I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of the Splinterlands team when it comes to the land expansion of the game. People are getting anxious (myself included) and want to see land, and the team ends up repeating the same responses because progress is what it is...
At first, it was by choice, to release SPS before the land expansion. And that took land out of the drawing board for quite some time.
But then, land slowly got back into their attention, together with other products that were worked on at the same time.
When they did that, they discovered that land expansion is a far more complex task than initially estimated.
They have broken it down into several phases:
- Prerequisites
1.1. Tech Modernization Phase 1
1.2. Non-Card Market - Land Phase 1
- Land Phase 2+
Of the elements described above, Tech Modernization Phase 1 is the furthest into development. But its rollout was attempted two times already (from what I know), and each time they had to take it down because something wasn't quite right. The most recent time was during yesterday's planned maintenance.
From the information shared during town halls, I could see this is giving them unexpected issues and they would be more than happy to finally roll it out and move on with it.
And the pressure is high since Tech Modernization is a prerequisite for land expansion. From my understanding, it is also a prerequisite for Non-Card Market too, so that will not be released before Tech Modernization is.
It's like 3 trains using the same railway line and the one ahead has the engine break. And the engine used to replace it breaks too.
I'm not sure how this is going to affect plans the second time Tech Modernization was taken down after yesterday's rollout, but before that happened the team still wanted to release Land Phase 1 until the end of the year, which is two months away.
That doesn't mean the gameplay for land, in phase 1 we should expect:
- revealing and converting Land claims into Land deeds
- surveying Land deed NFTs and revealing their properties
- buying and selling Land NFTs
- QA testing
According to the roadmap, that is still slated for Q4 this year:
Although by the looks of it, this page hasn't been updated in a while.
The land game mechanics is expected in phase 2 and after, and that will be in 2023, without more narrow details on "wen", which is understandable with so many loose ends.
What I don't see on this roadmap that was previously on the radar was Tech Modernization Phase 2. It looks like issues with Phase 1 might've pushed it further into the future.