It may be a magic beast mobile game that makes Blizzard players mixed.
Text/Andrew
When I woke up, Blizzard reached the top of Weibo's hot search, but it is difficult to say that this is a good thing.
At 1:00 a.m. today, Blizzard held a brief online conference to announce the first native mobile game of warcraft IP, "Warcraft Arc Light Battle".
To put it simply: this is a Warcraft IP, the gameplay is similar to "Clash Royale" and "Castle Burn" vertical screen light strategy mobile game, the style of painting is selected with bright and bright cartoons, and the texture of the unit is made like a physical chess piece toy hand. The first impression of the game is easy to think of as "Warcraft's version of Clash Royale":
This conference only lasted about ten minutes, you can see that the two designers who introduced the gameplay in the video are very enthusiastic, while many players at home and abroad are cold and indifferent, and even very confused - everyone has said: Just this?
After the release of the Warcraft mobile game, the most circulated memes on Weibo and WeChat
For example, in the comment area of the official video of Station B, some fading voices can be seen everywhere:
In the comments on the official video on YouTube, the two highest-ranking ones were saying, "My favorite pieces are actually these pieces."
On various platforms and social media, everyone's view of warcraft mobile games is generally not optimistic, such as TapTap, the game fell to 7.2 points as soon as it was announced.
The same is true from the votes launched by some game media and big V on Weibo.
Warcraft IP announced the mobile game for the first time, why is this such a scene? In fact, there have been some signs since the blizzard released the wind.
Although when the news was first announced, the official mentioned that this is a Warcraft mobile game, not a World of Warcraft mobile game. But many people are still looking forward to a World of Warcraft mobile game - or at least a Warcraft IP, a mobile game with an overall RPG gameplay, or even a new way of playing that everyone has not seen.
After the announcement of "Warcraft Arc Light Battle", everyone saw that the game chose a very mature category direction in terms of gameplay form, which is obviously different from the expectations of many players.
This time, Blizzard may have misjudged the expectations of its own player base or the needs of everyone to play.
01 When Warcraft first
Looks "less wary"
Let's first take a look at the specific content of this mobile game.
If you have a basic understanding of Warcraft and World of Warcraft, then you should easily understand what some people say, "This doesn't look like Warcraft at all," and even more so, "This looks like a false advertisement for some infringing Warcraft mobile game."
This is an exaggeration, but the style of Warcraft Arc Wars (hereinafter referred to as "Arc Wars") is really different from that of a typical Blizzard game.
Although "World of Warcraft" also has some cartoon elements in color, the overall style of the game is not young. Hearthstone was Blizzard's first product to appear on mobile, and the various characters in the card face are also classic images in World of Warcraft.
When it comes to the first mobile game in the true sense of the Warcraft IP, things become different.
"Arc Wars" looks very Q, and the unit modeling in it is also very "toy", looking like a physical chess piece, hand-made, which is also the reason why many people in YouTube video reviews say that they are most interested in these pieces. It is precisely because of the texture of this toy chess piece that the modeling of the game looks a little far away from the current mainstream mobile games, so that some players think that this is the low poly style.
The UI layout of "Arc Wars" did not break through everyone's imagination of a "Clash Royale" -like: the amount of health on both sides at the top of the screen, the time of the game, the squad combat units and gold below, can be compared to the cards and holy water in "Clash Royale".
The style of the Q version of the cartoon, coupled with the gameplay shown under such an interface layout, many old players of Blizzard are difficult to accept for a while.
To be sure, Blizzard moved its home-of-home IP to the mobile platform, and these stylistic changes are not difficult to understand, considering the hardware of the mobile phone and considering the absorption of new audiences.
You can also see from the configuration requirements,
How much they want to be as compatible as possible with a variety of devices
If you look closely at the unit shapes in the game, you can find that characters such as Gianna, Mavi, and Hell Roar still retain some recognizable appearance elements, but for players familiar with Warcraft, the style transformation span of "Arc Wars" is really a bit too big. The accidents and dissatisfaction that followed are naturally understandable.
02 Add a storm RTS to one
Clash Royale - like mobile game
So is Arc Wars really a War Royale skin of warcraft IP?
When I first watched the game's announcement video, I couldn't help but have such questions. However, after watching the producers gossip and the real machine trial several times, I think that if you simply summarize it in this way, you will ignore a lot of the details of the gameplay content.
