My day exploration in the metaverse
Drop In
As you first log on using your wallet you are greeted with joyful beautiful music and the rustling of a water fountain. Multiple users are dressed in their very best and some are even hovering over you, this is the lobby of Decentraland one of the major players in the building of the metaverse and gaming on web3.
As you continue your journey in the lobby, known as the Genesis portal, you are greeted with other players and three very large bulletin boards with places for you to go. There is the “Classic” board that houses gaming, the “Events” board that has the events, and the “Crowd” board that has the social events and areas.
Sights To See
The part I loved the most was the events aspect of it, I spent some time at the Steve Aoki closing festival dancing my virtual bum off to music that kept cutting off ( probably my internet wasn’t strong enough for the metaverse), during my time grooving I was able to chat with other users and even make some virtual friends.
After I finished my mastery of metaverse club etiquette I set off for the afterparty at Vanilla Ice’s virtual home. It may be true that I will never set foot in the real home of a celebrity but this was very close and highlights one of the major points of the metaverse. A universe that can be made digitally to bring people closer to each other, celebs closer to their fans, friends closer to each other, and businesses closer to more customers. Vanilla Ice’s metaverse pad was a tad — vanilla. I didn’t find anything more than another dancefloor, some NFT and an NFT gallery, and some other neighbors like a tattoo planetarium on the plot of land. There were sections that I was unable to explore but seemed as if they were either for sale or TBD.
Card Dealt
What I did notice on Decentraland was a lot of gambling. There were many places to play poker and lose your ETH or whatever other token you were willing to part with. The games were simple as there was either poker or blackjack but there was also roulette.
After losing a lot of my leftover ETH I decided to check out the map and was surprised to see many areas still available for purchase.
After roaming for a while I decided to go to the classic section of the bulletin boards in Genesis Plaza. I decided on an FPS ( First Person Shooter) the game itself was very laggy, which I once again blame on probably not having the fastest internet possible but not everyone can afford the top tier internet from Xfinity. There were some other games and adventures to be had, some of those games were used to reward users with MANA the coin of Decentraland but I was already too late for those rewards and I felt that if I were trying to do it for real then I would probably not be able to gain much due to my internet.
Game On
After a while, I gave up on gaming and decided to see the Crowd section and what it had to offer. After the game crashing twice and reloading twice I was finally able to join up on the lands that were offered on that bulletin board. I decided on spending my time in the wondermine. The wondermine was created for the user to mine resources and craft “wearables” clothing for your avatar. The idea was novel but after a while it became a tad monotonous and I was ready to head out of the activity.
After a while of dancing, exploring, and mining my time was up and I decided to log off. My final thoughts were that Decentraland has become set up quite nicely for what it wants to become in the future. There are many areas to explore, many places to go, and tons of activities to participate in. The one thing that was a constant hindrance was the laggy controls and the overall lack of seamless play. You definitely need to have top-tier internet to participate and a VR headset would probably go a long way to help in immersion.
Meta-Ready
The metaverse is here with Decentraland and The Sandbox (more on the latter in another article), optimization, and more integration may be needed, but the metaverse indeed is in its early stages and from what I was able to partake in today I am more than thrilled at the possibilities of the platforms of the future, though I myself may not have the funds to purchase land on Decentraland those that do will see themselves poised to be not only a part of history but also very wealthy indeed.