A few days ago, I read a comment left by a gamer on a games industry news article that made me rework the intro to this Medium post.

It was a comment that with such blunt honesty perfectly summarized why we are using the Ethereum blockchain to power Ember Sword, our upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game (MMORPG).

The article was about gamers’ rights to sell used games, and the comment by ‘ProphetTenebrae’ that caught my attention reads as follows:

“This is nothing new — the entire industry has ached to move us to a business model where we never own a game, just own a license or similar.”

Despite the games industry’s rapid growth ($116b in 2017) and the popularity of MMORPG games, which has enabled hundreds of millions of gamers to build communities and long-lasting relationships with other players across the globe, the digital universes these games provide are fully controlled by centralized groups of developers, who retain ownership over every part of the game world and all digital items in the game, while generating substantial revenue from the communities of gamers who make the game popular.

As the above comment exemplifies, this leaves gamers not only frustrated about the lack of ownership over the valuable items they’ve acquired in the game, but also as passive consumers rather than active participants in controlling and evolving the worlds they help populate.

We believe in a different future!

Ember Sword — The Modern MMORPG

Ember Sword is a free to play, modern, and truly player-driven MMORPG game with a real economy powered by the Ethereum Blockchain.

It’s a universe where the players control the world through true landownership, and where all valuable cosmetic items are tokenized as scarce non-fungible crypto collectibles, which are acquired by players through gameplay objectives instead of sold through lootboxes.

In Ember Sword, players can trade & sell the cosmetics they own for PIXEL Tokens, and those who invest in LAND to become landowners evolve the world by placing resources, monsters, NPCs etc., and can turn a profit by creating services and experiences, like vendor marketplaces where other players buy in-game purchases, access auctions, and more.

Instead of closing down the in-game economy, we’re opening it up by allowing players to do whatever they want with the cosmetics they truly own.

The core userflow in Ember Sword

Through Ember Sword, we bring artists, players, and builders together to create a vast, persistent, MMORPG universe where the community permanently own and decide the fate of the world and experiences within.

It’s a living, breathing world where landowners build & evolve the universe and monetize their own plots of land, where players are free to do whatever they want whenever they want and truly own their own cosmetic items, and where artists can monetize their own creations by making epic emotes, animations, skins and more.

Ultimately, Ember Sword is more than just a game, it’s a community, a world, an economy.

Ember Sword poster image

Why We’re Building Ember Sword

With Ember Sword, we’re building the next generation Free to Play MMORPG player experience — a re-thinking of what an MMORPG is and can be.

We want to forge an alternative path for games, moving away from predatory monetization and loot box gambling, towards a future where players have a permanent stake in their game world.

We believe that players should be free to trade their in-game cosmetic items, even on secondary marketplaces, and we believe in game design that creates a fair and thriving no-pay-to-win gameplay environment.

We believe in empowering artists to monetize their work, we believe in true ownership over digital items, and we believe in a persistent digital universe built by the players, with ultimate freedom and no borders.

And above all, we know that a great MMORPG starts with an excited community finally in control! We couldn’t be more excited about the future, and we hope you’ll join us on this journey!

Learn More About Ember Sword

Ember Sword is a free-to-play Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) for browsers and PC with a vast, persistent, fantasy universe owned and developed by its players.

Create a character, pick a home region, and venture into the dangerous world with a bow, staff or sword to prove your worth in the action-packed classless combat system by defeating monsters, bosses, and other players, or explore the world as a peaceful forager of goods and rares making a name for yourself as a talented refiner and craftsman of weapons and armor.

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