My first metaverse experience.

Long before I had heard of crypto or the metaverse we already had one. The only difference is that it wasn't built on a blockchain. I'm not sure how many of you have ever heard of Neopets but it was a game that was built about 20 years ago.

This is from the neopets.wiki

Visitors can create an account and take care of up to five virtual pets. buying them food, toys, clothes, and other accessories using the virtual currencies: Neopoints and Neocash.
Neopoints can be earned through many ways including playing games, investing in the stock market, and winning contests. Neocash though must be purchased with real money. Users can explore the world of Neopia with their Neopets and interact with each other through the Neoboards, Neomail, guilds, and certain games.
The site semi-regularly hosts events called Plots, stories with activities and puzzles for users to participate in that reward large prizes at the end. Neopets also has many holidays and annual events like the Altador Cup, Festival of Neggs, and Winter Starlight Celebration.
Source: Neopets.fandom

Sound familiar....

What is needed for a metaverse.

In its current meaning, metaverse generally refers to the concept of a highly immersive virtual world where people gather to socialize, play, and work.
Ref: Webster dictionary.

So what does Neopets have?

• Virtual world.
• Land.
• Economy
• Digital currency.
• Shops.
• Characters.
• Games.
• Bank.
• Challenges.
• Plots.
• Digital pets.
• Digital meeting place.
• Content creation.
• Digital mail.
• And lots more.

It was a game ahead of it's time. I must have put hundreds of hours into the game and built up a large shop. Built up a profile, a history, inventory and became one of the few millionaires on the site at the time.

They even built up a large network and hosted worldwide contests such as splinterlands are moving towards. Some of the first cases of egaming.

The first Altador Cup was released as an international online gaming event to coincide with the 2006 FIFA World Cup to improve interactivity between users and had 10.4 million participants the first year.
Ref: wikipedia.

I had a full blown addiction and logged in every day to meet my friends and work on growing my profile.

This was my first Neopet, "Ruccy", if only he was an nft then he would be worth a lot of money right now as he is over 21 years old at this stage. Don't worry that he is famished, he hasn't been fed for at least a decade.

Or my in-game currency which i could sell on the markets. It was a game ahead of it's time. It has everything that we are looking to see right now in crypto and had about 25 millions users at one stage.

What are the lessons here?

It has already been built before and can be done gain. This site was built out of a basement for years as a hobby before going mainstream and attracting the investment to expand more rapidly.

It needs to be more than just a game. Neopets had one of the highest stickiness ratings in gaming for multiple years as they had such a diverse range of options to keep you on the site.

It wasn't just one thing it had everything. If you stocked your shop with nft's then you could play some games while you hung around. You could go to the message boards and have the chat with other users. Trade, advise, have some fun.

There were quests and contests running every day to get involved with. It was a proper metaverse.

I think that this is where Splinterlands are looking to go and it makes me very excited all over again.

It's the same idea but on a whole new level. This time all of the assets will be real. We can build up our accounts, earn currency sell items and bank profits. All with real value.

So much better than the last time around.

We are stull early days but the vision is there to build out a full eco-system for splinterlands. Even this latest message from the discord is showing the direction that they are moving in.

We're going to begin fleshing out the idea of adding some casual oriented play to earn games inside of a new part of the Splinterlands platform. The focus is going to be on simple arcade games to start,

We have the marketplaces, the assets, the currency, the community, the land so now we get to see them flesh out the the world over the next couple of years and have the lucky position to there from the start.

Exciting times and a long term goal for the game.

Try for yourself.

If you haven't played the game before then now is the best time to join. Today is much better than tomorrow and a lot better than later.

Cards worth a few cents now will have a much higher value in the future as the print runs out. We have a strong community and seen this happen every time as it grows with the game.

Link to the game here,

Splinterlands.

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta