文 | 蓝媒汇，作者 | 闫烨，编辑 | 魏晓
When I saw the tag of #NetEase Blizzard Compound# rushing to the hot search, Dong Fang, who has been a Warcraft player for ten years, had no waves in his heart.
After all, she has experienced too many "wolves" this year.
According to her rough calculations, in the year that NetEase Blizzard broke up in China, there were no less than a dozen domestic game manufacturers of all sizes that had scandals with Blizzard. For example, in November, there was news that Tencent was going to take over Blizzard, but before players were rubbing their hands in anticipation, what they were waiting for was Tencent's refutation of rumors, similar to Blizzard's former Chinese agent Jiucheng, ByteDance, Perfect World and other game manufacturers.
(Screenshot of Dong Fang's circle of friends)
"The most outrageous thing is that even the Oriental Pearl Group has been rumored to be going to take over Blizzard, and it is the company of the tower in Shanghai!" she said angrily, "It seems that we players are a bunch of fools." ”
Dong Fang said that although players have long been trained to distinguish between true and false information, they will still look forward to Blizzard's return in rounds of news.
At the beginning of December, the well-known Hearthstone anchor Lvge said that on December 15, Blizzard would officially announce the news of its return to China, and e-sports anchor Huang Xudong also revealed relevant information.
At the end of the day, Blizzard is still missed by this extremely sticky group of players.
In addition, according to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Blizzard also wanted to return to Chinese mainland many times during the year, but after negotiating with a number of manufacturers, it was fruitless.
Blizzard undoubtedly regrets leaving the Chinese market.
Activision Blizzard's 2023 financial report data shows that Blizzard's segment revenue in the first quarter was only $443 million, compared with $794 million in the previous quarter, a significant decline. Meanwhile, the number of global active players in the first quarter of 2023 was 27 million, compared to 45 million in the previous quarter. Although the latest Q2 2023 earnings report revenue figures are very impressive, it is almost entirely due to the launch of Diablo 4.
Blizzard, which has left China, is facing difficulties and challenges.
It can be seen that despite the eagerness of players, the agent of Blizzard is still a hot potato for game manufacturers.
It is precisely because of this that after being reported by many media, the news that NetEase, which has agency experience and financial resources, has re-joined hands with Blizzard made Dong Fang look forward to it.
Of course, the premise is that both sides can pull down their faces.
Everyone remembers that after the turmoil in January, NetEase dismantled the Blizzard axe live on its official account and replaced it with its own "Naraka: Bladepoint" horse chopping knife, which attracted tens of thousands of onlookers, and also put on the shelves of "Blizzard Green Tea", "Blizzard Has No Heart" and other yin and yang drinks in the café of the NetEase building, and the connotation overflowed the screen.
However, Blizzard also gave "sincerity" on its side. On the 29th, Activision Blizzard CEO Caldecott, who directly promoted the breakup of the two, officially resigned, which also made players more and more convinced that Microsoft, which acquired Activision Blizzard, must have a layout in the Chinese market if it wants to enter the game field, and NetEase is the best receiver.
"Blizzard, who once abandoned NetEase, is like a scumbag, and now we only feel that it is Blizzard's turn to kneel and beg NetEase to reunite!"
After a year, players still miss the national server
Unlike Dong Fang, Li Ting couldn't bear the itching of his hands as early as the beginning of February 2023, a week after Blizzard officially withdrew from China, and switched to the Asian server with his friends.
As a fourteen-year veteran fan of Warcraft, Li Ting's hobby of playing Warcraft has continued from high school to the present, and he has spent tens of thousands of yuan on this game, and because he loves it enough, even if he needs to watch a lot of tutorials when he moves to the Asian server, he needs to spend an extra hundred yuan for the accelerator every month, and he needs to start from scratch to create a new account in the Asian server, and he is also willing to do it.
"To put it bluntly, who doesn't pay for youth who plays Blizzard games. ”
However, in his opinion, the Asian service can never be compared with the national service.
"Take the simplest example, if you want to find human customer service, you can only find AI robots, and the people who are doing customer service in Asia are all people from the United States, but they are jet lag with you. Li Ting said. He also gave an example to AI Blue Media, for example, there are many players in the Asian server who advertise in the main urban area, and if the book is swiped too often, the system will judge it to be a plug-in behavior and other outrageous operations frequently appear, which greatly affects the game experience.
But even so, there are still a large number of "game refugees" pouring into the Asian server. Li Ting also set up a WeChat group, pulling more than 300 players who switched from the national server to the Asian server, and a group of people went on the number every day like when they were in the national server. Many of them had players open accounts on the Asian server a few years ago, and the opportunity at that time was the breakup of Blizzard and the former agent Nine Cities.
In addition to Warcraft, Li Ting also tried to switch to the Asian server of games such as "Overwatch" and "Hearthstone" and start from scratch, but due to problems such as time and atmosphere, he was unable to stick to it in the end.
But in any case, there is no doubt about the expectation of Blizzard's return.
In fact, this time, well-informed players learned that NetEase Blizzard might be reunited several days earlier than the outside world.
