How is the client game market performing today as the mobile game market continues to soar?
According to the "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association (GPC) and the China Game Industry Research Institute not long ago, the actual sales revenue of China's client game market reached 58.8 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 2.880 billion yuan over 2020, an increase of 5.15% year-on-year, which is the first growth trend in the past three years.
In the domestic terminal game market, MMORPG is undoubtedly a dominant category, especially the "legendary" subtype - the "2020 Legendary" IP Influence Report released by Gamma Data shows that the "Legendary" IP has created more than 90 billion yuan of turnover in the past 20 years, and is expected to exceed 130 billion yuan in the next three years. At the same time, the cumulative registered users of the legendary category have exceeded 600 million, and 58.1% of the users said that they had played the legendary game, which shows that the demand of "legendary" players for the category of games has never weakened.
But at the same time, with the rapid development of the game market, the legendary category has also undergone tremendous changes: what is more intuitive is that the "fake legend" game is chaotic, and various hang-up legendary "legends" have appeared, and the proliferation of private servers has caused serious imbalances in data, rapid depreciation of equipment, and the collapse of the ecological collapse of small services. The unhealthy development of the category has also affected the wind evaluation of "legend", and "one knife 999" has become a negative label for anecdotal ridicule. Legendary games can initially harvest the spirit of fans, such as emphasizing the fun of characters from weak to strong, the serendipity of obtaining the best equipment, and the thrill of dueling at any time, which has been lost in many modern legendary products. It seems that "dissatisfied" with the lack of orthodox legendary spirit, NetEase recently launched the "Taiya Epic", decided to challenge the top position of a modern legendary MMORPG end game. This new genre work, which took 5 years to develop and was created by a team of 150+ personnel, is expected to solve the serious imbalance in the legendary game economy market through the design of "player-led economic ecology". But their goal is far more than to surprise the fans of the legendary MMORPG, and behind this, they also have greater ambitions to create a global IP.
Rejecting feelings and making a new medieval war game is a game based on legendary classic gameplay, I believe that the first highlight of "Taiya Epic" that catches the attention of players is its unique and grand medieval theme. The grand medieval full of Western magic stories is a subject that the domestic team does not touch much, and to make it a good job requires both a self-consistent worldview setting and enough technical strength to support the imagination. And these require new mechanisms and content innovation, not simple emotional reproduction. "Waking up in the foggy sea, surrounded by countless companions who were also shipwrecked..." The first scene into the game allows players to feel the hidden dangers of the continent of Taia. As the game progresses, the player's adventure journey moves forward step by step, the ancient jungle where the ruins are buried, the underground prison that is darkly sealed, the desert that is poisoned by the fire and demons, and the library full of conspiracies... The various maps are unfolded one by one. The rich, layered, interconnected topography gives players a strong and intuitive sensory experience when they first enter the continent of Thailand. With the blessing of technology, the high-definition screen has been rendered multiple times, so that "Taiya Epic" has the audiovisual expression that stands out in similar games. In order to support the presentation of a real and rich in-game world, the game production team has built a solid worldview for it. Based on the medieval European world of the 11th and 14th centuries, the Epic of Taia incorporates a large number of magical, occult, and eccentric themes. In the world of the Epic of Taia, the church, kingdoms, and free cities recreate the current situation of medieval history; priests, nobles, small citizens and peasants show the rich details of social life in the taia continent; magic, monsters, elves, beasts, imaginative and varied, closely related to various folklore, providing a lot of room for exploration. The "Epic of Taia" project aims to produce a grand medieval and magical epic story, which is a novel theme in the domestic market, which provides it with great competitiveness in content. The medieval enlarged world is not simply a "good-looking skin bag" in the "Epic of Taiya", it is deeply connected to the gameplay and is the core setting that ensures a unique experience for players. The medieval setting of "Taiya Epic" is fully integrated with the player's career design, positioning and matching, and growth route. As we all know, in the legendary game, character upgrading and transferring is one of the core funs that belongs to each player Exclusively In the "Epic of Taia", there are six major transfer routes, which together can provide more than 100 skill combinations: berserkers who are good at chasing and fighting, Templars who can reduce injuries and immunity, grand mages who can heal and purify, divine priests who heal purification, bounty rangers with high agility and high damage, and demon hunters who can summon war pets, these characters with rich and real medieval backgrounds can be used in the traditional " Returning to the fun of legendary games in the context of "leveling up" and defeating the fast-food experience offered by many "fake legends" on the market now. Of course, in the core gameplay part, Taiya Epic embodies the orthodox essence of legendary gameplay everywhere. For example, the self-sufficient economic system, daily props, rare equipment, etc. can be played by the player himself; "full prop zero binding" is another important system feature of the game, whether it is daily materials, weapons and equipment or mission items, etc., can be freely bought and sold, which greatly liberates the player's freedom in the game economic environment. Need for equipment circulates freely in the game through a variety of channels, and it also solves the economic imbalance and lack of fair access to equipment fun that legendary players on the market complain about today.
