Ragnarök, the First MetaRPG
There was an era in gaming focused around the early 2000s that really wanted to change the way we interact. An era before MySpace, Facebook and other social media that make communication so fast and momentary. An era before the word ‘metaverse’ even appeared online, and yet, connected people in a way never seen before. MMORPGs. A world of our own, where we meet friends, slay monsters, party, and make memories.
Fast forward some 30 years into the future, and we’re permaconnected in a dystopian cyberpunk-ish manner into all sorts of social media, unable to disconnect, addicted to validation and hardly finding energy to have real interaction. However, the desires and demands didn’t change. MMOs of old had what was needed of that day — however, while the genre has definitely evolved in terms of graphics and gameplay, one thing remained — we had no say in it, we had no power before the gods that created the worlds.
While the promises of decentralized space have been going on for many years without much progress — certain ideas have come to fruition, one of which is complete ownership of one’s own identity and assets within the game. This new buzzword, ‘metaverse’ is thrown out lightly, generally standing for MMO spaces of various types but yet without a clear goal, or vision in mind.
Enter Ragnarök, the First MetaRPG
MetaRPG? Another buzzword? Metaverse+RPG… sounds cool, right? Trendy, no doubts. According the official RAGNARÖK Twitter page, Ragnarök is a metaverse. A new dimension combining Lore, Web3, Social, and Role Playing Game.
What does this exactly mean? Is it an MMO game? Is it an NFT project? A DEFI platform? A social network? A media franchise? The answer would probably be… yes. Let’s go deeper.
The Game
If you go to the official site https://ragnarok.xyz/ you will be greeted with a big PLAY button. If you click it, you will be taken to the MetaRPG demo world and finally start to get the feeling what is this all about.
Doesn’t this screen look like a classic isometric MMORPG? It has a clear interface, social links, and a chatbox where you can socialize with fellow players. The current demo has several quests that slowly introduce the lore of the world as well as tease about future updates. Pretty cool for a demo, right? At this point you would probably think aaaah Maplestory/Ragnarok Online nostalgia (if you had played those 30 years ago). But the MetaRPG is a whole new type of beast, one never seen before!
Non Fungible… Characters
So, what about the second part where we asked ourselves, is it an NFT project? In order to access full features to the game (when released), you will need to possess an NFT character called Ronin which will be mintable on the 27th of April as per the latest updates. This is where the ‘multimedia’ part of Ragnarök really shines!
Majority of NFT projects deliver little use case aside from their perceived value on the secondary market. This topic can delve into more philosophical themes of what value truly is, and we’ll talk about it some other time, but the point is — they don’t bring any utility. With Twitter Blue allowing people to verify NFTs as profile pictures (PFPs) one can argue that some utility exists, but not many projects can proudly say they do.
But what if we could have a lovely PFP we can show off on Twitter and everywhere else AND truly become one with it in a virtual world? That’s exactly what the Ronin are!
With various traits, rarities and equippable accessories, the PFP collection stands toe to toe with some of the best out there, just based on the quality of art alone. But here’s where the magic happens — this pink haired dude above, turns into
Utility. Real utility. That’s what the Ronin are. They live in this persistent online universe and give a much greater and deeper connection for players sporting them as avatars. You could say that Ragnarök is already in the future.
Arguably, many other projects have the intention to create 3D versions of their NFT PFPs to use in various persistent online worlds, but that’s a lot of words and no action. If you take a look at most roadmaps for almost any PFP collection, one of the roadmap points will definitely be ‘metaverse’, usually scheduled next year. Newsflash — it most likely won’t happen. And yet somehow, it just did, here. I’d consider this a very big proof of dedication.
Web3 and Play to Earn
The main advantage we have today over 30 years ago is the web3 movement. While web2 brought us increasingly useful options to communicate (such as social media and apps) we never had true control of our data or ownership of our accounts.
In web3, this changes, and Ragnarök is perhaps the best currently working representative of the bunch. What we know so far, is that aside from the Ronin NFT avatars and their items/accessories, a breeding option/rental will also be a source of potential material, as well as an ingame economy oriented around the $RAG token.
The DEFI part of the picture is outlined as an ingame DEX (Decentralized Exchange) as well as a staking system. In the later phases, territory/plot ownership will also be used as a potential source of tokens or paid services. Plots themselves can be colorful looking buildings where one can promote their own brand and therefore gain intrinsic value from Ragnarök which is not in pure liquidity.
