After two years of waiting, the Web3 version of MapleStory was finally officially launched yesterday. This is the biggest blockchain game ever, and Have you been to the island? became one of the hottest topics yesterday. After the official launch at 6 oclock last night, the server was immediately full, and some players seemed to have encountered the problem of not receiving verification codes when registering new users due to the influx of a large number of new players.
The game currency $NXPC was launched on multiple exchanges including Binance, Bybit, Bitget, Upbit, Bithumb, etc. at the same time as TGE. The current price is US$2.87 and the circulating market value is US$483 million.
How to start the game? What is the gaming experience and how much money can you earn from playing? I have sorted out the information in this article after personal experience and information collection.
For more background information about the game, see:
Start the game
Go to the official website and click Game Start in the upper right corner. You will be asked to connect to the MetaMask wallet. Please keep the mnemonic phrase safe!
If you have not registered an account before, you will need to register an account with your email. Then install the downloader and wait for the game to be downloaded and installed before entering the game. For subsequent logins, click the Game Start button on this page to invoke the launcher to start the game, without having to log in in the game.
Game Experience
The Web3 version of MapleStory can only choose the adventurer professions of the early version (namely warrior, flying man, magician, archer and pirate). Old players may think that this is equivalent to the old version before the God of War profession was updated in V 077, but in fact, the game content including skills, maps, tasks, and other aspects of the game such as UI are no different from the current Web2 version.
Nevertheless, due to the major changes in the economic mechanism and the GameFi features of Web3, the overall gaming experience has changed a lot in all aspects.
When creating a character, players cannot enter their own game character name. The system will randomly generate a string of English as the players temporary character name. The name cannot be modified before the game character is minted and uploaded to the chain as an NFT. The condition for minting and uploading is that the game character reaches level 65 (although the level requirement is only level 60, there is another requirement, that is, to kill the Balrog once, you must reach at least level 65 before you can challenge it).
So when I first entered the game, a bunch of English names were chasing green snails, and I couldnt grab them all... I spent a lot of effort to get 5 green snail shells, and I couldnt even see the people... I rushed into the server quite early, and the screenshots I took were not shocking enough. I borrowed the screenshots I saw from other players in the WeChat group:
The early upgrade process of the game has been greatly simplified. After completing this task, you will directly go to the classic Pearl Harbor Map.
Then you will be asked directly which first-level career you want to choose. After you make your choice, the system will automatically increase your level to level 10 and teleport you to the career change point for the career change.
Then you will go to the Archer Village to do a series of simple monster-killing tasks. After completing them, you will be directly upgraded to level 30 regardless of your level, and will be teleported to the job transfer point for the second job transfer. After that, you will follow the guide to do the theme dungeon until the third job transfer at level 60, when you will have a short period of time to take on tasks and kill monsters to level up.
In the game, monsters usually only drop in-game gold coins $NESO and potions. The drop rate of NFT props is currently very low. In my more than 4 hours of play time, I only dropped 2 lottery tickets. There is no gold coin store to buy potions in the game, but there is no need to worry about insufficient potions. Monsters drop enough, and will gradually drop more efficient potions according to their levels.
In the game, you can quickly check what equipment can be dropped in the current map. As you can see, the current number of decorations that can be dropped is very small, and the explosion rate is naturally very low.
Another way to get powerful weapons and equipment is to defeat the boss. In the Web3 version, killing the boss does not directly drop equipment, but is equivalent to getting a lottery ticket, which means that you need to kill the boss every day and roll the equipment with players from all servers.
I completed the kill of Zakuun on easy difficulty, but only rolled $NESO, and did not get the Zakuun helmet
As you can see from the picture above, the game has been translated into Chinese, but the level of completion of this translation can be said to be disabled...
In general, I am very moved to be able to play the game of my childhood in the industry I am engaged in, but there are still many areas that can be improved in terms of experience, such as multi-language support including Chinese localization, better novice guidance, etc. Since the games drop mechanism has been greatly changed, I also hope to launch some interesting Web3 version-exclusive activities in the future in combination with the characteristics of Web3. This is a bit far-fetched, after all, the game has just been launched and it takes time.
It will take some time to verify how the mechanism related to NFT props will develop. From the perspective of Web3, the current in-game gold coin $NESO can be seen as Play to Earn without any threshold, while NFT props are Play (Hunt/Raid) to Raffle, especially the mechanism of fighting the boss and rolling the whole server, which requires meeting the conditions and then hoping for good luck.
Gold farming situation
Currently, players who entered the market with the mentality of making money are very dissatisfied with this. Because of the properties of Web3, everyone hopes that this is a magical mine with full gameplay, but the actual situation is that the current gold-making income is even far less than the Web2 version.
Aside from equipment drops (NFT market), which requires time to test the buying side (of course, the game has an official equipment recycling mechanism, but this cannot be judged now, and it depends too much on luck), the most direct way to make money is to kill monsters in the game to get $NESO and then exchange it for $NXPC. The current exchange rate is 100,000 $NESO for 1 $NXPC, which is too high under the current drop rate.
Quoting @ZiYu 0210 ’s data:
The prerequisite here is to reach level 200, and to bring the $NESO in the game to the chain for exchange, you also need to mint game characters. Therefore, if the games gold-making output is to be monetized, users must really play to a certain depth. At present, the only players who make money are those who participate in early activities and tests and get a large amount of airdrops.
This is actually a very contradictory point. If you want to continue to attract gold-farming players, at least one of the exchange rate or the explosion rate needs to be changed. If not, the game may face a greater test, because at this time, we hope that the players who really play the game, or the output of NFT props can become a good gold-farming channel. However, to get the top-level suits, you cant do it without krypton gold. For Web3 players, krypton gold is equivalent to reinvestment, but now this gold-farming that is close to 0, how can we convince gold-farming players to krypton the first sum of money? (Not to mention reinvestment...)
For real gamers, the overall experience of the Web3 version may not easily convince them to switch from the Web2 version.
This is a very hardcore or casual game, and the fun lies in playing with friends. How the game will develop and regulate in the future will gradually reflect how serious NEXON is about this blockchain game project and what kind of development strategy it has, so for the time being, we still hold an optimistic attitude of waiting and seeing.
So, did you go to the island today?
