Back in January 2017 I did my very first video on Moonlight Blade where I went on to discuss the North American and European release announcement of the game by Nexon. Today, I want to follow up on that announcement by talking about where the game is currently and if we can expect any kind of release outside of Asia going into the future.

So back in January 2017 Tencent made the announcement that they were not only releasing a brand new race to the game in the form of smaller Humans, but that the game was also going to be leaving China.
More specifically, they mentioned that an “English server” was coming soon, with Korean, Taiwanese, European and North American translations all concurrently being in the works.
This was reassuring for players since it came right from the developers themselves. “But Stix, it’s already almost half way through 2020. They made that announcement 3 and a half years ago!” I know, I do.
Honestly, the game is already showing its age and it’s only 5 years old.

It was announced at the time that Nexon was going to be publishing Moonlight Blade within South Korea, with no confirmed publisher for North America or Europe.. until August 2018, when Nexon released their 2nd Quarter 2018 financial report.
People were expecting an update on the South Korean release of the game ’cause, obviously, with them publishing in South Korea it’s a given at this point, but were surprised to see that Nexon had plans of releasing Moonlight Blade on PC in “North America and the rest of the world.”
I actually did a video on this in 2018 as well talking about Nexon’s confirmation of the game coming to North America, and players were ecstatic.

Then another year went by with no additional news from Nexon pertaining to the game. Then Nexon caught everyone off guard by cancelling one of the most highly anticipated upcoming MMOs in years: Peria Chronicles.
After having invested almost $10 million dollars into the game and over 8 years worth of development they decided it was no longer worth pursuing.

That wasn’t the end of their cancelled titles, though. Another game that had piqued player interest when it was announced in 2016, Project DH – Nexon’s take on making a more MMO-esque version of Monster Hunter was shut down later in 2019.
These games along with various mobile titles and entire studios were shut down, cancelled or restructured to help “the company thrive.” Yet even so, there was no mention of Moonlight Blade, neither in 2019, nor in the list of cancelled titles for 2020.
Moonlight Blade itself was evidently absent from the selection of games that Nexon was planning on releasing over the course of the year though, with various new additions including Project BBQ, Project V4, KurtzPel and others within South Korea, and no mention of any PC MMOs for North America and the rest of the world.

Taking a look at their upcoming games scheduled to release during 2020 shows no sign of the game either.
Moonlight Blade released back in China in 2015, Taiwan in 2018, South Korea in 2018 yet almost half way through 2020 and we still have no mention of the game releasing anywhere outside of the regions mentioned initially.. minus North America and Europe.
While I’m sure Nexon are still dealing with the issues concerning their restructuring, it’s definitely safe to say that Moonlight Blade has an uncertain future over here right now.
I’m sure after investing so much money into the game they’d love to release it over here to milk it for as much as they possibly can, but at the same time, Nexon are notorious for dragging their feet with releases and subsequently shutting games down or cancelling them before they’re even ready to release.
Honestly I don’t even know how they manage to show yearly profits with how poorly they manage their games, but I guess that’s why they’ve had so much internal restructuring going on lately.

I know this isn’t necessarily the news you were hoping for – but I figured after not having updates for so long I might as well discuss the game and its likelihood of releasing in English.
If we never see Moonlight Blade, then there’s always Justice Online, right?

I’ve played Moonlight Blade quite extensively. Both Wiggy and I had a series going where we played through until level 40-something, if I recall.
The game was stunning, offering us beautiful character creation tools, gorgeous scenery, and pretty engaging combat.
I know that there are a lotta people that are.. disinterested in these kinds of games purely because they’re not into martial arts and thus the setting just doesn’t appeal to them.
But to those of you that are.. well, I know how much you’re looking forward to this.

Now, before I get into this video, I do want to state that you can still play Moonlight Blade in Chinese right now.
To play it though I do recommend using a VPN – I personally use ExitLag which I link to in the description of every video. This helps reduce lag and makes the game much more manageable.

