Splinterlands - LAND after(!) Praetoria

Splinterlands yesterday unlocked LAND 1.0

After some confusion last week in the test phase in which many thought that entire regions would be homogeneous, we now have LAND 1.0! And it's steamrolled over Praetoria - we are now already in the Wild Northeast Territory in the claiming process. I am personally waiting for the right territory as outlined in previous posts. Since you will get with a 85% certainty the exact terrain of a plot which is shown in the artwork, one can actually try to claim the ones that one wants. The problem is just that it's very hard since

• due to the blockchain processing times, one is not guaranteed to get what one wants
• often entire tracts or regions are claimed which makes it very difficult to plan ahead

Nevertheless, I will try to claim deserts and calderas. There are some good options coming up.

But this post is not about Praetoria(!)

Looking at the map and especially the code for every plot in the "PR-ABC-XXX-XX-XXX" format, it got me thinking. Why include the first two letters, namely the continent? Well obviously when the team is not expecting Praetoria to be the only continent! In other words, the Splinterlands team is likely planing to add additional continents in the very distant future! This isn't something coming up anytime soon, if ever, though. We know that LAND is going to always receive updates and that actually constructing Spells and Items will be coming at the earliest in 2024! Adding additional continents will therefore be something that we could see in 2025 and beyond - probably 2026.

Why add more continents?

Obviously, LAND acts as a sink for cards and resources. With only 150,000 plots in Praetoria and therefore 150k * 5 = 750k sinks for cards, this sink will not be enough if the team plans to release additional cards. We already know that the next major expansion will be Rebellion and it is probably coming out in 2024. Also, we have a massive inflation from Reward Cards - so... the Splinterlands economy simply needs more sinks.

This is especially the case if the player base continues to grow. What happens when we get an X amount of new players? With only 150k plots of LAND, this would mean that only a very small fraction of players will have access to it.

Conclusion

While this is a development which is still likely very far off in the future, the direction of Splinterlands seems rather clear. Establish LAND, add additional sets of cards and mechanics and then expand LAND. This will be Continent X and will probably not be coming any earlier than 2026. By then Splinterlands will hopefully have grown by a large amount and established the core mechanics and gameplay which can then be expanded with additional LAND. In fact, this development will be a prerequisite for further expansions.

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