Blood returns to European Tera with patch next week

Blood returns to the European version of fantasy MMO Tera with the launch of the first post launch patch next week.

Tera's European publisher Frogster told Eurogamer the patch, tentatively titled 1.0.29, will add the long called for blood detail slider to the game, among other new features.

The European version of the game, which carries a PEGI 12 age rating, launched last week without the blood detail slider, causing an uproar among the player base. This will be reinstated next week when the patch launches, although the level of blood in the European version of the game will remain censored versus the North American version.

"The only major difference with the North American version of Tera is the blood splatter effect, which only appears in the tutorial of the game at the moment, is not going to appear in our version," Frogster community manager Lucile Le Merle told Eurogamer.

"It's going to be a slightly modified effect. But the blood is coming back."

The re-addition of blood is not the only new feature set to arrive with the patch. The Emblems feature, cut before launch, also arrives next week.

In the game, guilds can upload an Emblem so they stand out in the crowd. The problem, according to Frogster, was that when a logo was uploaded for use with an Emblem, it was stored on computer hard-drives. This would have meant that every time players encountered another player, the logo would have been automatically downloaded to that player's computer.

"This was very problematic because, apart from the eventual Nazi symbols or peado/pornographic images, there was also a high threat in terms of security, in case someone wanted to upload a virus," Le Merle explained. "It was a really big threat which we decided to fight by removing the Emblems temporarily."

Frogster, in collaboration with Korean developer Bluehole, has re-implemented the system into the game, but now the emblems will be stored in the memory of the client instead of the hard-drive of players, preventing any legal issues.

And expect changes to the game's chat filter, which many gamers have complained about. Currently, some words are censored that shouldn't be, and some words that should be censored aren't. One of Tera's more annoying bugs means chat does not update properly. All these issues will be fixed in next week's patch.

Elsewhere, the patch includes minor bug fixes. One of these relates to the prologue zone, where players are able to prevent player movement by blocking in narrow areas. So, Tera's collision system will be removed, only for this zone, "to avoid any misbehaviour". Some NPCs will be changed so they are more reactive, and only classes that superior grade items and above can equip will be able to roll for them.

The end game political system arrives next week at the same time as the patch. However, it will be based on player voting only, as the player versus player battlegrounds system won't be released until the summer. Players will, though, be able to start their political campaign and begin ruling once the voting phase, which lasts one week, is over.

The voting system, set to launch roughly at the same time in the US and Europe, was held back from launch because Frogster wanted to wait until it had a decent spread of high level players who could all use it at around the same time.

Expect more information on Tera's first post launch patch on Frogster's website next week.