The creator of Ethereum got into crypto because Blizzard nerfed his character
Without that one balance patch, NFTs wouldn’t exist.
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Ethereum is the blockchain behind thecryptocurrencyEther and alsoNFTs. It was created by a programmer named Vitalik Buterin who was inspired by realizing “what horrors centralized services can bring”. And what set off that Damascene moment of insight? It was World of Warcraft’s 2010 warlock nerf.
“I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010,” Buterin writes in hisbio, “but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”
From there, Buterin got intoBitcoin, “started writing for a blog called Bitcoin Weekly initially at a meek wage of $1.5 per hour, and soon with Mihai Alisie cofounded Bitcoin Magazine.” He dropped out of university to focus on crypto, coming up with the idea for Ethereum in 2013 and therefore being responsible for NFTs, the digital certificates of authenticity that, like everything powered by crypto’s proof-of-work security systems, are wildly energy-inefficient.
Many of us have been affected by a strategy we rely on being deemed OP and hit by a nerf. Very few of us subsequently cry ourselves to sleep, quit the game, and then dedicate the rest of our lives to a pyramid scheme for dorks that contributes to an environmental crisis, graphics card shortages,art theft, and ends up beingbanned in China.
This story was recently highlighted by Twitter’s@zemnmezand@simplygastly, who wrote, “I PLAYED WARLOCK AS MY MAIN FOR 17 YEARS AND IT DIDN’T MAKE ME WANT TO DELETE RAINFORESTS”.
https://t.co/XueyaQ4PGE pic.twitter.com/CjFjLgm6ijOctober 2, 2021
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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