Hello fellow Hivians!

Today I'd like to talk about the newest kid on the block in the NFT gaming scene, Thetan Areana. Now right off the back one of the most impressive feats for this game is hitting 1 million+ active players on day 1 of full release. These are insane numbers. For perspective, Splinterlands has been live for 3+ years and has yet to break 1M active users.

Game Overview

But what even is Thetan Arena? In short, Thetan Arena is a fast paced 4v4 MOBA brawler that holds nothing back. Players select between 3 hero types (Huntsmen, Tank, Assassin) and play 1 of 2 currently available game modes (tower defense and team deathmatch) which both pits players against each other in short high intensity fights.

Developers

Thetan Arena has been developed by Wolffun games which is studio out of Singapore that has previously focused on online mobile pvp games. The studio was founded in 2014 and has published 2 major titles prior to Thetan Arena: “Tank Raid Online” in 2017 and "Heroes’ Strike" which seems to have been released in 2018 and has had continued updates since with the last major update back in June 2021.

To my understanding Wolffun games currently has 10 staff members including CEO Khanh Nguyen who previously was with the company Bikasolution. Both of their games are well rated on the Apple and Google app stores. To me it seems this team is well positioned to create a well functioning game that can pass IOS development scrutiny which gives them a serious advantage given mobile gaming in my opinion is one of the hardest barriers for traditional developers to get into. There is only so much space on a 6" screen after all.

State of Development

As mentioned previously, this game JUST had their full release on 11/29/2021 which means just about everyone is just getting their feet wet and the NFT hero market is going crazy.

That said, if you looked into the previous games I mentioned you'll have noticed something a bit fishy about Heroes' Strike. If you look at it even briefly you'll quickly find that the game is more or less identical to Thetan Arena, even the "heroes" used. This means, Thetan is more of a refreshed re-release with a newly re-worked economy (ie blockchain integrated) than an entirely new game. There are certainly mixed thoughts about this and personally it does give me a few bad vibes but nothing that obviously stopped me from diving in.

You can check out their roadmap here but the TLDR is that 2022 should bring us a new game mode (42 player Battle Royale), Guilds, New Cosmetics, Pets, Player Staking, Hero Rentals, and so much more.

Thetan Gems and Thetan Coin

Thetan Arena utilizes 2 primary tokens and a 3rd market token at the time of this article (Thetan Gems, Thetan Coin, and WBNB). The two Thetan coins both launched in Q3 of 2021 and utilize the BSC smart contract network. However, unfortunately for me, given the use of BSC its pre-sale and whitelist was out of my reach and largely the coins still are to some degree until Binance.US decides to finally accept my KYC verification.

Thanks to Hive however the secondary market has come available to me. Given Hive is all about freedom and choice it hosts most of the major ETH, BSC, etc coins out there. As such, using TribalDex and Bittrex I was able to convert fiat to Hive and then Hive to BUSD and BNB. From there I managed to use Pancakeswap to convert to WBNB which is the preferred token of choice for the Thetan Marketplace.

Anyways back to the coins...
Thetan Gems ($THG) are effectively the governance token for the game and ultimately will serve similar purposes to SPS (Splinterlands governance token). As of today this token has only a single use case (leveling a hero) but like SPS there are plenty of utility functions lined up for the future.

Thetan Coins ($THC) are an unlimited token (ie no supply cap) that is earned via playing the game. THC is the predominate token that players are currently attempting to earn and that is accomplished in one of two ways as of today.

1. Via the f2p Season Pass: As each player ranks up they are given various rewards which include power (also used to level heroes) and THC. Seasons currently reset each quarter and hitting max rank is worth approximately 800 THC though it seems most players are struggling to even get out of Bronze (1 bad teammate is a huge detriment).
2. Via playing games with an NFT hero. This is where the real profit is as of today. Checkout the next section for details.

You can read more about both coins and the general structure of the economy in their whitepaper

Cost of entry / Profitability

Simply put, to earn anything in this game you'll need to be extremely talented or shell out for an NFT. NFTs currently can be obtained via purchasing a gatcha box from the store for 1000 or 2000 THC ($700-common $1400-epic as of this post) or buying a hero on the secondary market with WBNB.

Heroes each have differing rarities and skins that impart an additional level of rarity and utility. The higher the rarity of both directly impact a Heroes ability to earn. As of today, each hero has a set number of battles which it is eligible to earn THC from. After those battles are used, although usable, the Hero is exhausted and will no longer earn anything. To continue earning a player would need to buy a new hero or upgrade (which currently isn't cost efficient).

To give you an idea of the profitability of each type of hero I've utilized put together a chart assuming a steady cost of THC (as of right now $0.70) and some of the finer details you'll find in the whitepaper.

As you can see, if you are able to buy a fresh hero for under $600 regardless of type you should make profit assuming you have a 50% win rate and THC is stable.

EDIT: As of 12/1/21 Wolffun Games and Thetan Arena has passed the 2M player mark and to celebrate an NFT flash sale was announced. You can read more on Wolffun's post on Facebook but the TLDR is as follows:
1. Accounts registered before 4PM UTC Dec 1st 2021 will receive a reward of 20 PP
2. Starting 12PM UTC Friday Dec 3rd 2021, for 48 hours, all accounts will be able to purchase up to 2 hero boxes at significantly reduced prices: Common Box 150 BUSD, Epic Box 300 BUSD.

This announcement absolutely decimated the secondary market and also briefly tanked TCH to around $0.60.

One last note: There is proposed functionality for exhausted heroes going forward so they won't be completely useless as some people consider them. This may represent a good buying opportunity.

Thoughts

Personally I find the game itself to be quite enjoyable and hopefully as player skills improve the game will be a little less frustrating. Give me a shout if you find me in the arena!

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Disclaimers

Thetan Arena images owned by Wolffun Games. All other images and content owned by me unless otherwise noted.

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Helpful Details

Monster Curator
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