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What is this migration and why is it happening?

Greetings everyone and welcome to another Gods Unchained post, those of you who have been following Gods Unchained in discord and on-chain are aware the Gods unchained is going through a migration from IMX's "mainnet" (which is a layer 2 of ETH) to zkevm. Which is overall good news, it means that Gods Unchained isn't being COMPLETELY abandoned (fuck yeah, more IV drip live support baybeeeeee). It will also lead to more advancements for the game on the blockchain side including things like: sealed packs that are tradable, the chest migration, batch forging and more. For more details on this check out GU's official post here and @CodeRad's radical post summing up the ins and outs of migrations here.

What should happen next? What if it does not?

What SHOULD happen next is all of our cards transfer over and development begins on the new chain and progress can FINALLY be made on the game itself. The fact of the matter is that this may not be the case, and in fact the game itself might not get worked on. We may still see bugs, no mobile improvements, spaghetti code without any rewrite in sight, and a plethora of "soons" said to the playerbase ad nauseum. One of those "soons" being FINALLY closing the API to allow for creative gameplay and surprises. Also the rampant cheating and exploiting happening in the game is supposedly going to be addressed (hopefully). If there is no discernable progress on any of these items after migration within a fair timeframe I don't see folks "enduring for the sake of enduring" much longer. Or at least the real gamers, extractors and cheaters might stay to maximize profit/ego but people playing for enjoyment or strategic matchups will leave over time (we've already seen a mass exodus of these folks happen as they get replaced by extractors AKA "how do I get NFT, how do I earn token? How do I make the most money with the least effort/investment?" folks as oppose to "how do I play this game, what decks are fun? what cards should I use in my deck?" folks).

Fees, Gosh Darn Fees: A Double Edged Sword

The new chain will have gas fees paid in IMX (take this moment to groan, I know I sure did). So each transfer, card listing, purchase, or bid/offer will cost you some IMX to do so. Overall this sounds like a step backward to be honest, but perhaps this will cause GU cards to have a greater default price? who the heck knows. It may just lead to all the bots/penny extractors moving on to greener pastures, which when coupled with the mass hemorrhaging of real players that's been happening for years now may not spell good things for Gods Unchained. Which brings us to our next section...

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Talking tidbits: Are we getting "Etherbotted"?

For those of you who don't know "Etherbots" was a game that was completely abandoned by the Fergusons (IMX's founders) and was a rug pull. The only thing players of that game got were assets in gods unchained (The set "Etherbots") based on whatever airdrop table they had at the time, and a boatload of empty promises. For a more in depth summary I recommend checking out outlaw unchained's video here for reference. It is a VERY valid fear that they may do something similar again or "all but abandon" the game and leave it on life support getting the minimum attention possible for the foreseeable future as we get feed "soons" until the cows come home. The recent Battlepasses and pack economics have been "whale milking" at best and "an insulting slap in the face" at worst. Mythics that don't drop in packs, 150 dollar battlepasses that only have guaranteed core cards and exploit gacha gambling addiction for UNIQUE rewards (Every other game I've played has been flamed like a mfer for trying to do this in web2 to the point they STOPPED DOING IT, some lootbox shit is fine but having ALL the unique gameplay rewards be in a lootbox would bring out the pitchforks). Now we are moving to a chain with gas fees, and are being fed "we will do it soon after migration" for every important GAMEPLAY issue that the game currently has (economic and blockchain stuff aside). Including the age old "close the API already" complaint that has been going on for NEARLY 5 YEARS (this stifles player creativity and boils the meta down to just a few decks no matter what even outside the highest ranks). If the gameplay isn't addressed and fixed to AT LEAST ban/stop cheating and rampant botting what's the point? No competitive tournaments, no competitive weekend ranked, no fun/creative decks to play with or against (just blunt wincons, fast OTKs, or overly stacked controls), and the appearance of no end in sight. I'm not meaning to sound bleak but in the immortal words of this bearded fellow...

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I sincerely hope they can, I hope that something beneficial happens here and Gods unchained starts seeing some progress and not merely retrograde. I'll still see you all in Eucos as I farm out those frags and extract to build my collection, but oh man have I stopped enjoying it (as I stated in this post). Thanks for still supporting me everyone, you all rock (seriously), and I hope everyone is doing great out there. I've just become a bit jaded on GU, especially after taking a break on holiday and coming back to it. Cheers, stay safe out there in this crazy world.

P.S. I do realize that IMX is setting them up to fail with a skeleton crew and low as fuck budget, but if that's the case the end result of "not achieving what is neccesary" is still what happens. At the end of the day the "why you are shitting the bed" stops mattering and you have to just stop shitting the bed or admit you can't not shit the bed to the playerbase and that nothing can happen and this is the best we will get. Copium and hopium injections only go so far, we've got to start seeing progress. I've even ran chatGPT over GU's codebase or duplicated code base a couple of times and IT ALONE can solve various issues mentioned above (and yes I double checked it's results). So I'm tired of the whole "let them cook" mentality when we aren't even sure there is anybody in the kitchen at this point.