Blade & Soul is a Korean fantasy martial-arts massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by NCsoft (Team Bloodlust). On September 13, 2012, NCsoft announced that Blade & Soul would release in Western territories, however a release date was not confirmed Weeks before NCmedia day, NCsoft announced a new game only known for its codename Project [M]. For the next two weeks, a teaser website was updated revealing more information about the project. During E3 2007, Sony revealed that they had entered into an exclusive deal with NCsoft to produce new titles exclusively for the PlayStation 3. This contract included titles from both existing intellectual properties owned by NCsoft. On February 2010 it was confirmed that Blade & Soul alongside Guild Wars 2 is being developed for release on Consoles, referring to PS3 and Xbox 360. However, since then, there have been no updates on the development of the titles for the consoles. The first closed beta test was scheduled for 27 April 2011 while the open beta test and commercial release were to be determined within the year. In July 2011, Tencent gained publishing rights of Blade & Soul in China, and made its first appearance at ChinaJoy 2011.The second closed beta test was scheduled from August 29 to September 10, 2011. During this event the Assassin class was playable for the first time. After a rather successful open beta test on June 21, 2012 with a record number of 150,000 players, NCsoft confirmed that the official Korean Blade & Soul launch would commence on June 30, 2012. Recently, HTK was interviewed by one the NCSOFT staff. HTK has stated that an english version of the game will be released sometime in 2014. However, NCSOFT has not published any updates or news on the project since December 5, 2012.
