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I am very proud to be the first Korean to be selected for @ForbesWeb3 Inner Circle.
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ZAMA_APPLE🇰🇷
Verified account AP Collective@eth_apple
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Once again, MapleStory Universe has completely fucked up the boss balancing.
My party members have been practicing day and night to take down the new boss released today.
Entry requirement: Players who have spent over $70,000 in real money.
We literally assembled the strongest players across every single server, and even we can't beat this ridiculous bullshit.
WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR BALANCE TEAM EVEN DOING?
You have over 20 years of MapleStory history to learn from, and you STILL somehow manage to fuck up the same shit over and over again.
How incompetent do you have to be?
My party members have been practicing day and night to take down the new boss released today.
Entry requirement: Players who have spent over $70,000 in real money.
We literally assembled the strongest players across every single server, and even we can't beat this ridiculous bullshit.
WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR BALANCE TEAM EVEN DOING?
You have over 20 years of MapleStory history to learn from, and you STILL somehow manage to fuck up the same shit over and over again.
How incompetent do you have to be?
Apologies all but we need around 2 more hours of downtime.View quoted post on X
A Few Thoughts on Web3 Gaming, Which Nobody Seems to Care About Anymore.
> I've been playing MapleStory Universe for 1.5 years.
> My total playtime is close to 3,000 hours (5.5 hours/day).
> I'm currently ranked 33rd out of 1,341,744 players overall
So I think I've earned the right to share a few thoughts about this industry, at least as an actual Web3 gamer.
Recently, I saw @yellowpantherx and @inhuman arguing about the collapse of Web3 gaming and whether KOLs should be held responsible.
I've known both of them for a long time, and I really don't want to see them fighting. Personally, I can understand where both sides are coming from.
1. Are KOLs responsible for the failure of Web3 games?
Game studios worked with KOLs to attract more users and get people interested in their games.
I don't think a KOL necessarily needs to spend thousands of hours playing a game to be qualified to promote it.
Think about food YouTubers. They make food look delicious and entertaining, which makes people want to try it themselves.
Gaming KOLs play a similar role by creating content that makes people interested in trying a game.
Of course, how much someone has actually played a game can affect their credibility, but it isn't the only factor that determines marketing performance.
And yes, if someone lied while promoting a project or knowingly covered up fraudulent activities, they absolutely deserve criticism. The same goes for someone pretending to have extensive experience with a game they've never actually played.
But blaming KOLs for promoting a game that ended up failing years later doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.
KOLs have responsibilities too, but the responsibility for building a sustainable game ultimately belongs to the team developing and operating it.
2. So why did so many Web3 games fail?
I believe Web3 gaming had structural problems with its economic model from the very beginning.
The Web3 gaming industry has practically collapsed, and many people who previously promoted games or created gaming content have pivoted to other sectors like AI and TCG.
After playing countless Web3 games, one thing became pretty clear to me.
There were far more people trying to make money from games than people who actually wanted to enjoy playing them.
Think about the concept of Play to Earn.
Getting paid to play games obviously sounds attractive. But if making money is the main reason someone starts playing, why would they stick around once the money stops coming in?
People who join for rewards leave when those rewards shrink. When token prices drop, even more people leave, making the economics worse for those who remain.
Eventually, a game's popularity becomes more dependent on token prices and incentives than on whether the game is actually fun.
And this isn't something that happens only in GameFi.
Recently, MegaETH's TVL reportedly dropped from around $245M to roughly $11M following the end of its incentive program, a decline of nearly 96%.
I think it's a good example of how quickly capital attracted by incentives can leave.
The thing is, real gamers are already used to spending money on games.
I wouldn't be surprised if the members of my MapleStory Universe guild have collectively spent over $1M on the game by now.
Spending money on games is nothing unusual for us.
We willingly spend money to get better equipment, strengthen our characters, and compete with other players.
Of course, it hurts when the value of our items drops. I feel that too.
But when I think about why we spend thousands of hours playing, there are things that matter much more than money.
The desire to climb the rankings, earn recognition from other players, and experience the satisfaction of competing alongside our guildmates.
Even in games, people want recognition and status.
That's why we're willing to spend the money we earn in real life on virtual experiences.
Meanwhile, many Web3 games focused more on telling users how much money they could earn than on giving them reasons to spend money in the game.
As a result, they attracted plenty of people looking to earn rewards, but not enough people willing to buy those rewards and spend money within the ecosystem.
From what I've experienced playing MapleStory Universe, its economy also feels heavily dependent on the top 1% of players buying the tokens and items farmed and sold by the other 99%.
I do feel there's a significant imbalance between players who spend money and players who participate mainly to earn it.
I wonder how long an economy like that can realistically last.
For a game economy to survive, someone has to keep spending money.
But if most players are there to make money, where is all that money supposed to come from?
And there's another question I've kept asking myself throughout the past year and a half of playing MapleStory Universe.
Why does this game actually need to be on the blockchain?
I still haven't found a convincing answer.