Overall, with so many income mechanics integrated into Ragnarök, many different types of value tailored to each player’s taste could be brought and taken from the MetaRPG, so there’s a good chance everyone will find exactly what they’re looking for in the ‘verse.
Social & community oriented
Ever since the project was unveiled to the public around half a year ago as of the writing of this article, every phase of the project heavily involved its own community to develop, promote and spread positive vibes around. Thanks to the amazing development team that managed to release a playable demo, the community had a unique opportunity to participate in a series of quests over a few months, familiarize themselves with the game’s universe and lore, as well as obtain benefits such as mintlists and community roles.
Every time a new quest would be released, the community would gather quickly and solve it together, where some of the solvers would even obtain a coveted Pixel mintlist role that effectively reserves a Ronin character for them to mint.
Various social undertakings, community events, hashtag events and promotional materials not only helped grow the community to almost 200 thousand followers within a few months but also gave opportunity for smaller community members to grow together and grow their reach and audience through community initiatives.
The community created a significant amount of content, memes, vibes and showed great tenacity and trust in the project, becoming very attractive for people with similar aspirations of interests to simply jump in and participate. NFT collectors, web3 luminaries, artists, crypto investors and people from all walks of life came together to build the foundation of Ragnarök.
Team
The core team consists of 24 people according to the official website and likely various external contractors. These people are experts in their field in all required fields to bring a project such as this to fruition — including developers, artists, marketing experts and managers. The team leader, Fanfaron, participated in Avalanche Summit 2022 in Barcelona, a very prestigious blockchain conference where Ragnarök was presented to various VCs, investors and notable people in the industry.
Art & Lore
One glance at the art of Ragnarök would instantly scream ‘anime’, however, upon looking closely, we could see that both the characters and the world weren’t designed to imitate Japanese games or animation, but rather create something unique, that bridges both the west and the east. Fans of 2000s western anime might see this subtle connection (Galactik Football, Wakfu anyone?) that drew heavy inspiration from Japanese shows but found their own place.
Most of the art is designed to appeal to gamers, Japanese pop culture fans, anime, manga and the 90s-2000s gaming generation, while also looking attractive to modern anime fans. Many pieces of art both outside and in the game have Japanese text, game consoles and 90s like retro-future Tokyo vibes. The color purple is the most dominant by far in the material we’ve seen so far, adding more to that neon-city dream most people think of when they think about retro sci-fi metropolises.
The team proudly insists on the potential for world building and lore, and they’ve already published the first pilot chapter of the manga that deals with the adventures of Fanfaron, the main character of the franchise.
The current plan is to release 77 chapters of the manga, which will be a sort of a companion medium to the game itself, providing insight into the world, how it came to be, and what is happening to it, as sort of a narration that runs alongside the persistent online universe. This method was often used by big players such as World of Warcraft, and it has successfully attracted a very wide audience, no matter whether they had the interest in the game or not.
Wen Moon?
Disclaimer: The section ‘Wen Moon?’ is not financial advice by any means!
Now, let’s dive into the part where potential investors wonder whether this project might be a good bet.
Currently, the only two choices perspective investors have:
- Participate in the Fair Dutch auction to mint Ronin NFTs on the 27th of April
- Buy a Ronin from the secondary markets (such as OpenSea) after the mint.
What does this mean? The way a Fair Dutch auction works, is that the initial price of 0.77 ETH will be reduced by 2.5% every 7 minutes until it drops to 0.21 ETH or it sells out. This means you can bid at the highest price to secure your Ronin and in case they sell at a lower price later on, you will get the difference back within 3 days. Very fair, right? Everyone wins — no gas issues, the only decision is whether you think it’s worth it or not.
Is it worth it? Let’s discuss this. 7777 Ronin will be minted in total. They’re the initial generation, with all new Ronin becoming their offspring through the breeding system.
- 4000 Ronin will be for Public.
- 2900 Ronin will be for Pixels.
- 600 Ronin are reserved for Pills. (50% discount)
- 277 Ronin to be held by Ragnarök to be used for airdrops, team, and marketing.
