1. The Early 2000s MMO Renaissance: When We Truly Lived in “Another World”

About twenty years ago, in the early 2000s, internet permanent connections became widespread, bringing about an “MMORPG Renaissance” in Japanese gaming history. At the absolute center of that explosion was Ragnarok Online (RO).

I was right there in the middle of that frenzy. Beyond the fragile internet lines of the ISDN and ADSL eras lay a vast, pixel-art world where thousands, even tens of thousands of people breathed simultaneously. Every day after school or work, I would log into Rune-Midgard as if drawn by a magnetic pull.

The vitality of those days was far more intense than any viral trend on modern social media. It didn’t just stay inside the game, either. I frequently participated in “OtoO (Online to Offline) events,” such as official fan festivals and the doujinshi convention “RAG-FES.” We would gather offline with guild members we met online, staying at izakayas until the last train, passionately discussing how to take down a specific MVP boss or strategizing for the next GvG (Guild vs. Guild) war.

What existed there was not a mere exchange of data, but the raw heat of a new society—another reality being born.

2. The Startup Vision: The Future We Dreamed of “Living in a Game”

Years passed, and around the year 2020, the term “GameFi” was coined.

Triggered by the global boom of Axie Infinity in 2021, gamers and investors worldwide grew ecstatic, believing a true paradigm shift had arrived. The core concept was beautifully simple and revolutionary:

• Establishment of “Play-to-Earn (P2E)”: The time and effort spent inside the game would directly translate into real-world money (crypto assets).
• True Ownership of Digital Assets (NFTs): Items and characters would not vanish when a publisher shut down a service; instead, they would remain as “personal property” on the blockchain.
• Player-Driven Free Economy: An ecosystem running solely on supply and demand among users, free from the exploitation of centralized operators.

The idea that immersing oneself in a beloved game could secure a livelihood felt like the arrival of a true utopia for gamers worldwide.

3. The Disconnected Reality: A Miserable Bubble Burst in Just a Few Years

However, only a few years since its inception, the GameFi market now finds itself in a utterly miserable state.

The frantic bubble of 2021–2022 burst in the blink of an eye. Token prices for major titles from that era crashed by over 99%. The brilliant concept of “Play to Earn” deviated from its beautiful initial vision far too quickly and ruthlessly.

The Raw Challenges of the Present Face:

• The Limit of Ponzi-like Structures: Since the ecosystem relied on funds from new players to pay out existing ones, the economy essentially suffered a “sudden death” the moment the influx of new capital stopped.
• A Complete Absence of “Fun”: The quality of the games was abysmally low, resulting in a flood of titles that felt like nothing more than a tedious chore of clicking to harvest yields. Nobody actually played them for fun anymore.
• Devastation by Bots and Professional Guilds: Efficiency-obsessed bot armies aiming solely for profit, along with gaming guilds hiring low-wage workers in developing nations, completely overran the market, leaving casual players economically incapable of keeping up.

As a result, instead of “playing to have fun,” it became a place of upside-down “labor,” where people monitored screens just to grind out money. In the end, it left behind nothing but a scorched earth—this is the warped reality that GameFi rushed into in just a few short years.

4. My Experience: The Rise and Fall of ‘Ragnarok Landverse’ and the Web3 Version of a Midnight Flit

Carrying those intense memories of the past, I stepped into the world of Ragnarok Landverse, the official blockchain version of the classic game.

The moment I booted the client on my PC and materialized in the South Field of Prontera, I was instantly pulled back to those days. The background music, the sound of hitting a Poring, the streets lined with player shops—it was all there. However, within just a few hours of playing, I was forced to confront a cold wall completely different from the “warmth” of 20 years ago: the modern Web3 dystopia in its terminal phase.

The Landscape of Auto-Farming That Silenced the Chats

The original RO was deeply defined by its role as a chat tool. We would sit down at our guild’s favorite hangout spot and talk for hours about absolutely nothing. Even during hunts, unpolished, organic communication—like typing “Thanks for the heal!” and hearing “No problem, let’s pull the next mob!”—was the core of the game.

In Landverse, however, what I witnessed on the fields was a swarm of characters moving mechanically via “Auto-Play (Automated Battle System).” The game implements a strict “Stamina System,” making it a top priority to burn stamina efficiently to secure item drops. There is no room to enjoy a chat; looking at the screen, you only feel the cold gaze of investors (or bots) calculating how to mine tokens most efficiently.

