Richard Garriott’s NFT-Based MMO Has a Name: “Iron & Magic”
MassivelyOP is reporting that Richard Garriott’s in-development NFT-based MMORPG now has a website and a name: Iron & Magic. There’s also an official Twitter account, in case you feel inclined to give them a follow. Currently, the Twitter account is mostly tweeting concept art for various plots of land (and buildings) that future players of Iron & Magic will be able to buy and sell as NFTs.
You may remember that space tourist Richard Garriott, fresh off the utter collapse of Shroud of the Avatar, had threatened us all with another new MMO project filled with NFTs back in April of this year. Any hopes that this might have been a passing flight of fancy or that the people involved came to their senses are now dashed, as the game in question has a title and a website now. Touting a game called Iron and Magic, the website details no systems, setting information, or release date plans, but it does have a store section marked as coming soon asking you to buy land in a world created by Lord British.
No, really, that’s what happens with one click of the scroll wheel. Right down to the store, which is coming soon and displays little rotating bespoke blocks of land you can buy. This isn’t a joke; this is what the team actually has on display. The official Twitter has more details on actual systems, calling the game a Web 3.0 sandbox and teasing things like biomes, cooking minigames, party finders, various shops, magic, and so forth, although it offers
The Iron & Magic storefront is divided into three sections: Nobility, Merchants & Monsters, and Adventurers. Nobility seems to be the storefront for land, Merchants & Monsters is where shops and (presumably) creatures can be purchased, and Adventurers is for…something.
The Team page lists a handful of names associated with the project — Richard Garriott is there, obviously, as are Todd Porter and Chris Spears. Also listed on that page are the various investors and backers that Iron & Magic has courted to date. As you might expect, it’s a collection of Web 3.0 investment firms, DAOs, and a few crypto-aligned companies.
MassivelyOP is…not keen on any of this:
We know all of this was included in the first post we linked, but just in case you don’t feel like clicking through again, that was your recap. Even if this project weren’t clearly a way to sell you bespoke land NFTs (which, to be clear, the website makes it utterly transparent it is), these should be more than enough red flags to make you question this.
The gaming community at large has greeted the concept of NFT-based games with a mixture of skepticism and scorn, although this hasn’t stopped developers (big and small alike) from attempting to bring Web 3.0 technologies into the gaming market. The concept renders and images being released by DeMeta look great, as one might expect. There’s a certain “tabletop miniature” feel to the game assets we’ve seen thus far. But looks aren’t everything, and Iron & Magic has a lot of work to do to overcome the skepticism of gamers.
That 19th century American showman P. T. Barnum is said to have stated, “There is a Sucker born every minute.”
While no one is certain if this is something that legendary circus man actually ever said, it’s for certain that with “Shroud of the Avatar”, Richard Garriott’s belated follow up to that first great successful MMO “Ultima Online”, that the saying ought to be carefully remembered.
Garriott made lots of promises when collecting change for making SOTA. The game would be a spiritual successor to UO, with the same careful attention to details and interactivity. It would be immersive and feel real. Early huge problems with its abstracted combat system- heavily pointed out by hundreds of loyal fans play testing the early game, would be resolved before release. Unfinished NPC dialogue would be completed, etc. etc.
The game wasn’t even a shroud of the memory of UO. It was a lazy, money-grubbing excuse of a poorly cobbled together effort, worthy of a 1800’s carnival barker.
I was among the most ardent lovers of UO, there from the very beginning. I played pretty much nightly for six years, starting at beta. I formed a large guild and actively encouraged others to buy it. For all the lousy connectivity of those days, it was still wonderfully immersive, and felt….complete and competently designed.
“Shroud of the Avatar”, which I pledged at Knight level during it’s Kickstarter, seemed like such a good idea. After all, computer games have come a long way since those golden 1990s.
Alas, while the actual artists working on Shroud seemed competent enough, designing nice clothes, armor, weapons and towns- at the very top things were ridden with lack of wisdom, lacking care for it’s product and seemed to run with a design plan created on one of the more evil and chaotic planes.
Somehow, announcing a NFT based MMO, with huge emphasis on the “NFT” part, seems apt, doesn’t it?
As a competent writer of fiction named Bill once wrote, “All that glisters is not Gold.”
Oi… No. Just no. Richard bilked me for several hundred on SotA, he’s not even getting my time on this one. Not when it’s so obviously doomed to failure by incorporating something as obviously shady as NFTs.
It’s time for him to take whatever he has left and just retire. I hate to say it, but Richard is a disgraced lord.
I hope he grifts as little as possible from fans’ nostalgia with this.