Unless you are on the mint list, you will be competing for the 4000 public mints. They’re the ones that will be auctioned. By this time, most of mint list spots have already been given out to highly active community members and contributors, therefore we can consider that at least 90–95% of mint listed people will mint theirs. That leaves the question about demand for the rest of the 4000 public mints.
If we look at some statistics of the project’s socials, we can see that the last month has witnessed an overwhelming spike in interest, with over 130 thousand new followers just in the last 30 days. Of course, with a lot of fake accounts, bots, and giveaway grinders, a lot of these are irrelevant, but they too have a role in the ecosystem — for every grinder that Retweets, Likes or follows, some legit users find out and get interested in the project.
So let’s look at some other numbers:
The official Ragnarök Discord server is infamous for harsh anti-bot policies and repetitive/spammable phrases to eliminate mintlist grinders or resellers. Just a few days ago, a bunch of these accounts were banned, mintlists revoked and returned back to the pool from which legit contributors can claim them again.
Therefore, based on Discord numbers, if we assume that at least 50% (and possibly over 80%) are interested in obtaining the Ronin NFT which gets us close to 19 thousand people interested in just 7500 mintable Ronin (if we disregard the 277 kept by the team). It goes without saying that the chances of selling out very quickly are extremely high and a demand on the secondary markets might rise to up to 3x over their initial price just based on these numbers.
Everything above is just a tip of the iceberg — merely something flippers only might be interested in. If we take a look at the wider picture, the upside is possibly much higher — with such scarcity and a growing interest in the game, we could expect that the original Ronin might appreciate in price a lot higher down the line.
Let’s take a look one other very important factor: trend
April has been the month of Anime art NFT profile pictures. The trend was initially blown out of proportions by Azuki, a very trending PFP collection that managed to reach floor prices of over 30 ETH in mid April. This led to an enormous attempt to exploit the market trends and thousands of new anime PFP collections appeared almost every day, selling out like hot cakes, but none coming even close to what Azuki accomplished.
Azuki brought something original — a design unlike modern anime, yet, not even like the oldschool 90s style. They made a compromise (Samurai Champloo much?) and went for the middle ground that instantly picked up attention with it’s clean but mistifying art.
Now dear anon, if you had read this article carefully, you’ll remember that in the Art part we mentioned that Ragnarök design too is a compromise — a subtle bridge between traditional Japanese anime style, and western interpretation. This makes all Ronin PFP pieces extremely clean, fashionable, unique, and simply… lovely to look at. Everything a collection needs to stand out!
But perhaps the biggest factor that gives the most upside potential to all assets involved with Ragnarök, is simply their amazing roadmap — which is already covered in the article, but for references you can find it on the official website. It is very likely for the price of Ronin to become high as the release of the game comes closer (planned release is May 2022).
While users that don’t possess a Ronin will still be able to log in as an ‘Anon’ character, most game functionalities will be restricted to Ronin. Original Ronin are the only ones who can create new Ronin for upcoming players, giving them a huge first mover advantage in the MetaRPG.
Overall, betting on Ragnarök means investing in a big labor of love that is actually bearing fruit. Not many projects offer anything close to a finished product in the phase Ragnarök is right now, yet with a push of a single button, we can right now jump into the virtual world they created.
The biggest takeaway here would be to properly analyze the roadmap and consider the required time horizons if you’re considering holding Ronin for a long time. There’s a lot of potential in the project, and much more than monetary value that can be taken here. Our sincerest suggestion is to follow the project, and consider if it’s a product you’d enjoy.
Conclusion
Let’s summarize with some pros and cons:
Pros
- Working metaverse
- Attractive art that caters to several demographics and interests
- Aligns with current NFT trends perfectly
- Innovative approach to community building
- Deep roadmap with a lot of content to consume and provide value
- Complex and deep NFT utility not commonly seen on the market
- Friendly community with potential common interests
- RAGMI
Cons
- Ragnarök is a name very commonly used, although this might be intentional
- Steep learning curve — information is all over the place, and most people won’t answer basic questions so personal inquiry and further research is absolutely needed
- Full product with all planned features will take several months to complete, therefore patience is needed
Basic information & links
Public Ronin Mint date: 27. April 2022. at 9 PM CET
Supply: 4000 (out of 7777)
Start Price: 0.77 ETH
End Price: 0.21 ETH
