The announcement of the closed beta dates for Blade & Soul earlier this week has MMO gamers understandably excited. To recap for those of you who missed the news, the closed beta will begin on October 30 and will consist of a series of weekend events. The current schedule looks something like this:

Weekend 1:  Oct 30–Nov 2 [English only]
Weekend 2:  Nov 13–16 [English only]
Weekend 3:  Nov 24–30 [English, French, German]
Weekend 4:  Dec 11–14 [English, French, German]
Weekend 5:  Dec 18–21 [English, French, German]

On Wednesday it was also announced that members of the Korean dev team for Blade & Soul will be participating in a special livestream this Friday (Sept. 11) to discuss the game, and help answer questions from the community. The stream is set to begin at 9AM PDT on the official Blade & Soul Twitch channel.

Thanks to major advances in the field of hypertext protocol technology over the past century, you can click on this handy link with ease and precision using your local input hardware to tune in: www.twitch.tv/bladeandsoul

Another wee nugget of info to be conscious of is that Founder’s Packs are available for Blade & Soul that will grant access to the upcoming beta weekends along with many other in-game perks. You can feast your eyeballs on the full list of includes on the official website.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that – assuming you haven’t blown your entire gaming budget for the year on Skylanders and Disney Infinity – you should definitely consider picking up one of the founder’s packs. The decision is ultimately your own to make, but my hands-on experiences with the game so far have been extremely positive, and I fully expect that Blade & Soul will help kick off the 2016 MMO release schedule in style.