Today Bandai Namco announced the new dates for the network test of its anime-style MMORPG Blue Protocol for the Japanese audience.
It’ll start on Friday, March 31, at 2:00 on Japan time and end on Sunday, April 2, and 10:00 pm Japan time. This follows a considerable delay due to issues that the developers were struggling to solve. The network test was originally supposed to start on January 14.
Unfortunately, the test is reserved for Japanese players, even if there will likely be ways for western fans to join as usual with this kind of country-specific test. Of course, if you have not received an invitation by now it’s too late unless you find someone who has a friend invitation available (the deadline for submitting these is March 22).
That being said, Amazon is also planning a beta for the global release of the game, so we simply have to wait. We don’t yet know when it’ll come. On top of that, anyone can already enjoy the impressive character creation and benchmark software regardless of whether they have access to the network test or not.
On top of that, we’re likely to get to see a lot of gameplay footage when the network test starts.
if you’re unfamiliar with Blue Protocol, it’s a free-to-play anime-style MMORPG with a business model focusing on battle passes and paid cosmetics. It features an extremely deep character customization suite designed to let players basically create their ideal anime-style character, on top of fast action combat and interesting character progression and storytelling.
It’s developed by a team named Project Blue Sky, which is a joint initiative of Bandai Namco Online and Bandai Namco Studios, and it was announced all the way back in 2019. Two beta tests have already been hosted for the Japanese audience, which has received the gameplay quite well. The western release was announced in December 2022 during The Game Awards and is coming in the second half of 2023 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
