“I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell ... I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.” Vitalik, 2003.

https://twitter.com/zemnmez/status/1443821271045845005?s=20&t=DZyCF2JOX1DgRO8ZO1KMwQ

You’d think I’d start by rambling about the banal pros and cons of decentralized governance in a game, it’s meta, and revenue sharing creating a P2E economy. I’m certainly not going to debate the benefits of letting the richest generates dictate the meta of a game. But, I will be covering the benefits of blockchain-based gaming and virtual labour arbitrage specific to MMORPGs, and why I think Seraphie has to exist.

MMORPGs Win More

The financialization of game worlds benefit MMORPGs in an order of magnitude above other genres like RTS and FPS games. Super Rare items only give players a definite and irrefutable advantage over garden variety items in MMORPGs because these Super Rare items are essential to progression of the game. A Super Rare item in an FPS may have some benefits over a regular item, but they aren’t strict upgrades. For example in Team Fortress 2, the Iron Bomber is a variant of the stock grenade launcher. Everybody starts with the stock grenade launcher, but a player has to earn the Iron Bomber through game progression thus making it rare. However, the relationship between item rarity and benefits of the item aren’t linear:

Even with rare item skins involved, the only thing that changes about the weapons are the cosmetic effect:

On the other side, In MMORPGs, the relationship between item rarity and benefits of the item is linear if you don’t take item skins into consideration. This adds a whole other dynamic to item markets in MMORPGs that isn’t present in the economies of other game genres - pay to win.

Pay to Win has generally been thought of as a disease in MMORPGs. Yes, it sucks to grind out long hours to get a rare weapon to marginally increase your damage when your rich friend from school bought an entire legendary equipment set with daddy’s money. Yes, it sucks that he gets to do all the cool boss fights before you even though you’ve been playing the game longer. But, Pay to Win probably got you your first job.

For the millions of kids that grew up with MMORPGs like WoW and Maplestory, their first job was playing that game. Grinding levels to get stronger in order to fight tougher bosses and sell their loot was how they first exchanged their labour for money. In-game money. There was the problem for players - there’s a centralized marketplace for trading in-game items for in-game money, but there’s no off-ramp for your magical internet game money. You had to physically meet the buyer and do the transaction in person or trust that they were going to send you your money via PayPal. Sometimes you wouldn’t even be able to get straight fiat, you’d have to accept the secondary online currency of the game (eg. @Cash for Maplestory) which can be bought with fiat but not with the primary in-game currency, and you can definitely bet that it can’t be off-ramped into fiat. This creates burgeoning demand for peripheral grey markets, and peripheral grey markets just happen to be something that blockchain is exceedingly good at.

When you introduce trustless and liquid markets to a game, you legitimize the demand for peripheral grey markets and better actualize the rewards that gamers reap from their effort. MMORPGs stand to gain the most from this because of the linear relationship between item rarity and benefits creating Pay to Win effects, and that super rare items take a serious amount of time and effort to obtain. These super rare items in MMORPGs represent the labour of gamers more than any, making MMORPGs more deserving of the attention of GameFi acolytes.

Seraphie - Clutch

Let’s at the biggest game genres - FPS, RTS, and MMORPG, all but MMORPGs have undergone significant metamorphosis in the last decade.

FPS games were previously closed map affairs featuring a limited stock of weapons and equipment. Shooter games now offer complete open worlds for combat on a gargantuan scale and some have also drawn inspiration from MMOs and implemented crafting elements to expand equipment offerings.

Metamorphosis is no exaggeration when you look at the birth of DotA and with it, MOBAs from WarCraft 3. What started as a custom game in WarCraft 3 has since become a completely different type of game that has eclipsed RTS’. Graphics aside, MMORPGs still follow the same formula. Nothing’s really changed.

The fall of MMORPGs in recent years is easy to understand if you look at the incentives and design of them. You put in a lot of effort for a very long time so you can eventually get to the end-game where you get to finally do all the cool stuff. When you get to the end-game, your only ‘real’ reward is end-game loot that you attempt to sell on grey markets. Even if you’re an extremely skilled and dedicated player, there’s no real competitive scene for you to turn that effort into money - all the money is in FPS and MOBA competitions.

Just like how blockchains are exceedingly good at peripheral grey markets, blockchains are also exceedingly good at rewarding the dedicated. Gaming tokens introduce holder revenue share and P2E dynamics, creating a reward structure that the MMORPG genre desperately needs to retain dedicated players and stay relevant. Enter Seraphie for the clutch win.

Chapters

Seraphie will be a fully-fledged on-chain MMORPG incorporating all the Web 3 elements I’ve theorized above. As with anything, you need a Chapter 1. Our first chapter will comprise of a collection of nested NFTs and the launch of a dedicated marketplace. We’re working hard, and the next article I write will be all about Chapter 1.

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Onwards and upwards,

211lp

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Sources:

Butcher Bird Grenade Launcher

Death Deluxe Iron Bomber

Maplestory Spears, Maple Wiki