Last Updated on November 6, 2022 by Bitfinsider

Ember Sword is an open-world sandbox role-playing game that draws inspiration from legendary MMOs like World of Warcraft, Runescape, and Guild Wars, according to Bright Star Studios, the company that created it.

With a focus on lowering entrance barriers for both new and seasoned MMO players, accessibility is Ember Sword’s top goal. There are no classes in this role-playing game, as is typical in other ones. In contrast, Ember Sword lets players control a single character to experience every aspect of the game, including skill leveling, crafting, and battle.

The fantasy setting of Thanabus is the setting for Ember Sword. Duskeron, Ediseau, Sevrend, and Solarwood make up its four separate nations. The countries are divided into the Kingship, Outlaw, and Wilderness domains, each of which has its own set of game goals, from player-versus-player combat to epic open-world monster encounters.

Blockchain technology will also be used by Ember Sword to reward player ownership of in-game objects and promote community engagement. Future Ember Sword land plots will be accessible on Immutable X as NFTs, along with a selection of vanity and cosmetic items that players may use to decorate their plots and customize their characters.

Enhancing MMO Experience for Players

Ember Sword will be free to play, in contrast to many other MMORPGs that operate on a pay-to-play subscription model. Ember Sword NFT sales will provide revenue for Bright Star, so the game’s success will determine how well the business does.

Laursen used his vast gaming knowledge to fix flaws in current MMO games in order to ensure the success of Ember Sword. One of the most important components of MMORPGs is social interaction. In addition to allowing players to work together and make new connections, role-playing games transport them to a magical realm where they can slay dragons and demons.

The creators of Ember Sword decided against employing numerous “servers” of the same game, each of which could only accommodate a certain number of players, and instead designed a single, sizable globe in which everyone could take part simultaneously.

Laursen remarked that “We want it all to be one big world that’s connected. It can get lonely—even in an MMORPG—which is kind of weird, you know, because it’s supposed to be with a lot of other people. So we want to nurture the whole social experience and everything that comes with it, something we think has been lacking in other games.”

A unique artificial intelligence engine is being used by Bright Star to promote player involvement. The AI will bring dynamic difficulty based on a player’s skill level, suggest courses and goals that let players run into each other and work together, and offer advice specific to the player’s preferences. The AI may help players find and attack one another in player against player situations in addition to promoting collaboration, allowing for even more interaction and bringing the Ember Sword world to life.

Ember Sword aims to enhance current MMO games by making it simpler for new players to sign up. Ember Sword is powered by a custom game engine that Bright Star created in-house. This allows for rapid, browser-based gameplay without the need to download a specialized client or load a ton of data. Laursen stated, “We’ve made it easy to jump in, do something cool, then sign up after if you want.” 

Ember Sword NFTs

The two major types of Ember Sword NFTs are land and cosmetics.

By selling 40,000 Ember Sword land NFTs on the Ethereum scaling platform Polygon last year, Bright Star raised $204 million. Five categories were used to categorize the plots: land, settlement, city, town, and capital.

Regular land plots come with amenities like campsites, NPC residences, resource deposits, and monster spawns that will be made known as the game world develops. They also confer the Sir/Lady title. On the other hand, owners are able to construct buildings that other game players can use in settlements, towns, and cities. Additionally, only trades will be supported in towns and cities, enabling players to purchase and sell cosmetic NFTs and other in-game products.

Players can generate passive income from their land plots by trading on exchanges, where a small fee will be shared 50/50 between the landowner and Bright Star. All land plots will also partake in the profits made by the places around them, regardless of the type. The player-owned nature of towns and cities allows them to become dynamic, ever-changing hubs rather than the static settlements featured in other games. As Laursen put it: “The philosophy is that half of what goes in goes out into the community.”

Tokenized cosmetic goods will also be available for Ember Sword. These NFTs can be used to alter the appearance of player characters or land plots, but they won’t give players any tangible advantages in the game. For the customization of cosmetic items, Ember Sword has great aspirations. Even small aspects, such the textures of buildings and the ambient noises of player-owned land, will be represented by NFTs that players may collect and exchange.

Through in-game occasions and updates, the bulk of aesthetic NFT goods will be distributed in batches. As a result, players will determine the cost of various products rather than Bright Star doing so. Similar to how Yuga Labs recently unveiled ApeCoin as the only money for its own Metaverse ecosystem, those who wish to purchase cosmetic Ember Sword NFTs will have to utilize the game’s future EMBER token.

Laursen confirmed that NFTs won’t turn Ember Sword into a “pay-to-win” title, though. You can only buy looks, cosmetics, vanity, and other such things in the game. He said, “You can’t buy power in the game—you can only buy looks and cosmetics and vanity, all that stuff.” It will be pointless to farm stuff to sell to other players for real-world money because generic items like in-game gold, armor, and weapons won’t be NFTs. “If you’re just farming gold and selling it, you’re kind of doing yourself a disservice because there’s not really stuff that you need to buy. It’s the NFTs that you want, and you can’t bot farm those—you have to actually be good at the game and go out and play it,” Laursen added.

Currently, all Ember Sword NFTs are housed on Polygon and accessible for trading on NFT trading platforms like OpenSea. To Immutable X, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution driven by StarkWare’s ZK-Rollup technology, Bright Star plans to move Ember Sword’s land NFTs.

To make the process of developing in-game NFTs and deploying the contracts on Layer 2 more straightforward, Bright Star decided to use Immutable’s NFT toolkit. As a result, NFTs stored on Ethereum Layer 2 will be able to link with Ember Sword and benefit from extremely low transaction fees. All upcoming land and cosmetic NFTs will be deployed with Immutable X when the game launches and tradeable on Immutable’s NFT marketplace.

Launching Preparations On-going

The pre-alpha version of the game is now available for anyone who purchased Ember Sword land in the previous year’s sale and have either an Ember Sword land NFT or an Ember Sword badge. Laursen disclosed that the addition of fighting, which will operate similarly to well-known battle arena games like Dota 2 and League of Legends, will be the next significant update to the pre-alpha version. Laursen hinted that Bright Star will release a more complete version of the game by the end of the year when asked about the lengthy production process, but he would not offer any guarantees. In either case, he stated, “Either way we’re looking to put out the full game by around the end of 2023.”

Even though Ember Sword won’t be released in its entirety for another year, the development team has great hopes for the game. Bright Star might be among the first businesses to combine blockchain technology into a free and open game if Ember Sword is a hit. Ember Sword NFT owners will have to wait till the product is officially released to find out if it lives up to its billing.