I’m from Tennessee.
Naraka: Bladepoint hit its first quarter in existence, and you know what that means. It’s time for the quarterly report. If you assumed Naraka would be a one pump chump, you are turning out to be sorely mistaken. While player count has dipped off from its original 160,000 player peak two months ago, Naraka: Bladepoint still commands quite the following on Steam. While population has been on a steady decline over the last month, November 10 marked a discount bringing the game from $20 to $14.
The result? People buying it of course. Concurrent player count jumped from a peak of 82 thousand players on November 10 before the sale up to 142 thousand on November 14. Current review scores put the game at a 79% “mostly positive rating” factoring over 57 thousand reviews into the equation.
Positive reviews point make heavy use of the word “good” and reference that the game is enjoyable right up until the point where some Chinese player hands you your own ass on a ciabatta. Negative reviews similarly overwhelmingly point toward Chinese players using VPNs to access North American and European servers, and the accompanying lag, exploits, and hacking that occur whenever Chinese gamers are in large numbers on any online game. The developers and Netease are either unwilling or unable to do anything about the VPN usage. Other negative reviews point toward some of the game modes having long queue times.
The Chinese reviews on the other hand have somewhat laser focused on the game’s refund policy in the negative feedback. If I’m understanding the admittedly poorly translated reviews correctly, while Naraka does allow Chinese players to refund the DLC, some are refunding to buy different packages only to discover that the game forces you to either re-buy the same DLC package or delete your character to continue playing. I can’t comment on the veracity, but several reviews accuse Netease of violating Chinese consumer laws with this practice.
Have you played Naraka: Bladepoint? Let us know your experience.
MMO Fallout 