Every week I give my 5 biggest takeaways from the most recent Town Hall.
- Land for All, and All for Land
Nate took some time to dig into how he viewed what the Splinterlands ecosystem would look like once land was revealed and it was very encouraging. With only 150,000 plots available and no other land intended to be created (outside of new game types or special collaborations), there is not nearly enough to go around. As it stands, with roughly 500k players, that's almost 75% of players not having a plot if they were evenly distributed. The vision that Nate provided about land being something everyone could partake in, whether they owned the plot or not, should be very exciting to every player. PvE, Boss Fights, and traveling across land were some of the ideas mentioned and I personally cannot wait for this new element within the game to be implemented.
- 2022 Is On Track to Be The Biggest Year for Splinterlands
This is very much pep rally hype - but that doesn't make it any less true. To see how far the team has come in the past 6 months in growing out dev team and working on scaling issues after the rise in player base, it feels like we are very much in the 'ready for liftoff' phase. This is not a 'moon boy' sentiment as I'm not referring to the price of SPS, but rather the game itself and what is coming down the pipeline. SPS Governance, Modern Format, Land Expansion, and Riftwatchers are just to name a few of the major things coming 2022!
- Lower Bulk Sales Than Expected
As of last Friday (12/24), the team had only received $3.6M for bulk sales which translated to about 1M packs. People still have until the 28th but at this rate, I doubt we will see the maximum allocation (6M packs) reached. While some may see this as a negative as it seems the hype has died down, I view it as a net positive for the game and community. The team does NOT want Chaos Legion to sell out in a day, despite how good of a headline and soundbyte that would be. Slow and sustained organic growth is the best way forward instead of FOMO and price dumping.
- "Frictionless Crypto"
Hardpoint coined the phrase 'Frictionless Crypto' during the AMA and in my opinion, this is one of the most important concepts that I'm glad the team is focused on. Splinterlands is for many, the first interaction they have with blockchain gaming and crypto overall. To make this as seemless as possible and a positive experience is incredibly important. For those crypto veterans who have been in the space for years like myself, it's easy to forget that this stuff can be very complicated when just starting out. I love this being front of mind as the team works to create a solid top-to-bottom experience within Splinterlands.
- Riftwatchers in March???
This one really took me by surprise! I did not realize the potential time table for this release would be this early in the year. In my mind, I thought the team's expansion cycle was annually, meaning they would release Riftwatchers at some point next December and then Rebellion in late 2023. It was nice to get clarification on that, knowing now that the annual cycle is for core expansions rather than all expansions. If this is the case, we can expect 2 major releases per year (core and mini). To be honest, I do think that March is a little early and was probably only in the discussion once talks of Chaos Legion selling out in a day started circulating. I would expect this to be closer to a summer release - which would time very well with the end of the airdrop - although it is nice to know the team is working to be ready for release well ahead of then!