After way too many hours grinding Axie Classic - first as a scholar, then assisting a manager, then finally managing a small group of scholars myself - I temporarily "retired" from the game around the time the Origin alpha was launched.
**At the time, it seemed likely that Axie Origin would become a great game - far better than Classic. **
Yet it seemed like there would be at least several months of alpha testing and tweaking to get it there. I knew after all that time in Classic - 500+ hours, at least - I'd be burnt out if I started grinding the ultra-early alpha release of Origin. So, I waited.
Fast-forward to Season Zero and the "crypto gaming twitter" world explodes with everybody posting excitedly about their crafting results. Season Zero is here and the "SLP economy" has finally shifted out of Classic and into Origin. Now, when players craft runes and charms (Axie-buffing equip-ables for PvP), they are really excited.
It's not only crafting - the ranked ladder climb is all over Twitter too. With proper tiers to climb through, the Axie Origin grind is much more enjoyable than what we dealt with in Classic. Tier systems >>> raw MMR.
After seeing enough of this, I decided to get in on the action.
Now, Axie Origin is largely pay2win in the sense that the better your Runes and Charms are, the stronger your team is going to be. The Axies still matter a lot, but that isn't the limiting factor for most players.
No, it's the runes. For example, Bloodlust, one of the strongest Aqua runes, is an Epic rarity and commands a high price on the secondary market.
Of course I bought one lol but even for me, I only wanted one - buying multiple of this would be too expensive, I'm good with just one.
Then you have charms. Each of your three Axies needs six charms, and some of these can be quite expensive. Using Aqua again, since that is what I am most familiar - Bubble Paste is a very expensive charm. Considering you need up to 6 of a variety of charms for each Axie, and can even use multiple Bubble Paste on one Axie, this is quite expensive.
I decided to go for a more affordable option, scooping up several of these HP-boosting charms instead.
At the end of the day, in-game monetization is what it is. Nobody really cares if you do or don't like it -it seems clear that we all choose what games we want to play based on our personal preferences. For me, I'm ok with the monetization level in Axie - especially since these items are NFTs and may retain some of the value (although as the meta changes, they likely lose value).
One thing's for sure - if you try to free-to-play Axie Origin, you will have a substantially underpowered team for the PvP ladder. It is what it is.
The gameplay is where Axie Origin shines. Somebody in my stream chat said it best yesterday, stopping in for their first Axie Origin stream after previously seeing Axie Classic back in the day… "Wow, they sure did a 0–100 on the graphics."
Axie Origin looks better, plays better, and is more appealing to people in general than Axie Classic. It's not even close.
To be honest, I knew this would happen - that in retrospect, anybody who thought we needed to "Save Axie v2!!" back at the start of the summer was crazy. No matter how much nostalgia and time/energy a lot of us invested into Axie Classic, Origin is a fundamentally better game.
It's not even that Axie Classic was bad, it was just the awkward growing-up phase of Axie. Plenty of great franchises started this way:
Axie Classic is probably more like Super Mario Bros. 1 than King's Field 1 - it's a game that has a lot of good things about it, and imo it could even be supported as a legacy competitive format in years to come. Still, the pattern is clear - for ambitious gaming projects, you need to iterate and create sequel after sequel, pushing forward relentlessly, to truly achieve your vision.
It took decades to go from the early games and iterate up to masterpieces like Elden Ring or Skyrim. Axie, imo, is on a similar decades-long-trajectory.
Rather than try to describe the gameplay in this article - discussing gameplay in text blog form is abysmal, tbh - you can watch a few minutes of the livestream where I grinded with my Bloodlust Triple Aqua team. I think seeing the game in action will give you a good idea of why I'm optimistic for the future of Axie.
If you want to learn more about Axie Origin, the best thing you can do is try to play it yourself. While high-end PvP can get expensive, the tutorial and early game experience for a free player is very fun and accessible.
It's worth taking an hour on a quiet afternoon and playing some Axie Origin. How often can you play a video game and call it research?
What do you think about Axie Origin? Do you believe the game has a bright future, or do you like many think that Axie is Dead?
