Star Atlas is an upcoming, space-themed massively multiplayer online game (MMO). Similar to Illuvium, Star Atlas combines online gaming with NFTs and thereby covers two promising industries. The game held its first token generation event in August 2021 and began selling its first pieces of the universe in September 2021, causing quite a hype in the crypto community.
The multiplayer Metaverse, which is set in the year 2620, is a strategy game on the Solana blockchain. Solana’s strength lies in its low transaction costs, which makes in-game trading with NFTs affordable.
Items such as spaceships, weapons, and even the crew members that populate the spaceship and thus enable exploration missions are tokenized.
In the expansive game universe, users have the option to create cities and micro-economies as well as DAOs. The game combines a strategy and exploration aspect while various missions provide a real thrill.
The game’s performance will also be crucial for mining the cryptocurrency. The game developers speak of a Play-for-Keys™ experience.
Star Atlas is probably one of the most awaited games on the Solana blockchain. The project is based on the modern Unreal Engine 5 and promises real-time environments in cinema-quality. Star Atlas is a so-called massively multiplayer online game in a futuristic science fiction setting. The year is 2620: three major groups exist, competing for resources and control. These fractions are Humans, Androids, and various alien races.
In Star Atlas, players can explore space as a spaceship captain with a crew, discovering various resources along the way. Once discovered, staked claims can be mined, refined, and traded through a network of commercial mining installations, refineries, and the Universal Marketplace. Exploration should lead to many more surprises in the vastness of space, the developers promise. In this “exploration” mode, the player controls the spaceship mainly from the outside, but he can also switch to the inside and thus watch the crew working or control the vehicle in the cockpit/bridge view via first-person perspective.
Gameplay-wise, Star Atlas combines different genres. On the one hand, it is a strategy game. Players have to develop plans and tactics on how to interact with other players. At the same time, Star Atlas contains the mentioned exploration part, where players explore alien planets. This in turn turns Star Atlas into a flight simulation, as you travel to these planets in a first-person perspective. In addition, role-playing elements are to be included.
Exploration
It is about staking claims to expand one’s empire and establish strategic trade routes. In this mode, the player interacts mainly with a dynamic overview of the mapped and unexplored regions of space via the map view, also known as Star Atlas.
Role Play
The mechanism that drives the entire economy of Star Atlas is mining. The wealth gained from mining creates a couple of income streams that players build a career around. From trading raw and refined ore to transporting cargo to manufacturing retail components, there is a wide range of career opportunities that a player can take on and advance within the specializations of that career.
Space Flight Simulation
During exploration, combat, and various other role-specific game mechanics, the cockpit view gives players the feeling of owning and grounding their chosen ship. This immersive, first-person, seated view allows players to use devices such as flight sticks, throttles, multifunctional control panels, head-tracking hardware, and, most importantly, virtual reality displays on their heads.
The developers introduce numerous blockchain mechanics:
Star Atlas offers two native tokens: the ATLAS token and the POLIS token. Players can use the ATLAS token as in-game currency to purchase assets. On the other hand, Star Atlas also plans to offer an NFT marketplace for trading non-fungible tokens. The Atlas token will then be used to buy NFTs on the NFT marketplace, which in turn will function as ships or equipment in the game, for example.
POLIS, on the other hand, is the platform’s governance token. It is used for all decisions about the development of the project. Token holders have almost full voting rights in the DAO, control over the treasury, and financial participation in the game. POLIS has a fixed supply that cannot be changed. Exception: the DAO decides differently in the future.
While the Star Atlas developers are promising a huge final product; investors and users are becoming more and more frustrated due to the lack of reasonable updates on development. According to the fanbase, genuine insights into the development of the project are missing.
This adds up to the negative buzz that was caused by the repeated network outages of the Solana blockchain network.
Users are expressing their frustration on Reddit:
– Star Atlas will never be released cuz there is nothing to release. Star Atlas isn’t a game, its a scam. And a very specific kind of scam — that economists have a technical term for it — its a ponzi scheme. — reddit.com/r/solana
– They have like 1 or 2 devs with actual experiences making games. The rest are for design or marketing. Not gonna lie, that is why I’m holding off on the project. Seems like they want the money more than the game. Now, I’m open to being wrong, but I don’t see this being a decent game. — reddit.com/r/solana
– I doubt Star Atlas is ever anything more than a buggy small tutorial. — reddit.com/r/solana
The token is not listed on the major crypto trading platforms so far. If you want to profit from Star Atlas success nonetheless and take away some risk, Solana (Star Atlas runs on Solana) could be the token of your choice.
For newcomers, I’d personally recommend crypto.com as an easy-to-use trading platform with a user-friendly interface and step-by-step instructions. Crypto.comoffers a whole ecosystem with a credit card (including crypto-cashback), staking, and many more features. Read more here.
For EU citizens, Bitpanda also provides a well-rounded service including savings plans and even supports stocks and precious metals at low fees. Here you go
For anyone seeking a more advanced platform with lower fees, give BitForex a try!
Solana’s goal is to develop the fastest one-layer solution for decentralized applications (dApps). So far, Ethereum is considered the blockchain of choice for most projects, but it is increasingly criticized due to a lack of scalability. Therefore, several competitors have already emerged, which are considered serious competition for Ethereum. The Solana Blockchain can score with various interesting technologies. With 50,000 transactions per second, Solana is one of the best alternatives for Ethereum.
Read more on Solana here: Solana: Record Growth of the Ethereum Competitor
Star Atlas is certainly one of the most interesting plays in the metaverse crypto niche. Star Atlas aims to take blockchain gaming to the next level, combining the quality of triple-A titles like Red Dead Redemption with the innovation of modern blockchain gaming concepts. Star Atlas is also based on the super-fast Solana blockchain with extremely high throughput. This feature makes it possible to track gameplay interactions between assets in real-time. It also eliminates the need for a traditional server backend for online multiplayer games.
Another important aspect of Star Atlas is the ability to earn virtual assets and exchange them for real-world currency. So far, no blockchain game combines as many different gaming options as Star Atlas.
Still, the game is far away from a production release and the negative sentiment in the community definitely points towards some of the risks. If the developers can meet the expectations though, Star Atlas will be a milestone in game development.
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With much love,
Maximilian
The article includes the personal opinion of the author. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. All data and numbers have been sourced on 13/02/2022. Changes may apply.
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Blogger, Product Manager, tech and financial enthusiast. Minimalist and climber ?
empowerment through data, knowledge, and expertise. subscribe to DDIntel at https://ddintel.datadriveninvestor.com
