Clarence bought cards from every expansion, like clockwork every four months when they were hyped and subsequently released. He became proud of his collection, feeling that he was secure as one of the more formidable players in the game. He thought a couple times about going pro, but when he mentioned that idea to his wife, she shot it down quickly.
He still loved opening the packs, but Clarence longed for more. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for, but he was satisfied with the game, which continued to still occupy his time. He waded through Reddit threads like this one, called “How Much Money Have You Spent on Hearthstone?”, and articles such as “Hearthstone has Become a $400-a-Year Game” Polygon.com December 2017, and Clarence began to wonder if the game would be an endless money sink with no return.
Finally, once Clarence got wind of this VICE article, which describes Blizzard allegedly suspending one of their pros for defending the Hong Kong protests, he decided to cut ties and stop playing. He wanted to take up watercolor painting anyway.
Clarence had some hope of selling his account so that he could get some kind of return on all the time and energy, but according to everything he read, that was an extremely difficult process. He even attempted to sell the account for $700 to a gentleman that he met on a message board, but unfortunately because of the lack of security in such a transaction, he ended up with his identity stolen and spending another $2000 on legal fees.
Now Clarence has no game and no rewards, on top of a heart full of regret for wasted time and money.
Abigail amassed a substantial collection of Splinterlands cards over the first year of playing. She loved playing each day to earn various piles of REWARDS. She was even early enough in the game to have quite a few Alpha cards, which had increased substantially in value since when Abigail found them in the Booster Packs.
Suddenly one day, Abigail's health took a turn for the worse when she was diagnosed with an acute allergy to all electronic devices. She could not hold a phone without sneezing, and she could not be near a computer without quickly developing runny, watering eyes. Sadly, Abigail knew this meant that she had to stop playing Splinterlands. There was no other way.
Donning a HazMat suit, Abigail sat down at the computer for one last Splinterlands hurrah. Much to her surprise, selling the cards was just as much fun as playing the game. Abigail was able to sell a bunch of cards in the first day, many of which earned her a healthy profit. She sold off roughly 60% of her collection in the first week and she could not believe how much money had been generated.
When Abigail came back to Splinterlands some weeks later, she found that nearly all of her cards had sold on the p2p market. She was so thrilled that she decided to once again don the HazMat suit and make some more moves on the market.
Now that Abigail had liquidated all her Splinterlands cards, she was ready to take the HIVE and Dark Energy Crystals she had generated and buy more cards. Since the last time she played, Abigail had heard of the Peakmonsters.com Rental Market, where she could lease out cards to set up a residual income for herself. So she went on a massive shopping spree, mainly stocking up on the cards she thought were "undervalued." She then began renting these cards to others players for pennies each day. The pennies quickly added up.
So while Abigail no longer plays Splinterlands, her cards are NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that do the work for her. As long as she holds the private keys to her Splinterlands account, Abigail will never stop benefitting from Splinterlands.