Compared to the original MapleStory, there have been very few moments where I felt blockchain technology significantly improved my gaming experience.
The one area where I genuinely saw potential was in probability-based enhancement and item systems.
If players could independently verify whether the published enhancement probabilities were accurate and whether the outcomes had been manipulated, that would be genuinely valuable.
Blockchain technology could help make those systems more transparent.
But concepts like digital sovereignty, true asset ownership, and interoperability, which Web3 gaming projects have been promoting for years, still don't mean that much to me as a player.
I just think most gamers care more about how useful an item is, how rare it is, and how badly other players want it than whether its ownership is recorded on a blockchain.
If the game itself isn't fun, how much does having that ownership recorded on-chain really matter?
I do believe blockchain technology will eventually play an important role in the gaming industry.
Maybe one day it will become so common that players won't even think about whether they're playing a blockchain game.
But based on everything I've experienced so far, I think we're still a long way from that point.
3. Maybe Web3 gaming arrived too early, just like the metaverse and NFTs.
Looking back, I think we expected too much from Web3 gaming too soon.
Game studios spent so much time explaining how much money players could earn, but often failed to give them a convincing reason to keep playing.
I still spend several hours a day playing MapleStory Universe.
Even when token prices fall and my items lose value, I still log in.
Because I genuinely enjoy the game.
I understand Yellowpanther's disappointment, and I also agree with some of Inhuman's criticism regarding the responsibilities of KOLs.
But I don't think attacking each other over what happened in the past is going to fix the problems facing Web3 gaming.
We all believed in the future of Web3 gaming at some point, and we all contributed to this industry in our own ways.
At the very least, I don't want to see these two fighting.
> I've been playing MapleStory Universe for 1.5 years.
> My total playtime is close to 3,000 hours (5.5 hours/day).
> I'm currently ranked 33rd out of 1,341,744 players overall
So I think I've earned the right to share a few thoughts about this industry, at least as an actual Web3 gamer.
Recently, I saw @yellowpantherx and @inhuman arguing about the collapse of Web3 gaming and whether KOLs should be held responsible.
I've known both of them for a long time, and I really don't want to see them fighting. Personally, I can understand where both sides are coming from.
1. Are KOLs responsible for the failure of Web3 games?
Game studios worked with KOLs to attract more users and get people interested in their games.
I don't think a KOL necessarily needs to spend thousands of hours playing a game to be qualified to promote it.
Think about food YouTubers. They make food look delicious and entertaining, which makes people want to try it themselves.
Gaming KOLs play a similar role by creating content that makes people interested in trying a game.
Of course, how much someone has actually played a game can affect their credibility, but it isn't the only factor that determines marketing performance.
And yes, if someone lied while promoting a project or knowingly covered up fraudulent activities, they absolutely deserve criticism. The same goes for someone pretending to have extensive experience with a game they've never actually played.
But blaming KOLs for promoting a game that ended up failing years later doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.
KOLs have responsibilities too, but the responsibility for building a sustainable game ultimately belongs to the team developing and operating it.
2. So why did so many Web3 games fail?
I believe Web3 gaming had structural problems with its economic model from the very beginning.
The Web3 gaming industry has practically collapsed, and many people who previously promoted games or created gaming content have pivoted to other sectors like AI and TCG.
After playing countless Web3 games, one thing became pretty clear to me.
There were far more people trying to make money from games than people who actually wanted to enjoy playing them.
Think about the concept of Play to Earn.
Getting paid to play games obviously sounds attractive. But if making money is the main reason someone starts playing, why would they stick around once the money stops coming in?
People who join for rewards leave when those rewards shrink. When token prices drop, even more people leave, making the economics worse for those who remain.
Eventually, a game's popularity becomes more dependent on token prices and incentives than on whether the game is actually fun.
And this isn't something that happens only in GameFi.
Recently, MegaETH's TVL reportedly dropped from around $245M to roughly $11M following the end of its incentive program, a decline of nearly 96%.
I think it's a good example of how quickly capital attracted by incentives can leave.
The thing is, real gamers are already used to spending money on games.
I wouldn't be surprised if the members of my MapleStory Universe guild have collectively spent over $1M on the game by now.
Spending money on games is nothing unusual for us.
We willingly spend money to get better equipment, strengthen our characters, and compete with other players.
Of course, it hurts when the value of our items drops. I feel that too.
But when I think about why we spend thousands of hours playing, there are things that matter much more than money.
The desire to climb the rankings, earn recognition from other players, and experience the satisfaction of competing alongside our guildmates.
Even in games, people want recognition and status.
That's why we're willing to spend the money we earn in real life on virtual experiences.
Meanwhile, many Web3 games focused more on telling users how much money they could earn than on giving them reasons to spend money in the game.
As a result, they attracted plenty of people looking to earn rewards, but not enough people willing to buy those rewards and spend money within the ecosystem.
From what I've experienced playing MapleStory Universe, its economy also feels heavily dependent on the top 1% of players buying the tokens and items farmed and sold by the other 99%.
