Lots of Blade & Soul fans have sparked outrage immediately after name registration opened for NCSoft’s recently released game Blade & Soul. The controversy surrounds certain names in the game’s servers being claimed by NCSoft employees. This has led many fans to believe that members of the NCSoft staff used their privilege to score these sought after names.
Since then Blade & Soul Brand Manager Julianne Harty to respond to this fiasco. She first stated that some of the names were claimed by her as they are mascots for particular classes and would be used in promoting the game on its website and in trailers, or participating in in-game events.
Her second not was that characters belonging to the Blade & Soul GMs “have either a personal moniker or a name that is easily recognizable and identifiable as someone special.”
Finally she also said that some were claimed so players could not try and make money off them via real world trading. Stating..
“Shady people sell popular names. To me, that’s more unfair than losing out on the lottery for the name that you want, because someone has come in and reserved a name specifically so that they can earn money on it. You want a definition of pay to win? THAT is it right there – a person paying $400 just to have Naruto and bypassing the lottery system. We have, in the past, reserved popular names in order to prevent this sort of shady stuff from happening.”
