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Roadmap Discussion

February 16, 2022

Discussion and Q&A [VOD]

Roadmap Discussion and Q&A Session coverage by Kenjiro

Questions and Answers Summary

Q1. What has changed in the new roadmap?

In the 2022 Roadmap announcement, we announced updates to launch time and definitions. We also announced our broad plans for the year. Theres really 2 main changes. 1. Instead of releasing alpha on Mainnet in q2 of 2022. We are moving it to the 2nd half of 2022. This means its up to 6 months of change for alpha release. The 2nd main change is our approach. Our plan is to release first on testnet rather on mainnet. We believe that spending a decent amount of time in testnet in learning and iterating the systems will benefit the game long term.
Few other changes as well. Timing is now broader and We plan to have token rewards in the Alpha (testnet). We are also looking into making NFTs playable in Testnet, we'll update the communtiy about this later.

Q2. Why has the timeline changed?

We realized that we are quiet rushed in the time. We moved the timeline to have more time and not rush in making the game. We believe that this is what works best for long term. We would rather be conservative and say things now rather than say things down the line.
We have big plans for 2022 and we are taking time to recruit more people.

Q3. Do we know the timeline wil change before the token sale last year?

We definitely didn't, otherwise we would not have said those dates. We decided only in January to set expectations that the time is going to change.

Q4. Previously the game was said to be 80% complete, Is it true or not?

This one is true depending on how you define it. Hopefully the community team and game team will go into more details about the status of the game, but effectively a lot of the work is done. The game is playable, characters are being made, you can play in guilds, etc. But the last 20% is the hardest part so it might take time, since it involves the legalities and integrations with the immutable X.
The core work is done but there is still a lot of work to do.

Q5. What has the team done so far to mitigate any delay today with affecting the game's quality?

The team that has been actively working for the dates and releases and they also have been actively expanding now. But adding people does not necessarily doubling the speed that you work. We wished it did, but unfortunately that's not how it works. We are doing what we can to add more people and help with the development.

Q6. How does the Russia and Ukraine situation affect the timelines?

Just today there was some positive news on this point about russia easing off. But in general, we have been monitoring this since November last year. So far it hasn't have an effect on the timeline. It hasn't been the reason why we decided we want to change the dates. We do have mitigation plans in place. Everything can be worked on remotely and we have contingency plans such as relocating, if need be. We don't really think the risk is as high as the media portrays it to be. All in all we are monitoring this.

Q7. What is the team doing in light of sell pressure for coinlist and or VC token unlocks at the end of the year. Does the team plan to change these unlocks?

We currently haven't decided wether or not to pursue a change in unlocks. And even if we wanted to it may legally not be possible, its a senstive topic.
I think the concern from the community is that the VCs might just sell everything but the partners that we have really long term aligned. From the Get-go, Guild of Guardians has one of the longest vesting projects out of any projects out there. There is zero unlocks at day 1 which is different to some others, and actually lot of our investers or partners have publicly made purchases of GoG NFTs often from the secondary marketplace.
So these are people that are not just in for the tokens, they have invested in the ecosystem and many of them have purchased mythic guilds or heroes.
All in all, we're --- of changes. (20:58 - 21:00)

Q8. When will we implement staking? What other plans are there to add utility to either NFTs or tokens prior to game release? Why can't we just put something like a staking mini-game?

I don't have plans for (NFT) staking. Apologies.
The main reason here is, we don't want to be a project which- We do not want to announce things that could be use on the basis of financial decisions. We're not here to influence people to on investments. We are here to build the most successful game possible, which we think will lead to wins to everyone involved. We will really hesitate to say any timelines around staking / listing in exchanges / other utilities until they are pretty much they are ready to go.
But we have plans to implement (Token / $GOG) staking, it's in the whitepaper.
We don't have any development around any mini-games. Ultimately its an allocation of resources. Do we want to spend resources to that or use it to create the game faster. That's the trade-off that the team we are thinking through.

Q9. What will the developers do about the prices of the NFTs and Tokens before the game is released?

From a lot of what I read in the discord, lot of people are very supportive with the rationale behind the change but regarding the voice of minority about the prices of tokens on how the prices will go up?
One thing to do is to give incentives. Our goal is we want Guild of Guardians to be a succesful game long term. In the short term, it is inevitable that we have different groups which might want different things. For example, new players will want prices to be low so they can buy nfts meanwhile older players will want prices to be high. Or some players may want us to focus on the gameplay and others may want to focus on staking.
Our goal is to do whats best for GOG long term and as part of that, help the existing community who have NFTs and tokens already. We want to all work together to achieve this long term goal to create a play and earn game.

Q10. When do you pan on having all characters skills and stats announced?

Don't have answer.

Q11. Can we have monthly updates on the state of Guild of Guardians?

Yeah, we are looking into having a standardized way of updating the commmunity.

Q12. We are going to be launching in Testnet in 2nd have of 2022, are we going to be able to play our NFTs in playing the game?

We are looking into that whole part right now, we are confident that we're gonna have of some kind of a token rewards, we'll try to simulate what will happen in reality. But we don't have a specific answer yet.

Q13. Security is a pretty big thing, what steps have you taken for the security and what does it look like?

Security is one of our must haves for Testnet but we also want to incentivise people to break it as well, since that is the point of Testnet.

Q14. In Crypto games, economy is the most important part. Have you hired an economist?

Yes. We do have a full time game economist whose sole job is to think about that basically. How to make a sustainable economy and how to reward the right things.

Q15. Are there going to be more ways to put more pets in the game?

We don't plan to have anymore founder NFTs. In Pets, EB and Guilds, are going to be limited so we are going to find ways to introduce those but we don't want to do anything to damage the original holders.

Q16. Is there any regulation or app store issues that are effecting the timeline?

