MapleStory Chain Game Version First Experience
After two years of waiting, the Web3 version of “MapleStory” officially opened its servers yesterday. This marks the largest blockchain game launch in history, and the question “Have you reached the island?” became one of the hottest topics of the day. Following the official server launch at 6 PM last night, the servers were immediately filled to capacity, and some players seemed to encounter issues receiving verification codes during new user registration due to the influx of new players.
The game currency $NXPC was launched simultaneously at TGE on multiple exchanges including Binance, Bybit, Bitget, Upbit, and Bithumb, with the current price at $2.87 and a circulating market cap of $483 million.
How to Start the Game? What is the Gaming Experience and Earning Potential?
Starting the Game
Visit the official website and click on “Game Start” in the upper right corner, which will prompt you to connect your MetaMask wallet. Please keep your mnemonic phrase safe!
If you have not registered an account before, you will need to register one using your email. Then, download the launcher and wait for the game to finish downloading and installing before entering. Subsequent logins will also be done by clicking the “Game Start” button on this page to launch the game without needing to log in within the game.
Gaming Experience
The Web3 version of MapleStory only allows players to choose from the early versions of the adventurer classes (i.e., Warrior, Thief, Magician, Archer, and Pirate). Veteran players might find this reminiscent of the pre-V077 update version before the God of War class was introduced, but in fact, the game content including skills, maps, quests, and other aspects like UI are not significantly different from the current Web2 version.
Despite this, due to the significant changes in the economic mechanism and the GameFi characteristics of Web3, the overall gaming experience has varied greatly in many aspects.
When creating a character, players cannot input their own character names; the system will randomly generate a string of letters as a temporary character name. The name cannot be changed until the character is minted as an NFT, and the condition for minting is for the character to reach level 65 (although the level requirement is only 60, another requirement, defeating “Balrog,” necessitates reaching at least level 65 to challenge).
So when entering the game, a bunch of English names were chasing the green snails, making it impossible to compete… It took all my effort to drop 5 green snail shells, and I couldn’t even see other players… I entered the game earlier and the screen I captured wasn’t shocking enough, so I borrowed some screenshots from other players in the WeChat group:
The early leveling process in the game has been significantly simplified. After completing this quest, you will directly arrive at the classic “Pearl Harbor map.”
Then, you will be directly asked which first job you would like to choose. After making your selection, the system will automatically raise your level to 10 and teleport you to the job advancement point.
You will then proceed to Henesys to complete a series of simple monster-killing quests. After finishing, regardless of your level, you will be directly raised to level 30 and teleported to the job advancement point for the second job advancement. After this, you will follow the guide to complete themed dungeons, and only before the third job advancement at level 60 will there be a brief period where you need to accept quests and grind monsters to level up.
In the game, defeating monsters usually only drops in-game currency $NESO and potions. The drop rate for NFT items is currently very low; during my over 4 hours of playtime, I only dropped 2 raffle tickets. There are no longer any gold shops for buying potions, but you don’t have to worry about running out of potions; monster drops are plentiful and will gradually drop more efficient potions based on your level.
The game allows you to quickly check what equipment can drop on the current map. As you can see, the current drop quantity for accessories is very low, and thus the drop rate is naturally low as well.
Another way to obtain powerful weapon equipment is by defeating bosses. In the Web3 version, defeating a boss will not directly drop equipment but is equivalent to receiving a “raffle ticket,” meaning you must defeat bosses daily and roll for equipment with players from the entire server.
I completed a kill of the easy mode Zakum and only rolled $NESO, without obtaining the Zakum helmet. From the above image, you can also see that the game has done some localization, but the completion level of this localization can be described as “crippled”…
Overall, being able to play a childhood game in my industry is absolutely moving, but there are still many areas for improvement in the experience, such as multilingual support including localization, better beginner guidance, etc. Due to the significant changes in the drop mechanism, I hope that there will be some interesting Web3 version-exclusive events that combine Web3 features in the future. This is a bit far-fetched, as the game has just launched and needs time.
How the mechanisms related to NFT items will develop also needs some time to verify. From a Web3 perspective, the in-game currency $NESO can be viewed as a no-threshold Play to Earn, while NFT items are Play (Hunt/Raid) to Raffle, especially the boss rolling mechanism, which requires meeting conditions and then hoping for a lucky outcome.
Earning Situation
Currently, players entering the game with a mindset to earn are very dissatisfied with this aspect. Due to the nature of Web3, everyone hopes it to be a game-filled gold mine, but the actual situation is that the current earning potential is even far below that of the Web2 version.
Setting aside the equipment drops (NFT market), which require time to test the buying market (of course, the game has an official equipment recycling mechanism, but this aspect of earning is currently indeterminable and relies heavily on luck), the most direct method is to grind monsters in-game for $NESO and then exchange it for $NXPC. Currently, the exchange rate is 100,000 $NESO for 1 $NXPC, which is simply too high given the current drop rates.
Quoting data from @ZiYu0210:
The prerequisite here is still reaching level 200, and you need to bring the in-game $NESO onto the chain for exchange, and mint a game character. Therefore, to realize the earning potential from the game, users really need to play to a certain depth. Currently, only players who participated in early activities and testing and received larger airdrops are making money.
This is actually a very contradictory point. If you want to continue attracting gold-making players, either the exchange rate or the drop rate needs to be adjusted, at least one of them. If not, the game may face significant challenges, as it would then rely on players who are genuinely playing the game, or NFT item production becoming a good earning channel. However, to obtain the top-tier sets, you cannot compete without spending money, which for Web3 players is equivalent to reinvesting. But how can the current near-zero earning potential persuade these players to spend their first investment? (Let alone reinvest…)
For players who genuinely enjoy the game, the overall experience of the Web3 version may not easily convince them to switch from the Web2 version.
This is a game that can be both grind-heavy and casual; the fun lies in playing with friends. How the game develops and adjusts after launch will gradually reflect how serious NEXON is about this blockchain project and what kind of development strategy it has. Therefore, I remain cautiously optimistic for now.
So, today, have you reached the island?
This article is a collaborative reprint from: Deep Tide