League of Kingdoms - An MMO Strategy game where you fight for dominion

Introduction

League of Kingdoms is one of the world’s first blockchain MMORTS games and is available on multiple platforms including web app, IOS and Android. It has some resemblance to Red Alert or Travian if you are into the RTS genre. Players build their own Kingdoms by gathering resources, upgrade their buildings and plots, and finally build armies to venture outside their kingdoms to battle monsters, other players, or team up together to tackle more advanced content similar to raids in a MMO setting.

The game is free to play but has microtransactions and also has blockchain integration featuring land NFTs and more.

Gameplay

In League of Kingdoms you first start with your castle. You start by gathering resources to build up your plots and buildings. 

There are 4 main resources: food, lumber, food and gold.

Build, Farm, Upgrade

Your kingdom consists of the inner castle where there are a number of buildings that can be upgraded to unlock higher level buildings or progress your technology tree.

Outside the castle are some plots in the field. These are plots where you can construct resource gathering nodes or barracks to build your army. Note the plots are limited in number but will unlock as your castle levels up, so this is where you need to make decisions on how to utilize the limited spaces effectively.

The tutorial will guide you upon starting the game for the first time and will take you through the process loop of farming, building and upgrading your kingdom. In addition to the main resources there’s also an auxiliary resource called Crystal which can be used to boost your gameplay. This can be bought through in-game microtransactions via fiat credit card payments.

Fighting Monsters (PVE)

Once you get to a comfortable size in your Kingdom and have built an army, you can visit the field which is the world outside of your Kingdom. Besides other players’ plots you might find monsters on the field where you can defeat for loot:

Monsters provide resources that cannot be farmed inside your Kingdom and PVE is an essential mechanic for players to progress in the game.

PVP — attacking and looting other players’ kingdoms

If you feel like going the competitive route, you can also attack other human players’ kingdoms on the maps. This is the traditional 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) genre gameplay and can be very exciting and hectic. Be sure to watch out for their strengths and whether there are alliances formed by nearby opponents before you launch an attack, or your invasion attempts can backfire.

Upcoming Drago NFT sale and P2E elements

As an effort to add further P2E elements to the game in the roadmap, League of Kingdoms is planning to introduce Drago NFTs in the game. While this is optional and free-to-play players can carry on without purchasing a Drago, this adds a powerful companion in your journey.

Sale of Drago NFTs is expected to be in May 2022 and this will have to be purchased with the governance token LOKA. The price is yet to be determined and the Dragos come in two tiers: normal or legendary. They also come with 5 different elemental types and can be crossbred to spawn offsprings.

The P2E element introduced by Drago NFTs is that playing the game with a Drago will be the sole means to earn the DST token which is an in-game currency that can be redeemed for other resources or improving your assets. New game modes will also be introduced on top of the Dragos to further add variety to the gameplay from just being a powerful companion to your armies.

Team

League of Kingdoms is developed by NOD Games which is a Korean blockchain gaming studio. Its leadership and prominent members have years of experience in building mobile games and are taking that expertise to create entertaining gaming experience with blockchain interactions. Development for League of Kingdoms started as early as 2020 and this goes to show NOD Games as one of the earlier entrants into blockchain gaming.

Key members of the team are the CEO Chanki Lee, CTO Steve Hwang and Chief Game Designer Edgar Kim. The team and its software engineers have previously held roles at major game studios such as Electronic Arts and famous Korean game studio NEXON and have looked into integrating blockchain in gaming back in the days where smart contracts were not yet popularized.

Partnerships

Famed to be the first MMORTS blockchain game, League of Kingdoms has seen a lot of support from investors to fuel its journey into web3 gaming. The game announced a $3M token round led by crypto VC Hashed and including an all star lineup of investors such as a16z, Sequoia, Blocktower, Binance Labs and Yield Guild Games. Later in Jan 2022 its own governance token LOKA also debuted on Binance as part of its launchpad ICO.

Since its investor rounds were announced there has been a stream of partnerships from other players in the industry. This includes Polygon Studios powering some of the game’s resource NFTs and in-game skins, and P2E metaverse guilds such as IndiGG and Avocado DAO. These partnerships leverage the strong player metrics League of Kingdoms has accumulated up to this date and provides an opportunity to expand to other communities.

Assets & Ecosystem

The governance token of League of Kingdoms is LOKA. The supply is capped at 500,000,000 tokens.

The token had a public sale on Binance launchpad in Jan 2022. At the time 5% of the total token supply was sold and the launchpad ICO price was $0.16. Before the launchpad a private round took place and 6.2% of the supply was sold at $0.1 to raise $3.1 million for the project.

Tokenomics of LOKA is depicted in the following infographic and has relatively linear emissions over 5 years until full issuance.

The LOKA governance token is expected to have the following utilities:

• Staking of the token to earn yield. Staking is due to be available in Q2 2022

• As rewards from landowners transitioning from previously DAI or BUSD rewards

• Future governance votes or proposals

• For acquiring the Drago NFTs coming in 1H 2022

• To purchase skins and in-game resources in the shop as an alternative to fiat micro-transactions

As a transition into a play-to-earn blockchain game, with the upcoming release of Drago NFTs into the game a secondary token called Dragon Soul Token (DST) will be introduced into the ecosystem. DST is expected to be an inflationary token that is only minted organically in the game via interacting with in-game content and will be the utility token for improving the NFT assets in the game such as the Dragos.

Other game assets that can be tradable as tokens are land NFTs on Ethereum mainnet, skins NFTs on Polygon network, and also resource tokens available as NFTs on both ETH mainnet and Polygon. These can be browsed and purchased on secondary marketplaces such as OpenSea.

How to get started

League of Kingdoms is free to play and is in the process of adding play-to-earn features since the introduction of its governance token LOKA and upcoming Drago NFTs. 

To access the game, simply visit https://www.leagueofkingdoms.com/. The game is also available on mobile on Android or IOS devices.

Upon finishing the load screen you will be prompted to login via one of the SSO methods such as Google, Apple, or Facebook. Alternatively you could register an account via email or play on a Guest session.

After signing in, you will be taken through a brief introductory cinematic before being directed to your own kingdom. Then the game would guide you through the basics of building up your kingdom and you are off to explore on your own.

And that’s it! We will have to say we’re very impressed by League of Kingdoms in terms of delivering a smooth onboarding experience that’s very easy for new players to get into. The app and the web game are smooth and its tutorial is intuitive to follow. All the UX controls and the wallet linkage feel naturally integrated into the game and its resemblance to some other mobile game titles with a large amount of micro-transaction options allow for it to be easily monetized, which can be win-win for players and also LOKA holders.