There's no regulations / single event / big event that is affecting the timeline.

Q17.In regards nft trade-up system, do you have an ETA? Trading system like 10 rares for an epic

For the merging system, It would be on for the Testnet launch I suppose. We haven't decided if we are going to release it on Testnet or maybe if it will release on Mainnet.

Q18. What is the team doing to keep interest up over the course of the next year and a half?

So we think that the demo of the game (pre-alpha) will generate a lot of interest in the game, thats our hope. we also want to spend this year to really build out the community even more. One of our goals is to try to bring in more new-to-crypto gamers as well to the community. We might work with different partnerships with different comapanies but our goal is really to empower people aswell.

Q19. Based on the large news from axie infinity, regards to the issues in their economy. Has there been any changes discussed for the proposed economy of GOG?

We're in the stage where we are still finding the numbers for the gog economy. Like "Oh this is a number of tokens that people get in the game daily". We havent made any big changes yet but the team are already designing things that we want to release even after, things that will not be released or announced yet.

Q20. When do you think you might be opening up applications as for more ambassadors?

This is a big part of community that we had for a while now. For me this is a big focus area, also for the community grants. For the ambassador programs, i want to expand and go into more depth before we start scaling out more. I mean, yesterday I actually announced that we are going to have a reddit army for the ambassador program and I try to bring in Quality people. Second, we need structures as well for the every possible ambassador path. It's important to organize this before we start bringing in more people.
It should be in the not too distant future, I can't give you a date , unfortunately.

Q21. Will there ever be more Morax/Cyrus/Lia (Founder Heroes) ever?

No more founder heroes.

Q22. Do you know when it will be possible for GOG tokens to be in US exchanges like coinbase?

No time frame unfortunately. This is something that is on our list. Its been discussed but its also not only up to us either but its something that we want to do.

Q23. One thing - and I have talked about is people might own multiple guilds and from my understanding, you need to play multiple accounts. Will you be potentially be banned for?

Currently we don't want to create technology systems to necessarily enable people to set up whats called a scholarship because the game is free to play but we also don't have any policy against it. We haven't wrote a specific guideline about this yet.

Q24. Can everyone participate in the Testnet alpha?

Currently, our plan is to open up. Like I said before, we want to simulate the real thing, and the real thing is everyones rushing to play it, so that's our goal.

Q25. What is the difference of Testnet and Mainnet

Testnet are fake. fake nfts, fake tokens.
A Testnet is basically a simulation of a blockchain where things can be tested before actually integrating it to the real blockchain. Here, tokens are freely acquired for use in testing smart contracts or experimentation without the risk of losing funds with real value

Q26. Integration with Immutable X, why not just copy Gods Unchained project integration?

We are definitely learning from them. I think we have a lot more systems than them in terms of touch points with integration which is actually more complicated than what they have now but certainly we want to learn from them.

Q27. Is their any other plans for token utility besides staking before the game is launched?

TBC.

Q28. Are we still on track for the Pre-Alpha Demo at the end of Q1?

I don't know when the team plans to announce more information on this but hopefully we'll be able to share more about this in the next two weeks. Not the Demo, just information. But to answer the question, I think things are on track.

Q29. On a scale from 1-10, how big of a concern is it for the team that a competitor steps in with a similar style of game that gets early adoption market share? A lot of projects popping up all over trying to take advantage of hype around "crypto games", and while I understand and appreciate the team's focus on quality over speed just wondering about thoughts around the risks associated with that.

Its possible. So far nothing has tried to do this but its possible. Long term advantage we have is we want to build a really engaging game. we hope to have the network effect around the game as well. We are really supporting of community building things.

Q30. Don't you share everyday leaks?

I think the team is organizing now how to best communicate information about the game.

Q31. Will founders nft s have a distinct advantage over Non-founders?

Founder NFTs will probably be more scarce. But they won't necessarily be stronger. Each hero is different in strengths and weaknesses but

Q31. Will there be breeding for pets?

Currently, No.

Q32. Can we get a little bit of teaser info for the pre alpha coming up Q1, Q2?

The goal for demo that's coming up in the Pre-Alpha is we want to give people just a small experience of the game and give the community to play something and share to them like "Hey, this is what we have". We also want to get feedback from it.
It is not going to be the entire gaming experience. It's going to be smaller.

Q33. Any connections with IMX, Gamestop, Microsoft, Blizzard?

We're close with immutable X, so you can imagine we have access to the partners that they talked to. Wether thats games or brands or exchanges. I don't have any specific things to share but yeah we have connections.

Q34. Seasonal events were mentioned before. How will this play out in the game?

Once the game comes out, there will be three main things that will happen.
  1. 1.
    We'll make it look better
  2. 2.
    We start having more regular content updates (Patches)
  3. 3.
    Major releases (Gamemodes)

Q35. Is there any news on the number of players GOG devs ideally want for Alpha?

Its going to be limited, but no specific number.
You may find Q24 and Q35 contradicting each other. But in Q24, Derek is talking about Alpha Testnet that is scheduled for 2nd Half of 2022. On the other hand, in Q35 he might be talking about the Pre-Alpha Demo scheduled in 1st Half of 2022.

Q36. Any good news to drop?

We are making good progress, i think.

Q37. I don't know what was originally planned for Alpha, but at the very least why couldn't we have the option to simply connect our wallets, and have the option of choosing the heroes we could choose in Alpha (our see or Avatars)? It's a one way transaction. Was there anything in particular that drove the decesion to use any blockchain functionality? Not even a subset of it!

The main thing is we're doing things in stages. We want to start with just the gameplay, and things around that and get a feedback on how that plays out. We have a lot of touch points in IMX including connecting wallet and showing which heroes you have but that won't be right in the demo. It is also not the focus of that phase either.