So, back in 2018, Nexon revealed that they had acquired publishing rights to Moonlight Blade in North America and Europe.
Naturally, people were ecstatic, and mass hysteria ensued. “We’re finally getting Moonlight Blade!,” “It’s finally coming, they’re actually doing it!”
People had a 100% confirmed Western release – at last, after years of seeing the game and longing after it.
The one issue we found was that it was Nexon publishing it, and Nexon has a bit of a… well, a long history of making their games heavily pay-to-win.
But that wouldn’t be too big of an issue for a lot of people because they’d still be able to play the game fully translated in English.
Even I figured, regardless of how Nexon planned on monetizing the game, it would probably be worth trying because the game is a lot of fun, even if they opted to go the pay-to-win route.

Fast-forward to the end of 2019, Nexon has not updated us in any capacity as to the progress made localizing Moonlight Blade.
However, Nexon did announce the closure of several North American subsidiaries, such as Nexon M, and revealed that they are in fact cancelling a large sum of their games.
The closure of subsidiaries is unfortunate, as there is going to be quite a few people without a means of supporting their families while they look for a new means of employment.
The cancellation of games is unfortunate for both the teams working on them, and for us as consumers. Because that means the games they’ve been working on won’t see the light of day, meaning we won’t ever be able to play them.
But also that the teams that have spent months, or even years working on them will now no longer have a stable game to work on.
Nexon stated the reasoning for this is that they’re merging all of their mobile, PC and console teams into one single unit – cutting costs and also the team size by quite a sizable margin.
I spoke about this in greater detail in my “Peria Chronicles is cancelled” video, so I won’t rehash my thoughts in yet another video, but I hope you all find a new home that appreciates your work!

Regarding Moonlight Blade, Nexon has made their intentions known for a long while now: They aren’t very concerned with PC MMORPGs – or, heck, even PC games in general anymore.
South Korea knows the mobile market is where the money’s at, Nexon included. And even though they cancelled a sizable number of mobile games, this bodes significantly worse for PC games, such as Moonlight Blade.
No mention of the game in over a year? Absolutely no information released at all, and a large focus-shift to the mobile market?
I’m not claiming that Moonlight Blade is cancelled. I’m merely stating what a lot of us are thinking: And that is that we might not end up getting Moonlight Blade in the West anymore.
Especially not with Nexon’s ongoing internal issues.
Now, there is the possibility of me being very, very wrong. Nexon might not be cancelling the game and they might have made quite extensive progress towards releasing the game over here.
But I just don’t see that being the case.

Moonlight Blade was supposed to give us fans of the genre a place to fly through the air on swords, challenge one another to kung-fu battles and make beautiful, Asian-themed characters.
And while we technically still can due to being able to play the Chinese version, I doubt we’ll ever be able to officially in the West.
But, there are other games in the works that may get picked up like the upcoming Justice Online MMORPG, which, honestly, looks beautiful as well.

After radio silence for what seems like an eternity, evidence has come to light pertaining to the release of Moonlight Blade in the West.

If you’re not already in the loop, allow me to give you a quick rundown of what the game is.

Moonlight Blade is a wuxia themed action MMORPG with gorgeous graphics and combat comparable to something like Blade and Soul.
Moonlight Blade was originally released in China back in July of 2015 by Tencent, one of China’s largest gaming developers. It was met with quite the reception – with Wiggy and I logging in around mid 2017 and seeing the starter areas housing – and I’m not exaggerating here – hundreds of new players.
But then that is to be expected – the population of China is over 1.4 billion. To put that into context: North America has a population of over 580 million. Europe has a population of over 740 million. Tallied together, North America and Europe combined have a total population of a little over 1.3 billion. So China alone has a population larger than both North America and Europe combined.

Add onto that there are more gamers in Asian countries than in Western countries and.. well, that should be enough to give you an idea of why there are so many players playing concurrently.

While I’m sure Moonlight Blade will have a following when it comes over to both North America and some of Europe, I can guarantee the playerbase is going to be quite niche.
If you didn’t pick up on my pointing out “some of Europe” earlier, though, allow me to elaborate a little.

