Thanks to a new teaser released at this year's The Game Awards, Blue Protocol will now be released in the West early in 2019. The anime MMO will be released in the West in the second half of 2023 thanks to a collaboration between Amazon Games and Bandai Namco Online, as was revealed in the trailer.

Mike Zadorojny, a former Guild Wars 2 developer who joined Amazon Games after leaving his position as GW2's game director in 2019, will serve as the franchise's head. In order to deliver Blue Protocol to the West, Zadorojny is heading up internal teams at Amazon Games and serving as a liaison between the company and Bandai Namco Online.

MMORPG had a quick conversation with Zadorojny before the announcement about some of the things that gamers may anticipate from Blue Protocol. Many people are concerned that this free-to-play game would turn out to be pay-to-win, but Zadorojny reassured them that this is not the case. As a result, Amazon is committed to making sure that users can fully experience the MMO, including the complete story, without ever having to pay a single penny. This is how a real MMO should be, and I am glad that they did not go the route of Tower of Fantasy, where you can use their gambling gacha system to get stronger characters.

Similar to Final Fantasy XIV, Blue Protocol will have five classes at launch, and you can switch classes pretty much whenever you want. This means that while you can create alt characters, you can actually do everything on one avatar. Players can utilize classes like the Blade Warden to tank, and the Spell Weaver uses magic to deal fire, ice, and lightning damage to their enemies.

What kind of combat system will Blue Protocol follow?

Combat is the action combat style that has recently dominated many MMOs. It was designed to be simple to play whether you're using a gamepad or a keyboard and mouse. To maximize the action-packed fight, players can evade, strike, and even apply an optional aim help for those ranged heroes. Experts in these classes, according to Zadorojny, can also really go into the customizations of each class, pull off significant combo multipliers, and really shape their characters to suit their individual playstyle preferences.

Blue Protocol is also designed with both solo and multiplayer play in mind from the outset. Players can join parties of up to six other people for dungeons and open world activities, however raid groups will typically have more than six players. Due to the fact that it is an MMO in the truest sense, it differs from other persistent world MMOs with an anime aesthetic, such as Tower of Fantasy and Genshin Impact.

This is my most anticipated game in the past few years other than God of War Ragnarok(which I am still working on as I type this). I haven't played a good mmo since WoW and Maplestory, and I have high hopes for a action rpg style MMO with actual controller support. Let me know which class you're thinking of playing in the comments, and I'll let you know mine.