Blade and Soul

Nine months after launching in the east, NCSOFT launched Blade and Soul in the west. This was another beautiful game with a vibrant story. In terms of gameplay, the only complaint I have with the game is how free-to-play has affected it.

When a game was launched in the west, developed initially by NCSOFT east, a product team would be created to oversee the business plan and translate all the game content. In terms of site design, they wanted something different. We didn't have a lot of content at this time or weren't getting it initially, so there was a lot of room for creativity. We created a fixed position site navigation that hugged the left side of the window with scrollable content on the right.

ESRB had given the game a Teen rating, so this was my first site to implement an age gate. For first-time visitors, we use Javascript to display the verification screen that forces them to enter their date of birth. Our system grants access if the entered birthday is older than 18; otherwise, we display a message informing them that they are not old enough to view the content. We also maintained a list of submissions with the user's IP address to show our due diligence in preventing access to minors.