Doctor Who Worlds Apart is one of the projects I was most hopeful for in 2021. They have a strong franchise behind them, they have the backing of the BBC, and their first edition cards were looking quite interesting and diverse in terms of design and effects. In short, this could very well turn into a hit trading card game. I've already done several articles about the game and I've also been promoting my ref-link heavily. So far, I've managed to acquire 185 cards (which equals a total value of 185$) without spending any real money on it. So things should be really looking great. Sadly, that's not exactly the case. The more I follow the project, the more it seems like a pure cash grab to me!
In Doctor Who Worlds Apart, rarity is not only determined by the rarity of the card itself but also by the card frame it has. While the rarity of the card itself is completely randomized across all packs, certain card frames can only be found in certain boosters. I've already made an article on the concept some weeks ago, coming to the conclusion that the whole system feels unnecessary complex. Yet, I was more or less okay with it. It has no effect on gameplay, so if people want to spend their money on a different card frame I don't have any objections. Since then, though, 2 new types of booster packs where introduced to the market offering yet another exclusive, never to be found again card frame.
These new card packs are the "Timelord President Pack" and the "Machines of War Pack" and honestly, they are sold at ridiculous prices again:
If I counted right, this brings the number of different card frames in the game to something like 19 variations. This all is happening while there are no news on the game itself, it's still scheduled for a release into testing in Q4 of 2021. I really don't mind some exclusive pre sale stuff, but this is getting more and more ridiculous. To me, it feels like they are just trying to milk the show's fans as much as possible. When the initial pre sale happened, there also was no indication that these packs would get released in such a short order, making it look like the card frames available back then truly were the only exclusive ones to be had. Obviously, you don't need any of these special card frames to play the game and because of that, I've always only been buying the Core Pack. Nevertheless, there are a lot of people interested in exclusive card frames and Doctor Who Worlds Apart seems to be doing all it can in order to milk them as much as possible.
That's not all, though. They've also launched their market place and it's now possible to trade these cards with other players. Well, at least that sounds cool right? It's a blockchain game after all, true ownership of assets, time to make some money! Well, it's not that easy. Their market is not really running on chain. Fun enough, the cards aren't on chain either. You'd have to pay the ETH fee (which they set to 55$/card) to get them there first. Things are even worse than they sound, though. Their market place only accepts a singular currency - vUSD. Haven't heard of that token yet? Well, that's because it isn't a token. It's just the name of their store currency. And there's only one way to get it - buy it from Doctor Who Worlds Apart:
Now the crazy thing is that you can buy vUSD from the game, but you can't sell it back to the game. Yes, you've read that right. There's only a way in but no way out. All money spent on buying vUSD will stay with the game, you can't exchange vUSD back to regular USD. So in essence, this market has nothing to do with how things should work in a blockchain game. There's no cashing out, any money you spend will stay within the game. Now the guys that designed that whole process are either completely ignorant of blockchain principles or they are just greedy and want to suck as much money out of people as possible. Honestly, I'm not even sure which of the two options would be worse. Either way, this is completely unacceptable to me.
With all this stuff going on in Doctor Who Worlds Apart, I sadly can't recommend the game any longer. I'll still collect the 10 free Panadalks by logging in daily, but I won't promote it any longer. I'd also strongly advise against spending any more real money on it for the moment. They are officially backed by the BBC, so the possibility of this being an exit scam or something are really slim. Nevertheless, it seems like they are only trying to use the blockchain/NFT craze in order to collect as much money as possible. They do have their ETH bridge and there are signs of this thing being a blockchain game after all. But with all their recent decisions, it seems more like this is going to become a conventional digital trading card game where money is only flowing in but never out.
That's not to say that you won't be able to make money with it nevertheless. I've earned thousands of dollars playing Hex TCG which wasn't a blockchain game at all. If trading is possible in a game, people will find a way to convert cards to real money. But Hex launched in 2014 and now it's 2021. There are a lot of promising trading card games out there and they are actually running on the blockchain, allowing me to buy and sell my assets just as I please. I might be wrong about the whole thing, maybe they'll get things right eventually. But at the same time, this could be a hint of what's going to happen in the future. Mainstream developers certainly don't want to share their revenue with us and creating pseudo blockchain titles that only pretend to offer real ownership of assets might be a trend we'll see more of pretty soon. As always, it's best to stay vigilant and always research new projects before spending any money on them.
And that's all from me for today. Thank you all for reading and see you next time!