developers, developing an MMO for a Japanese audience first. They are under no obligation to satiate the needs of us Western players that are being vocal about our want – or need – for new information.
As far as I can tell, Japanese players up until this point have been relatively quite, allowing Bamco to continue to develop the game at their own rate. This is likely due to the fact that Japanese players are used to Japanese developers only releasing information when they feel they have something of worth to actually reveal.

Now don’t take this as a confirmation that Bandai Namco and the Blue Protocol dev team don’t have anything to show. It’s been over a year since the Closed Beta test that I got to participate in, and they’ve since showcased various overhauls to a significant portion of the game, along with the addition of many features into it.
I’m not Bandai Namco. And for whatever reason, they’re continuing to choose to remain quiet about what they’re working on. What they’ve completed. I know this can be very frustrating for you, as you’re no doubt as excited as I am about the game, yet unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that.

Very little has been revealed over the course of the last year. I’ve done my utmost to keep the MMO community up to date with anything and everything they say and do, whether that’s the combat overhauls announced earlier this year, the various different streams they’ve put out since their last Closed Beta.
The new class announcement, the technical demo, the official music video for the game. I’ve been there with all of you every step of the way, and I aim to continue to do so going into 2022.
Blue Protocol was “expected” to release in 2021. It was not set in stone. Due to what happened over the course of the last 2 years, a lot of games, a lot of TV series, a lot of movies got pushed back, delayed.
Blue Protocol was likely no different. And while it would’ve been incredible to have gotten to play it in 2021 or 2022, it seems – at this juncture, highly unlikely.

We might get a release some time in 2022 within Japan still, but given how desperate Bamco are to release an MMO that their players are satisfied with, it might take even longer than that.
But at the end of the day, the final result should reflect the time, the effort, the dedication of their respective team’s devotion to perfecting a product before releasing it.
Nobody wants Blue Protocol to be a rushed mess that doesn’t live up to the unrealistic hype that has been created for it.

So with this in mind, I’ll continue to bring every one of you every bit of information I can pertaining to the game. The question, “what happened to Blue Protocol?” Nothing.
It is still actively being worked on. They have shown absolutely no signs of slowing down. They’ve shown no interest in ceasing development of the game. As far as we’re aware, development is moving along as expected.
We’ll all just need to sit there patiently and wait for more info.