The announcement of Unreal Engine 4 and new (more open) content is a big one for Blade and Soul. Remains to be seen, if it will help the game performance issues at all, but it is a good marketing point that could bring old players back (and maybe some new even). BnS has a solid core of great combat and interesting world that could make it a big success with some work and less item shop, but we all know that won't happen, because NCSoft has proven again and again they're here just for quick money.
Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about.
The Korean Blade and Soul just announced a "classic server" coming with the engine change, going back to the Pohwaran times. The idea of cashing out on old content and nostalgia without any development time is nothing new and have been a trend in past years. However, there are crucial differences between KR and NA/EU versions that will make the "classic" kill the game alltogether.
Korean Blade and Soul launched in June 2012, that's 7.5 years ago. At this time, it was the most popular MMORPG at this gaming focused contry for a while. Thing was massive and brought massive revenue. And of course there's a lot of people, who would like to refresh that feeling from many years ago in better graphics.
Meanwhile our version came in January 2016, that's less than 4 years ago. It's still fresh in player memory, and the reception wasn't anything like that of Korea. There aren't millions of players waiting to jump right back into it, because it was never that popular. It came too late in the west to be a novelty. We just played that content basically yesterday.
No, it won't bring a long-term playerbase, it will just divide the current half-empty servers more, and when classic server dies, what are you going to do? Merge them into the main one? People will quit and never play again. Sure, you might bring a few thousand players that will play, reach 45, see it's same thing they just played on launch.
TL;DR: The game is too fresh and was never popular enough in the west to maintain a classic.
Of course, I'm sure decision has been already made and you sure as hell don't give a damn about player feedback. Even more - I expect players in this thread to be all for the idea: "We want classic, open world content on 0 FPS was fun!", "Pohwaran best times, no P2W yet".
I'm just putting in here so that when (not if) the whole idea flops and sinks the game, I can say "I told you so".