I do feel there's a significant imbalance between players who spend money and players who participate mainly to earn it.
I wonder how long an economy like that can realistically last.
For a game economy to survive, someone has to keep spending money.
But if most players are there to make money, where is all that money supposed to come from?
And there's another question I've kept asking myself throughout the past year and a half of playing MapleStory Universe.
Why does this game actually need to be on the blockchain?
I still haven't found a convincing answer.
Compared to the original MapleStory, there have been very few moments where I felt blockchain technology significantly improved my gaming experience.
The one area where I genuinely saw potential was in probability-based enhancement and item systems.
If players could independently verify whether the published enhancement probabilities were accurate and whether the outcomes had been manipulated, that would be genuinely valuable.
Blockchain technology could help make those systems more transparent.
But concepts like digital sovereignty, true asset ownership, and interoperability, which Web3 gaming projects have been promoting for years, still don't mean that much to me as a player.
I just think most gamers care more about how useful an item is, how rare it is, and how badly other players want it than whether its ownership is recorded on a blockchain.
If the game itself isn't fun, how much does having that ownership recorded on-chain really matter?
I do believe blockchain technology will eventually play an important role in the gaming industry.
Maybe one day it will become so common that players won't even think about whether they're playing a blockchain game.
But based on everything I've experienced so far, I think we're still a long way from that point.
3. Maybe Web3 gaming arrived too early, just like the metaverse and NFTs.
Looking back, I think we expected too much from Web3 gaming too soon.
Game studios spent so much time explaining how much money players could earn, but often failed to give them a convincing reason to keep playing.
I still spend several hours a day playing MapleStory Universe.
Even when token prices fall and my items lose value, I still log in.
Because I genuinely enjoy the game.
I understand Yellowpanther's disappointment, and I also agree with some of Inhuman's criticism regarding the responsibilities of KOLs.
But I don't think attacking each other over what happened in the past is going to fix the problems facing Web3 gaming.
We all believed in the future of Web3 gaming at some point, and we all contributed to this industry in our own ways.
At the very least, I don't want to see these two fighting.
I'm not sure what this inhuman guy is on, but might need some of it.View quoted post on X
Self-proclaiming holiness and consistently acting righteous is problematic on its own. Inhuman was likely charging high rates too.
Yes, I've worked with gaming partners to promote their games. I've always disclose and my community knows it.
There was a demand and I supplied some of it, what is wrong with it? If price was the issue, I was charging lower as I'm not based in the USA.
I've always worked hard for my content and going the extra mile for my partners. Posting content is just one, but I deliver with conversion. I want to emphasize that not all games get decent conversion, because of the game itself and product not being appealing itself. I can only do my part.
I did not "drain" marketing budgets. The games failing and not working out, is out of my control.
The thing I cannot wrap around is saying... I'm not a gamer... like this is just WTF.
I've played games since I was young, from super mario, pokemon, to old school runescape and league of legends. I may not be the best gamer, but I have my fair share of hours in games.
Lastly, I can only respect people who gives respect to me.
You are just full of shit, inhuman.
Hmm... According to the user, he only used a single mobile phone.
But even if we assume LBank's claim is true and he traded using 50 different devices, what exactly would be the problem?
He was simply opening and closing positions on major cryptocurrencies like $NEAR and $BTC through normal trading activity. What rule did he actually violate?
I still don't understand.
Even if someone logs in and trades from multiple devices, would other exchanges freeze their funds for that reason alone?
First, I'd like to offer LBank some sincere advice.
Replace your marketing team immediately.
Almost every comment defending LBank looks like it comes from either a bot account or someone paid to promote the exchange.
You don't have to be a genius to notice this. Anyone in the crypto space can see right through it.
Instead of flooding the comments with fake-looking support, why not address the actual issue and provide some real evidence?
But even if we assume LBank's claim is true and he traded using 50 different devices, what exactly would be the problem?
He was simply opening and closing positions on major cryptocurrencies like $NEAR and $BTC through normal trading activity. What rule did he actually violate?
I still don't understand.
Even if someone logs in and trades from multiple devices, would other exchanges freeze their funds for that reason alone?
First, I'd like to offer LBank some sincere advice.
Replace your marketing team immediately.
Almost every comment defending LBank looks like it comes from either a bot account or someone paid to promote the exchange.
You don't have to be a genius to notice this. Anyone in the crypto space can see right through it.
Instead of flooding the comments with fake-looking support, why not address the actual issue and provide some real evidence?
We didn’t want to get into a back-and-forth on X, but we owe our community clarity on what actually happened.💛View quoted post on X
To keep it brief:
We already allowed the user to withdraw 100% of their deposit before the user ever posted about it.
A lot of people have called this user a “beginner”.
We’ll share just one detail from our review: the user traded across nearly 50 devices, all on the same account. There’s more, but we won’t list everything here.
To everyone else: We’re guessing most of you don’t have 50 phones.
