F2PMeter: Is Blade & Soul Truly Free to Play?

September 29, 2016 13:55 ( Articles, F2P News ) 0

F2PMeter: Is Blade & Soul Truly Free to Play?

Blade & Soul is a martial-arts MMORPG from NCSoft in which players can star as the vengeful hero in their own personal quest looking to hunt down those that destroyed their friends and family. With exceptional cinematics, character customization, multiple classes and a story driven content, the entire game is provided as free to play… or so the developers say; let’s put Blade & Soul through our F2PMeter and see for ourselves!

Users can download the game and play it for free.


Whilst there isn’t a mandatory subscription, players can purchase a Premium Membership subscription (30 days, 90 days or 365 days), which grants a variety of benefits from gold and XP boosts from quests, cooldown reduction on certain skills, as well as an allotment of Hongmoon Coins with the quantity increasing the longer your paid subscription. Premium Membership also provides Premium Membership Points which determine a players Premium Rank (ranging from 1 to 10) that grants more benefits the higher your rank; Premium Membership Points can be acquired by spending Hongmoon Coins in the Hongmoon Shop (cash shop).


The game provides all expansions, like the new Ebondrake Citadel expansion, for free included in the core game as new patches.


Players can spend NCCoins (cross game currency) and Hongmoon Coins (in-game premium currency) to purchase items from the cash shop, everything from different starter packs for exclusive cosmetics, to materials for crafting, keys to open different weapon chests, and a whole host of cosmetic skins for weapons and character costumes.


There are a variety of hard to attain items, or hard to craft consumables, that can be purchased as a micro-transaction in the Hongmoon store; realistically these purchases are convenience only as all items can be gained through gameplay.


The UI is not restricted at all.


Currently the game has four races and nine different classes, all of which are free to play, however certain class-race combinations are restricted by the game to all players regardless of their membership or free to play status.


Although the auction house can be used by all players those players that have Premium Membership do get reduced fees when using the service.


Inventory can be expanded with Dragon Pouches, which are extremely hard to get through conventional means and generally only available as a rare random drop from rewards chests. In reality this item is mostly limited to the cash shop making it a bit of a premium purchase (though not completely). Premium Members get exclusive access to a Wardrobe Deposit feature that allows them to store costumes in it, essentially relieving space in their inventory and allowing them lots of cosmetic clothing changes.


Players can travel to any dungeon or zone without restriction.


There are no end-game/high level play restrictions to free to play accounts.


Whilst the cash shop has some convenience items, and some items might be extremely hard to loot/craft conventionally, nothing is exclusive to paying players that provides any significant advantage. All game content, quests, dungeons and features are free to play and players can enjoy the full quest storyline from start to finish as any of the classes.

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