WE BELIEVE IN EOS OF COURSE, IT IS THE MOST PROGRESSIVE BLOCKCHAIN WITH A BIG COMMUNITY

EOS is a third generation Blockchain that has raised over $4 bln in a year-long ICO. In June EOS launched its own main network. Often called an Ethereum killer, EOS is trying to become the de facto standard for creating decentralized applications (DApps). We already have some interesting applications to test out, and many new DApps are scheduled to launch on EOS later this year. One of the first games built on EOS is called Wizards.one. It has a potential to become an EOS version of CryptoKitties (for those who don’t know, CryptoKitties is currently one of the most successful DApps. It even managed to clog the Ethereum network at its peak. We had an opportunity to interview two very important people behind the Wizards.one project, CEO Andrey Durakov, and CTO Kirill Yurkov. In the interview below they take their time to fully explain the concept behind Wizards.one and they share their thoughts about Blockchain technology in general and what it was like working on one of the first EOS projects. Let’s jump into the interview!

Hi and thanks for joining us today. Could you quickly introduce our readers to the Wizards.one platform? Whats it is all about? How can we play it? What things are necessary to get started? 

Short version: Cryptowizards are digital characters. Different and colorful they can be bought, collected, and auctioned. But ultimately they exist to compete in tournaments for real and virtual prizes.

Long version: CryptoWizards are digital, collectible characters built on the EOS blockchain. They can be created (bought) using EOS or Wizard Tokens, but their main goal is to participate in Tournaments.

Each wizard has a number of unique attributes:

1. Battle DNA which affects their battle abilities in fights with other wizards.
2. Appearance DNA which defines their race.
3. Outfit: items Wizard can wear.

Due to such diversity of attributes, there won’t be two identical wizards in the world. Wizards can participate in tournaments in which they fight for rewards: EOS tokens, items, prestige.

Wizards have a distinct appearance and equipment and, accordingly, a different rarity. All the clothes and equipment can be replaced to increase collector’s value of a wizard.

To play the game you need to have EOS mainnet account and Scatter browser plugin installed to sign transactions in the game.

Tell us how you came up with such an idea?

Initially, we’ve been working on the audio-internet letitplay for a long time. But the development for a new blockchain is full of surprises and adventures, so we’ve decided to launch small but fully operational EOS based project first. This project should be technological but also funny.

That’s how the idea was born to create a game about wizards who fight among themselves for treasures – EOS tokens, which will be stacked on tournament contracts.

It’s not a secret that we were inspired by the cryptokitties, which caused a huge clog in the Ethereum network due to the players’ activity for a few days in a December 2017.

It was very interesting to contrast EOS and Ethereum networks especially when the expected performance of EOS should be several orders of magnitude higher than in Ethereum. We will have a chance to check this with our game.

What makes this DApp unique, how it differs from other DApps and centralized competitors?

Wizards is one of the first dapps on the EOS mainnet and this in itself makes the game special for the EOS community.

The game has a lot of different mechanics which are implemented in smart contracts and this is the best guarantee that no one can cheat. Moreover, all the mechanics are opened for review and anyone can check our open source code.

Wizards also have a collectible part of the game. And any collectibles made on a blockchain have much more value than in any other centralized application because the ownership rights for any collectible item is reliably stored in a blockchain and does not depends on any other side outside the blockchain.

What were the main challenges that you encountered while developing this DApp?

EOS is a brand new blockchain and it was pretty hard to be in the first developers’ cohort who builds dapps in a new environment with a new unusual economy. But we are proud to be the first. Our team got a lot of valuable experience that we share with other dev teams.

What was the main reason that you decided to build this game on EOS?

We like EOS blockchain because it is one of the most promising technology in the World. And as I said before we wanted to get the real experience of developing on EOS for our future projects.

Is the supply of the Wizards limited or you can buy as much as you want? Will the price (0.1 EOS) increase in the future?

Creating Wizards is a pretty addictive and funny process, so we decided not to limit players. Initially we were planning to make the creation price based on the market activity but it is too complex and spends a lot of CPU to maintain it, so we decided to keep the price fixed for the start of the game. Maybe we will return to this idea in the future. So hurry up to buy Wizards for a decent price!

Do clothes give wizards any competitive advantage (for instance, provide bonuses in battles)? How do you determine the rarity of each peace?

In the first implementation of battles, items will not affect the result. In future tournaments, it is possible to make items active in battles. Items have more collectible value as the supply is limited.

Item rarity is calculated on the basis of items distribution in the game. The only thing we make manually is defining an item probability to be generated for a new Wizard. Probability could be set only once when we add a new item to the smartcontract and it could not be changed after it’s set. This probability is the main parameter that determines items shop price and also affects the item distribution in the game.

Are there any parts that are stored off-chain?

All the main game info is stored on the blockchain. We use a backend server only to improve user experience and to calculate some statistical featured to show them on the UI.

Could you tell more about the team behind the project? How many people are working on this project, what are their roles, etc?

We are the letitplay.io team (previously known as maugry.com). We have been working together for more than 7 years and previously we were developing mobile apps and some multimedia projects for museums and exhibitions. We started to develop our first blockchain project last year and half of our team is taking part in the Wizards game. They are developers, designers and project managers. About 10 people in total.

Currently, we see that Blockchain DApps do not have many users. What do you think is the main reason for this? Do you think that this could change in the future, and if yes, what factors could help increase DApp popularity?

Basically, blockchain technology is not user-friendly yet. It is pretty hard for an ordinary user to start to operate with blockchain wallets and accounts, especially in EOS because it is a brand new and has some unusual specifics.

For example, during the early birds registrations on Wizards, we gathered 27000 users. Only 7500 of them really have an EOS account. And less than 1000 of them were able to connect to the game using Scatter. You see that funnel is pretty narrow. It is because we are on the very early stage of EOS launch.

Are there any future updates planned, what are your thoughts about the future of the Wizards.one?

We are planning to make a lot of improvements in the game. Actually, we have launched only ⅓ of the game at this point- wizards unboxing and magic shop. Wizards marketplace is coming soon. And battles of course – it is the main part of the game!

What do you think is the future of EOS and the Blockchain technology as a whole?

The blockchain is an amazing technology with a bright future. And we believe in EOS of course. It is the most progressive blockchain with a big community.

All we need is to create more useful and popular dapps and in a few years people will be operating with blockchain based services every day and they event won’t know what services they use backed with a blockchain.

A bright future is coming!