Blade & Soul's UE4 Update Goes Live Today, Adds New Dual Blades Class And More

Blade & Soul's long-awaited Unreal Engine 4 update is finally live -- almost. The estimated downtime was 12 hours as of 4 a.m. Pacific today, which means that the servers should be coming back about three hours after this writing, if all goes well. I'm sure all will go well...

When the update does hit, it will bring not just a graphical upgrade but all kinds of additional new features and gameplay to NCSoft's martial-arts MMORPG. At its forefront is the new Dual Blades class, the game's 14th, for Jin and Yun characters, which got an extended preview earlier this week. Today's big update also adds a slew of other new systems that revitalize combat, dungeons, and much more, all of which we first learned about back in May.

The complete patch notes and system specifications are available for your viewing pleasure on the Blade & Soul site, spotlighting other primary features of the UE4 upgrade. These include an increase in character slots (to 14), a new four-player dungeon, Forest of Echoes, new glove and belt accessories, four new events, and various UI, difficulty, quest, achievement, and reward tweaks.

The list is obviously too long to cover piece by piece, and by now, you've probably already decided if you're going to check out the game for yourself, whether you're a lapsed player or a brand-new one. As for me, I've never played Blade & Soul, but if you're hyped for this mega-update, let me know in the comments if I should. What I've seen of it makes me think it's a generic questing-leveling-dungeons MMO with just an Asian flair to make it look different, and all that's not exactly my cup of oolong, but maybe you can convince me otherwise.