Dear all,

(first of all excuse me for any mistakes, English is not my first language)

I have been following this website for a while and have now played also played on the Russian Open Beta.
There is only one thing to say and that is that Bless Online if executed well here in the West could be the next big thing.

Now while there are dozen or more posts about Aeria Games being a bad publisher / Studio (honestly recently they have improved), I do hope that they see this game not just as a quick cash cow but as a long term investment.
The game itself has a lot to do and I for one have just been having a blast (even though I died 5 times on my paladin the first few levels).
For the first time in many years I feel like I can call this MMO home again (after the Archeage ''Success'')

Now with Aeria Games taking the lead here in the West, I feel as the general MMO population or community would rather avoid this game.
I believe it is up to Aeria Games to not only gain back trust but also improve their reputation. Besides as a company they have to do what brings in money and at the moment .... money will go to those that bring a game to the market with a good store, fair pricing, no pay to win and etc. But also we know that the mmo community likes to complain often and often with a real reason or having insight on how things really are.

With this I hope that Aeria Games would consider the following methode:
- Free to play game with ingame store. (limited char slots (2 max, limited customization)
- Subscription option that eliminates many of the store items ( the gems to revive for example) and just leaves open the store to sell outfits, mounts and etc. (subbing would grant more char slots, no limitations on the customization and etc)

Second option:
- Make the game Free to play (limited to X amount of char slots (2 slots maxlimited customization) + unlock based store
- Buy to play to play eliminating the stores ''questionable items'' and only sell outfits, mounts, ... ( not giving currency)

As I mentioned before I got a feeling I could call Bless home again, but it also depends on how well it is executed.
People play mmo's to have not to be frustrated with cash shops, frustrated people leave the game which means less players = People that play games because they are not active leave as well = dead game.
They got a gem on their hands here and I hope that Aeria Games can proof to the MMO community that Bless is here to stay and to be successful.

My main concern is as you can see in the image below that they might take a stance as they di with echo of soul.
Selling passes that give you unlimited access to dungeons for 2000 AP a month? (15 euro's +-) + if you want to raid another 15 Euro
+ the scrolls that give +4% attack and defence. these things first of all split up a community and are the reason that games get bad reputations.

People these days are less forgiving to games, so while I do not want to point fingers.
I am hoping Aeria can see the mistakes, learn and apply. I understand that they want to earn money but with a good communication, a business approach you get a large group of players to stay in your game and spent money on it, then adding more updates to the game will let people that left return and new players join. ( which for the above suggested payment models)

While it is true that about 10% of the players in a f2p game spent money it is also true that it is important that you keep both spenders as non spenders happy.
Non spenders leave -> pop drop -> spender sees less of a reason to invest --> lower income.
To increase revenue while you know only 10 - 15% of a population spends money, is to provide items that people really want or can use or feel entitled to get ( such as a subscription)

If you manage Bless as Echo of Soul is, revenue will decline fast and operating fees will increase.
Which gives a bad impression to the players who will notice less communication, lower pop and etc and to investors.

Looking at the games you manage at the moment, you could have a increased revenue and better reputation which also would lead to higher revenue by just cutting down all the questionable items.



Sorry for my long post.
Bless is an amazing game and I would love to see it succeed, but there are things that are worrying and I think I am not the only one here that is worried about the cash shop.
items such as in the screenshot are just horrible and should not even be there.

While I am not a big fan of the Studio in the past, I hope they can listen to the players and see the light hihi
So good luck Aeria Games I look forward to hearing from you talking about the game !

Happy new year to everyone.

Best regards,

Hal