Moonlight Blade is being released in the West by Nexon.
Nexon is widely known for IP blocking a lot of countries – such as the majority of South East Asia, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and various other European countries.
I’m aware that is because Nexon is required to purchase distribution, operating, and publishing licenses in those countries but you can be certain a lot of the world is going to be IP blocked from playing Moonlight Blade.
If you’re IP blocked from playing Vindictus, MapleStory, Riders of Icarus or any of their other games.. you won’t be able to play this either, unfortunately.

Now, back on January 7, 2017, I did a (very poor, admittedly, in retrospect) video detailing how Nexon had gained publishing rights for Moonlight Blade – and that we could expect information in the near future regarding its release.
All we had confirmed was that it was coming both to North America and Europe. Then, we got over a year and a half of complete silence on the issue..
However, in Nexon’s recent financial report to their investors, they outlined their activities and plans for the future.

Listed for release in North America were games like MapleStory M, Overhit, AxE, Magia, Final Fantasy XI Mobile, and.. Moonlight Blade.
While several of those games already have confirmed release dates, Moonlight Blade does not. What we can be certain of, though, is that Nexon is definitely still at work localizing the game for a Western release.
And with how large the game is.. and trust me, the game is absolutely huge, both in actual scale, and in terms of how much text there is to translate, I can understand why it’s taking them so long.
Well, that and the fact that the vast majority of Nexon’s overall revenue comes from both China and Korea.

Now I know what some of you are going to say..
“Nexon? Ew! It’s going to go pay to win!” – Yes, that’s completely plausible. But be glad Gameforge or My.com didn’t get their hands on this – they ruined the MMORPGs they got recently and I’m glad Nexon got Moonlight Blade.
“The graphics look so dated now. Black Desert Online looks better!” – True, Black Desert does look better, especially with its remaster. However, for a niche realistic wuxia MMORPG, I dare you to find a better looking one.
“The combat looks so slow compared to other games!” – It is. The combat, although similar to Blade and Soul requires a little more thinking and a little less “head smashing on keyboard-ing”.
“It’ll be 2020 before we get the game” – Very possible. With the scale of the game and the sheer amount of effort required to translate it, it’s a very probable possibility.

And.. probably dozens of others. But those are the most important ones that I’m answering pre-emptively. Now, what are my overall thoughts on this?

I loved Moonlight Blade when I played it. I love the wuxia theme both in movies, in TV series and in video games.
Some of my favorite movies of all time include things like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Iron Monkey. And even though Into the Badlands is super cringy.. I cannot get over how beautiful the movements and action is in that show.
So you can imagine how disappointed I was with Revelation Online.. yet, even so, I have hope that Nexon might pull through with this one.
I’m aware of their history with pay to win, but if they can successfully pull off MapleStory 2 without it plaguing the game, which they promised me personally through email that they would, then I can personally get behind it.
Moonlight Blade, that is. I feel like it’s still a ways off, though, but that is more than okay. We have a lot of potentially good MMORPGs on the horizon and adding Moonlight Blade to that list is far from a bad thing.

So, overall.. I’m excited, but skeptical. Like always.
What do you think?

Moonlight Blade is one of the very few Wuxia themed MMORPGs left. It is a beautiful, Asian-themed Wuxia inspired free to play MMORPG that has yet to launch in the West, but has a confirmed Western release date. Featuring a mixture between action combat and tab-target, along with some of the most beautiful flying visuals, Moonlight Blade is sure to please any Wuxia enthusiast.

Moonlight Blade is a wuxia themed free to play MMORPG that has a confirmed Western release date set for possibly 2019.

It is one of the most breathtaking, gorgeous MMORPGs to come out of China to date, and has some of the most engaging story and combat in a Chinese MMORPG.

