Ember Sword, one of the most highly anticipated web3 games in development, has announced the dates for the second and third land sales after the first was an unprecedented success.
It feels as if Ember Sword has been around for so many years, and yet I have barely had the opportunity to test it. One of the oddities of web3 is that we are exposed to games when they are proof of concepts or minimum viable products, because the players (and speculative investors) have such a significant role in funding the projects. As a result, the development cycles feel like decades — particularly in the fast-moving space of web3.
For the uninitiated, Ember Sword is a fantasy MMORPG by Bright Star Studios on ImmutableX. Few games have got a more dedicated, cult-like following, and Ember Sword demonstrated that with their initial land sale. Now, the land sale did take place in May 2021, so it was all high days and holidays, but the initial land offering sold out in under six hours. What really puts this in perspective is how much that raised: $200 million.
Land is a central part of Ember Sword, and unlike many web3 games that attempted to harvest the boom of interest in digital land back in 2021, this MMO’s land has heavy utility. As you can see in the graphic below, there are a lot of uses to owning land, and it can even earn passively. To get a better sense of what you get, I would recommend this blog post or their whitepaper.
Your first question is likely similar to mine: how much? Well, there’s quite the disparity. The entry-level, regular plot is — dare I say it — quite reasonable, at just $60 if you get into the first wave of the sale, which is application-only. Conversely, the City land, which has the best of everything and 16 plots within it, is $120,000 with the discount. Although you can recoup costs through various means, it’s difficult to imagine a world in which you can recoup 6 figures; Ember Sword would have to hit unparalleled levels of success for a web3 game, putting out major triple-A IP numbers.
Whether you’re about to drop the amount of money you would spend on a nice meal at a restaurant, or the amount of money you would spend on a restaurant itself, Ember Sword certainly has allure. It reminds me of a modern Runescape — which I intend as high praise — and if the game is executed well, it could be as iconic and as important to gaming as Runescape has been.
Applications for Wave 1 of the land sale begin on 10th July 2023 and close on 13th July, with applicants notified on 21st July. The purchase window, with the 25% discount, will be between 24th and 30th July. Wave 2 will begin on 31st July, offer a 15% discount, and no application is required.