"NetEase Thunderfire Studio, which developed Diablo Immortal, recently restarted recruiting for the MMO game user operation-churn recall data analysis post, located in Guangzhou, and it's hard not to think that it is related to the Blizzard game reboot. Dong Fang said.
At the same time, players also picked up that just a few days ago, NetEase withdrew 5 of the 6 lawsuits against Blizzard, and NetEase Dashen APP also updated the content of the existing version of World of Warcraft, and also built a new version of the chat room......
In the player community of NetEase Dashen APP, players have created a joyful atmosphere. During the investigation, a player told AI Blue Media that he sold his account on the Asian server as soon as he heard the news and made hundreds of yuan. "I was not happy to play the Asian server, but after two days, the national server will return, and the Asian server account should be worthless, so I will shoot early. He said.
During this period, NetEase and Blizzard have not refuted this rumor for a long time, which has become one of the most important reasons for players to have illusions.
All this fragmentary evidence seems to point to the fact that NetEase and Blizzard are going to rebuild their old friendship.
If you take over Blizzard, NetEase also has a plan
However, the expectations of players are not the only lubricant for the recombination of the two capitals.
The past year has been full of ups and downs.
First, it was disclosed in the Q1 financial report that the global active users fell from 45 million to 27 million, and the revenue also fell directly from $794 million in the previous quarter to $443 million, and the two data were almost halved, and then in Q2, the net revenue of "Diablo 4" released in the current quarter exceeded $1 billion, achieving a breakthrough.
On the one hand, the fluctuation of these data is not unrelated to the decline in the quality of the revision of classic games such as "Overwatch", "Heroes of the Storm", and "Call of Duty", and on the other hand, the loss of the Chinese market has also become the direct cause of its data shock in all aspects.
According to the financial report, after exiting the Chinese market in January 2023, Activision Blizzard's revenue in Asia in this quarter was 306 million yuan, compared with $381 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, a decrease of 24.5% from the previous quarter.
According to media reports, Activision Blizzard generated a total revenue of $480 million in China in 2022, with Blizzard sharing a profit of $264 million, and the remaining $216 million going to NetEase.
The Chinese market is fertile enough, and Blizzard understands this.
The reason why "Diablo 4" can bring extremely high revenue figures to Blizzard is bound to be related to the fact that this IP will be renovated again after 11 years and eat emotional meals, and it is still unknown whether it will have such a high popularity as the popularity declines.
Looking at the multi-dimensional data, Blizzard wants to return to China, and it also needs to return to China.
At the Blizzard 2023 Carnival in November 2023, Blizzard President Mike Ibarra once again raised the issue of the return of the national server: "There are millions of players in China who love Blizzard games, and everyone at Blizzard wants to make sure they can play our games. ”
The attitude is very clear, only the other party who is willing to lend a hand.
In fact, after careful study, it is not difficult to find that among many Chinese game manufacturers, NetEase's re-takeover is a more cost-effective choice for both parties. On the one hand, NetEase's servers and player data are readily available, and on the other hand, there are not many Chinese manufacturers who are willing to pick up PC games again in the mobile game era, and NetEase is one of them.
Compared with Blizzard, NetEase's year has been quite comfortable.
NetEase has said in its financial report for the third quarter of 2022 that the expiration of the license with Blizzard will not have a significant impact on NetEase's financial performance, with game and related value-added service revenue of 18.7 billion yuan in the quarter. In the fourth quarter, the data was 19.1 billion yuan, and it also reached 20.1 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2023, which is a significant and steady increase.
Obviously, the shock brought by Blizzard's withdrawal to NetEase is not obvious, and NetEase has also found "Egg Boy Party" as a new growth point.
Snowball shows that in the past year, NetEase's stock price has risen significantly.
Until a few days ago, the launch of the draft of the game's new rules for public comment. According to the new regulations, including daily check-in, first charge benefits, etc., will no longer be allowed, which made NetEase's share price fall from HK$159.8 per share to HK$122.6, with obvious shocks, and after NetEase's scandal with Blizzard, the stock price has a tendency to rebound.
This means that the capital market is looking forward to the two holding hands again.
On the other hand, it is well known that the irreplaceability of Blizzard games is the most important reason for their ability to gain many loyal fans around the world. Recently, Tencent's "World of Taris", which was launched in January 2023, is operating like crazy and has been regarded by some players as a meal replacement for "World of Warcraft", similar to "Golden Shovel War", which has begun to be regarded as a meal replacement for "Hearthstone".
This is undoubtedly a situation that NetEase does not want to see.
Because of this, NetEase's disclosure of this news was extremely ambiguous, not admitting or denying it, giving the capital market and the majority of players infinite reverie.
Once the news is true, both NetEase and Blizzard will be profitable, and the ritualistic AFK in January will only fade into oblivion with time.
However, none of this has yet been confirmed.
Whether it awaits the player is what everyone expects, or whether it is another "wolf", it will be necessary to wait for the answer given by time.
(Li Ting and Dong Fang are pseudonyms in the article.) ）