Moonlight Blade is a free to play Wuxia themed MMORPG set in a fantasy version of ancient China.
Although not officially released in North America or Europe as of 2018, Tencent did go ahead and formally confirm a Western release is slated for 2018, possibly 2019.
No further information has since been given on an exact release date other than they are “working on it” and it will be “coming soon”.

With that in mind, I want to do a review of what I think of Moonlight Blade in 2018, whether I believe it’ll be worth playing going into 2019, and what my hopes are upon its inevitable release sometime in the future.
Do note that we have played Moonlight Blade on the official Chinese servers, so my experiences thus far are based off of a game that has 0 English translation whatsoever.

One thing that really, really entices me about MMOs is their character creation.
You can’t say you don’t spend hours trying to craft the perfect character. That’d be a lie. I spend a while, granted, but my wife.. don’t even get me started on her. She gets ready to go out faster than she creates a character, and man..
Now the character models in Moonlight Blade are absolutely gorgeous, and the game gives you a lot of options to choose between when crafting your masterpiece.
You’re given quite a large selection of hairstyles to choose between, and a character creator tool similar to Black Desert.
You have the ability to grab each piece of your characters face and drag it around until you’re comfortable with what you’ve done.
However, you don’t have the ability to craft the body the same way. Character creation only allows the customization of your characters face, not the entire body.
Which is fine – trust me, you can do so much with your characters’ face that it’s probably one of my favorite facial customizers in an MMO outside of Black Desert.

Gameplay in Moonlight Blade is very high quality.
Movement in the game is very fluid, skill animations are very high quality but not very flashy due to the game being martial arts themed as opposed to fantasy.
I’m a sucker for flashy animation though – so thankfully, flight – which is a feature in Moonlight Blade – is quite ostentatious.
Mounts are high quality and they move about as well as in any other MMO.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, Moonlight Blade offers an auto-pathing system, similar to that in Perfect World of more recently, Revelation Online.
Now, fortunately for us, that made it possible to find what we needed to do while questing.
Unfortunately, that means you can in essence just click where you need to go, AFK, then come back once you make it there.
This is a poor model to take as it diminishes any need to explore or go off the beaten path because – honestly – you don’t need to.
Yes, I know, you don’t have to auto-path if you don’t want to, but be honest here with me.. when was the last time a game offered a quality of life improvement to your gameplay that you didn’t take advantage of? Yeah. Same here.

Combat is a strange beast to tackle.
You have the ability to make it action combat or semi tab-target combat.
The action combat still locks on to a specific target, but you’re not required to be within attacking range like tab-target games. So while technically action combat, it’s unusual to still require a target.
Tab-target mode though allows you to fight like you would in a more traditional combat style, while giving you access to large AoEs that hit multiple targets at once, making it semi-action oriented.
All in all, the combat is definitely strange, as it’s neither action combat nor is it tab-target. Opting to offer the option for either, and not allowing either in its true form is an.. interesting route to take.

I will preface this with a warning that I may very well butcher the pronunciation of these class names.
They are not basic sounding classes like “Warrior” or “Priest”, so I apologize in advance.
Now, there are a large variety of classes in Moonlight Blade to choose from. You have the Zhenwu, Taibai, Tangmen, Begger Sect, Shenwei, Tianxiang, Shendao, and finally, the Wudu.
Each of them offer a vastly different playstyle than the other; something I often find lacking between classes in MMOs.
I can’t stress enough how irrirating it is seeing something like “Warrior, Berserker, Guardian, Paladin, Lancer” all essentially being the same damn thing, minus their weapon of choice.

Unfortunately, even though I’m part Chinese, I understand literally nothing of it.
I can speak like.. two words in Chinese, that’s it. Don’t get me started on attempting to read it though. That shit looks some kinda alien hieroglyphic to me.
But, the game is very story-heavy. Every zone I went to, every hub I went to, every town or city I went to had some backstory to it and that is minus the main scenario.
The main scenario is the main driving force behind everything you do in the game. There are so, so many important NPCs involved in your story that it became a little daunting just attempting to keep up with who was good, bad, or even if I’d seen them before.
Which isn’t a bad thing.
I love story in my games, and the fact that there is so much in this game gives me high expectations for its Western release.
Unfortunately, though.. with how often translations of Eastern MMORPGs turn out well, my expectations for even a semi-comprehensible story is low.