At present, the interface of the national service battle network, the official introduction is like this:
Of course, you can understand the underlying gameplay of the game according to the basic rules of Clash Royale-like, and on this basis, in addition to the strongly related background and character settings of the Warcraft IP, Arc Light Battle also has some applications to the classic elements of Warcraft.
The first is the design of the map level, the map in the game is not fixed, each map usually has at least two or more branches, unlike the "two bridges across the river" in "Clash Royale", "Arc Wars" also has some asymmetrical map design, Blizzard's intention to "guide the line of troops" here is obvious. At the same time, some maps also add various terrain differences such as highland depressions to further increase the influencing factors of the bureau.
According to the official introduction, the game currently has more than 70 maps, lenovo "Warcraft" in the different sizes of the map can correspond to rush, airdrop, chaotic mines and other different directions of tactics, according to different maps to form different teams may be the focus of "Arc Battle".
There are quite a few similar asymmetrical maps
At the same time, various neutral elements on the map also introduce some variables. After capturing neutral buildings such as collection stones and defensive towers on the map and turning them into their own, players can deploy units within the influence of these buildings, rather than simply sending troops from the main base at the bottom - one thing is like the crystal tower of the Gods in StarCraft affects the building range - the control of the building will greatly affect the player's troop deployment, which in turn will affect the overall situation.
The game's map also has neutral gold mines, treasure chests, and wild bosses, and attacking them can drop extra gold, all of which have a bit of a "miniature Warcraft" meaning.
The second is the team construction with the captain as the core, each team is composed of 1 captain + 6 retinues, and the captain is the core of the team formation, just like the heroes in "Warcraft", which has a more important role.
For example, Gianna has a signature, field-controlling blizzard, Red's black hand can reduce the cost of all flying units, and "Arc Wars" has more than 60 characters, divided into 5 major forces, including alliances, tribes, undead, beasts and blackstones. There may be different ways of playing with different heroes like Warcraft, and subsequent updates may slowly build more systematic races/factions like Hearthstone.
Character development in the game will be a long-term content, and as you level up, you can unlock more talents to cope with different play styles. Judging from the published screen, the captain and his entourage should also have corresponding card-like upgrades, strengthening the life and attack of units, and is also one of the main payment points for future games.
In addition, unlike some similar games that focus on PVP, judging from the review video released by GameSpot, "Arc Wars" seems to be a game that emphasizes PVE.
There are dozens of levels of single-player progression on the map early in the game to unlock various basic rewards such as companions. Players and teammates challenge bosses together, and even team up to play the group game – this sounds like a hodgepodge, but it is exactly what the designer mentions in the video: "Everything that is included in a Warcraft series".
03 Is such a Warcraft mobile game worth looking forward to?
Perhaps because it is still on the holidays, after the announcement of "Arc Wars", compared with the previous Blizzard announcement of new games and the recent release of the new version of "World of Warcraft", most of the Blizzard players in my circle of friends and some of the game groups I belong to have not had a very heated discussion. The most common reaction was silent.
Seeing that I've said this, you should know more about Arc Wars.
You may feel that in addition to the initial impression of its repetition of the existing category of gameplay, the Warcraft mobile game has something different; you may still feel that the game is not innovative enough, not surprising enough.
In fact, from the current community opinion, everyone is not entirely concerned about this game. There is also the expectation of a "more Warcraft" Warcraft mobile game, which should probably have more and more obvious RPG content, or more elements familiar to veteran Warcraft players - just like some players half-jokingly said", "Even if you put pet battles on your phone".
On the one hand, Blizzard is firm about "taking its own classic IP as a mobile game".
At Blizzard Carnival 2018, Vice President Allen Adham mentioned that Blizzard has several mobile game projects in development. In addition to products such as Diablo Immortal, which collaborates with outside companies, there are also games that are entirely produced independently by Blizzard.
Then-president J. Allen Brack in 2019 also spoke in more than one interview about the need for some of Blizzard's classic series to expand to mobile platforms.
But on the other hand, this is indeed not the first time that Blizzard has encountered difficulties in user opinion because of the "release of mobile games". Similar issues, they have experienced in the time and occasion of the release of Diablo: Immortal.
According to the news previously revealed, there is more than one mobile game of Warcraft IP. Maybe the next time we release a new work, Blizzard should really think about this issue.
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