The Madness of GvG Driven by Real Money and the Ghost Town Effect

As token prices (such as ION) entered a relentless downward spiral, players vanished like the ebbing tide. The chat logs, once bursting with life, fell dead silent, leaving only hordes of bots roaming the deserted fields.

Yet, amid this ghost-town reality, the Guild vs. Guild (GvG) battles over castles raged with an entirely different, distorted fervor. The essence of the battle had transformed from “bonds and tactics” into a pure brawl of capital power. Wealthy whales equipped with ultra-powerful, real-money-bought NFT gear and professional Web3 guilds backing massive capital resources completely dominated the battlefield. Because winning yields substantial token rewards (real financial returns), the matches are no longer a game; they are an investment payoff. The pure sense of accomplishment we used to celebrate at the pub until sunrise—”We did it, we took the castle together!”—was nowhere to be found.

Server Shutdowns (EOS) and the Scorched-Earth Strategy of “Reincarnation”

The final, crushing blow was the announcement of the End of Service (EOS) for the initial global servers.

In a traditional MMO, a shutdown is a bittersweet farewell. Fans gather, weeping openly in chat, counting down the final seconds together. Web3 gaming, however, dies a cold death. While angry players left holding worthless NFTs and tanked tokens scream into the void of Discord channels, the operators simply declare, “We are launching ‘Landverse Genesis’ on a new chain!” or “We are opening new US and Thailand regional servers!” They abandon ship and migrate to a brand-new cash-grab venue without offering any asset migration to the loyal players they left behind.

When the casual player base completely loses faith and leaves, the whales are left with no one to dominate. Once a server dries up, the operators pack it up and open the next loop. This is not the “alternative society” we experienced in the MMOs of our youth; it is merely a short-rotation harvesting machine.

5. The Core Difference: What Set the Old MMOs and Blockchain Games (BCG) Apart?

Playing Landverse solidified my conviction: “Traditional MMOs” and “Blockchain Games (BCG)” are entirely distinct, fundamentally incompatible entities. The root of this incompatibility lies in a bug concerning the motivation for a game world to exist.

A “Place to Escape Reality” vs. An “Extension of Reality”

The essence of traditional MMOs was that they provided the ultimate escape from reality, where you could shed your real-world baggage—school grades, corporate titles—and stand as an equal, a lone adventurer. Spending money (paying a monthly subscription) to “consume” time was a luxury, and it was fun.

Conversely, because BCGs inject real money into the heart of the game loop, they become an unforgiving extension of real-world capitalism. Every single action is plagued by calculations: “What is my hourly wage for grinding this area?” When everyone wants to extract money from the game, the economy chokes the instant new “sacrificial” investors stop arriving. Operators find it faster and more profitable to launch a new server to recoup initial capital rather than extend the game’s lifespan, so they discard worlds without a second thought. The sanctuary of escape turns into an economic battlefield fiercer than reality itself.

6. Future Outlook: The Death of 99% of NFT Games and What Rises from the Ashes

Currently, NFT games across the board are shutting down in droves. This “first generation of GameFi” will likely face near-total extinction within the next year or two.

Yet, through this brutal death spiral, I anticipate the gaming market will evolve in two major ways:

① The Total Exclusion of Speculators and the Redefinition of “Data Permanence”

The sweet talk of “Play-to-Earn” is dead and buried. Future Web3 titles will likely stop marketing the ability to make money altogether. Instead, blockchain technology will pivot toward its true utility: Composability. If an operator bungles a game and shuts down the servers, the weapons and characters you worked for (as NFTs) can be carried over and utilized in an entirely different game built by a different company. It becomes a technology that prevents developers from holding your digital life hostage.

② From a “In-Game Economy” to a “Fan-Driven Economy”

Instead of buying an NFT because the price might pump, players will buy digital items for the exact same reason we bought doujinshi and merchandise at RAG-FES twenty years ago: as a badge of belonging, a token of support for a community they love. Paradoxically, the NFT games that yield zero financial returns will be the ones that survive the test of time.

Conclusion: Until We Meet Again in Prontera

The harsh reality exposed by Ragnarok Landverse is that when money takes center stage, a game rots with terrifying, ugly speed. The current dark age, marked by a succession of NFT game closures, is a natural triage of the market.

The raw passion we felt in the streets of Prontera twenty years ago, the firm handshakes shared at offline meetups—that pure communal power has yet to be beautifully wedded to Web3’s promise of digital ownership. Only when the mud of rampant capitalism has been thoroughly drained, and the speculators have deserted the scorched earth, can a true “Second Reality” MMO finally take root. As an old adventurer, I will be quietly waiting for that genuine MMO Renaissance to arrive.