At the same time, a variety of PK modes loved by some legendary players have also been fully restored in "Taiya Epic", the game provides peace, whole, team, family and justice 5 PK modes, whether in the dungeon or in the wild, players can freely and freely launch duels in different modes, the double opening of modes and scenes restores the tension and unpredictability that the real "duel" should be. It can be seen that in inheriting the essence of the classic legend, "Taiya Epic" allows players to gain more control by opening up the degree of freedom, and has been restored and upgraded to provide players with a richer and freer gameplay.
Of course, "Taiya Epic" is not blindly "restored", MMO + SLG real sandbox, occupation and plunder of resources of the gameplay of the addition, so that the game on the basis of maintaining the core fun unchanged, greatly expand the possibility of multiplayer in the same game, collective combat gameplay. In Taiya Epic, players can fight with other players for their own clan, and fight with hundreds of families for control of the royal city, and this strong "sense of alliance" is a unique highlight of Taiya Epic in similar games. What is more noteworthy is that this gameplay is cross-service battle, thousands of people on the same screen, which puts forward extremely high requirements for the production process of the game. The production team told us that they put a lot of effort into achieving a large-scale war with multiple people on the same screen, upgraded the technical bottom layer, and adopted a new central server architecture, so that each server is fully connected, a server is a country, and it is born to support transnational battles. The effect of this technical upgrade and production investment is also obvious - compared to traditional legendary games, Taiya Epic has a higher level of grandeur and world sense in the combat experience.
Overall, Taiya Epic is an MMORPG that follows the essence of orthodox legendary gameplay and does not simply sell feelings. Players need novelty in the classics, and the pure medieval theme of Taiya Epic, the immersion of the big world under high-cost production, and the innovation in detail in the game mechanics make it unique among the current legendary new products. Reinvigorating categories, globalization on the road When we asked the production team, what is the ultimate goal of "Taiya Epic"? They said that they want to create an international IP of the same level as "legend", "paradise" and "miracle". It is not difficult to see that "Taiya Epic" is the forerunner of NetEase to re-excavate the playability essence of legendary MMORPG. In this orthodox retro genre that some contemporary players have ignored, the genre is revitalized through better graphical monetization, more novel theme settings, and more player-oriented and fun-oriented gameplay, so that the classics are back to the center of the stage. From its more international medieval theme selection and cross-service multi-person battle and other designs, it means that "Taiya Epic" also carries the goal of NetEase to go to overseas markets. In today's Tepid MMORPG terminal game as a whole, many overseas category players are also suffering from the lack of new product choices, and like the "predecessors", by establishing the influence of IP on a global scale, it is an important trick to keep this classic category alive. It is reported that the game has passed the Steam green light, and it is also expected that what performance will be performed in overseas markets in the future.