Graphically, Moonlight Blade looks beautiful.
It isn’t a fantasy themed MMORPG but that doesn’t mean the world the game is set in is anything other than gorgeous.
From the huge forests, to the large valleys, to the giant mountains you get to scale and fly over..
I haven’t ever seen scenery this expansive nor breathtaking in an MMO before.
Then the character models, the outfits your character progresses through.. everything is so detailed, right down to the individual strands of material.
Outside of Black Desert Online, I would dare say that there isn’t an MMORPG at this point in time capable of matching Moonlight Blade, graphically.

This is going to be difficult to guage.
See, the Chinese version of the game has multiple servers and I swear you can’t go two feet without seeing two hundred other people all questing with you.
If Western MMORPGs had even a fraction of Moonlight Blade’s population in their games then I don’t think we’d see nearly as many shutdowns as we have over the years.
Experiencing a Chinese MMORPG has definitely been an experience in terms of how populated each of their zones are.

Moonlight Blade has the largest game-world I’ve probably ever seen.
It is huge. Absolutely, insanely huge. The fact that when I mounted up to get from one quest hub to another it actually took minutes – and how little over the map I moved, was just ridiculous.
How you travel the world is comparable to Revelation Online. Mounted, flying. Regardless of the mode of travel, the world is large, open and filled with content.
I honestly don’t see the English team finding this an easy task to translate completely.

With such a large world to explore, you’re no doubt wondering about all the varied options you have for PvE activities, am I right?
Dungeons – Traditional dungeons that you group together for.
Raids – Traditional raids that require you form a larger party and tackle much more difficult encounters.
Questing – Like most MMORPGs, Moonlight Blade offers both the main scenario and side quests to tackle. The main scenario is quite expansive, and there are side quests seemingly around every corner.
And.. outside of that I honestly cannot say what will or will not make it through in the official English release of Moonlight Blade. But as of right now, these are at least the PvE activities that are confirmed.

PvP in Moonlight Blade functions similarly to World of Warcraft. Like the Horde and Alliance in WoW, Moonlight Blade has 4 distinct factions each with their own differing storylines.
Like in Blade and Soul, you can only join a guild of the same faction. So keep that in mind when choosing.
There are two separate modes to participate in: Instanced PvP like arena matches between a small group of people, and Open World PvP.
So if you’re a fan of exclusively instanced-based PvP, I assure you that you’re going to get ganked in the open world. You find those ass-hats everywhere and this will be no different. Especially when three other factions are capable of killing you.

The Chinese version of Moonlight Blade is an absolute blast. It is ridiculous fun, but being limited in what you can do based off of your inability to understand anything going on makes it difficult to enjoy anything but exploring or fighting.
So, I recommend instead opting to either wait for someone to offer an English translation, or instead wait until the official release.
I know I’ll be there at launch, as will Wiggy and my wife both!

Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
Processor: Pentium4 2.0Ghz or similar
Graphics Card: GGeForce 6600 or above
Ram: 2 GB

Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
Processor: Core E8400 3.0Ghz or above
Graphics Card: GeForce 9800GT or above
Ram: 4 GB

Nexon has finally revealed the South Korean launch date for Moonlight Blade’s Open Beta. It is scheduled to go live January 25th, 2018. While, granted, this is a little sudden, and doesn’t leave much time between now and the actual Open Beta, it – at the very least – should provide ample time for players to prepare for, if not clear up their schedule for the launch.

Nexon has focused on extensively overhauling the games localization, with a large focus on professional Korean voice overs and in-game story text translation.

Back in January I posted an article detailing the licensing of Moonlight Blade, and the inevitable launch in both North America and Europe.

There has since been no additional news for the Western release of Moonlight Blade, but here’s hoping 2018 has some good news for us!