What if you could simply use your web browser to dive into a full-fledged MMORPG? No installations or downloads needed! You could still play your favorite game whenever you wanted. This is the exact scenario that Ember Sword is presenting. Besides, it is not unfolding like a regular game release, but rather as a story of the team’s persistence, inventiveness, and their father-like refusal to let go even during the hard times.
The start of 2018 saw the guys at Ember Sword setting out on a mission to create an accessible, fun, and community-focused MMORPG. Along the way, they hit pretty much every kind of roadblock imaginable – engine refactor, code rewrites, the FTX collapse, the SVB disaster, a tough bear market, and even a global pandemic. Most of the teams would probably have given up at this point, but the team of Ember Sword was definitely not one of them. As a matter of fact, they claim to have “weathered every storm possible” and still, they are there, not only surviving but also creating and still holding on to their dream.
In fact, Ember Sword is a dedication to the preservation of the great things of the past MMORPGs—the kind of things that happen when one meets a friend from the other side of the world at an MMO, becomes an elf, or finally feels part of a community. The devs themselves veteran MMO players, felt the need to evoke the feeling of community and hype, which is only a densely populated online world can give. To understand better what they mean, they even suggest watching the Netflix documentary “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which is just a proof of the strength of the virtual relations.
The first indicators reveal that the story is quite convincing. Through Ember Sword, the play sessions soared over 152,000 with a total playtime of slightly less than 41,000 hours close to five years of gameplay in total. On the very first day, retention was at 43%, the Discord community had grown to 75,000 with more than 151,000 messages exchanged during the beta, and social media activity was at over 800,000 impressions. Nearly 370,000 player accounts were created in advance of the content being finished.
What is the reason behind this passionate support? Besides nostalgia, Ember Sword is also banking on an innovative cloud-based gaming solution that totally gets rid of the cloud gaming lag and allows gaming to be done at a very high level without heavy downloads or using very powerful machines. It you use your browser, then you are able to get in the world of Thanabus. This model makes gaming open to the whole world, as well as to those gamers who were socially excluded in the past, so accessibility is at the heart of the experience.
Early Access is simply the beginning. The debut, which will be starting on servers in Singapore, features a level cap of 30, wrought new weapons, skills such as alchemy and woodcutting, cosmetics (optional NFTs), and the introductory lookat the Solarwood area. The developers are quite transparent with the existence of bugs and their lean staff, but they promise to be fast in fixing the issues and reacting to players input by game development.
Furthermore, the game economy inside the game is as far-reaching as the plot. Initially, the $EMBER token came into being in a very modest way – a market where nearly every game token fails is not much of a surprise – but the crew is still full of fight and not in the least bit discouraged. The duo-token systems, burn mechanics related with in-game revenue, staking programs, and the grind-to-upgrade-to-trade carousel are all there, the intention being to come up with both a sustainable and intriguing economy. The brand new partnerships and advisers are paving the way for the system not being just a short-lived one.
Going forward, the Ember Sword plans to unveil more locations, bring more features, and prove that a browser-based MMORPG can be as good as the big players in the industry. It hasn’t been easy with the team shrinking and the resources being limited, but the flame of the team’s passion is still very much alive, and the community is already playing a significant part in shaping the game’s future.
Ember Sword is not an ordinary MMORPG. It is a trial to figure out whether the MMO model can work from a design and tech perspective, with the players creating the content—simply available from anywhere, at any time. If you are the kind of person waiting for the next great MMO, then watch out for Thanabus. This underdog isn’t just surviving, rather, it’s changing the fates that a browser-based MMO can accomplish.