This article is from the WeChat public account: 眸娱乐 (ID: mouyuchanye), author: 眸娱乐, title picture source: Visual China
On April 10, Beijing time, Blizzard Entertainment, Microsoft Games and NetEase officially announced that they had re-entered into cooperation. Two pieces of data are worth noting:
First, Blizzard and NetEase just announced their cooperation in the morning, and at noon the "World of Warcraft" player reservation exceeded 20W.
The screenshot was taken at 12:48 p.m
Second, at 10:24 a.m., the official public account of "Hearthstone" released the return trailer "Welcome back, find a place to sit down", which was read more than 100,000 in less than 5 minutes.
This is a screenshot of less than 4 minutes after the official account was issued, and 10W has been broken in 5 minutes
These two data undoubtedly prove that even if Blizzard has "backstabbed" players, in the field of MMO and chess, Blizzard's "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" products still have a very high appeal in the hearts of players.
This is very different from the tone of public opinion last year.
From the very beginning, when NetEase broke up with Blizzard, Blizzard was at a disadvantage in public opinion.
Subsequently, "StarCraft 2" Li Peinan won the first championship in China, but no one applauded him because the game was suspended, and called on fans not to send money to Blizzard in the live broadcast room;
During the Asian Games, the Hearthstone project was abruptly canceled due to the termination of the operation team and server.
The dissatisfaction with Blizzard has reached its peak in the hearts of Chinese players, so much so that when the news of Blizzard's return has not been confirmed on April 9, there is a joke:
"Iron Turtle Man, even Blizzard games can be replayed, so what else can't be forgiven. ”
Even if there are many players who can't give up their old loves, they have already given up the national server and worked hard again in the Asian server, with new accumulation and social precipitation, so that they can return to the national server, and the psychological cost is not high. Therefore, many people were not optimistic about Blizzard's return before.
But the dazzling data at noon once again proves the true weight of Blizzard games in the hearts of players. The previous dissatisfaction can only be roughly explained as "the depth of love and the urgency of responsibility".
Blizzard will always be the white moonlight in the hearts of players in that era.
Bai Yueguang can be forgiven no matter what he does. But this can make it difficult for Wang Baochuan, who has been eating wild vegetables diligently for a year with the players.
After Blizzard withdrew from China, domestic manufacturers launched a large number of substitute games for Blizzard games to take in homeless Blizzard refugees. In the days when Blizzard is away, the expansion team will play with you, and the music design will make you happy. And now, Blizzard is back, and you can just go.
510 days after Blizzard withdrew from the domestic market, Wang Baochuan ushered in a big test.
One
If we divide by company, what we need to pay attention to most is the performance of NetEase, Giant, and Tencent.
First of all, no matter from which point of view, NetEase is the most suitable game manufacturer to undertake Blizzard refugees.
In terms of timing, NetEase has a first-mover advantage, and the software and hardware facilities and publicity channels previously built to serve Blizzard are all there, which is about the same as running at the starting line; emotionally, NetEase is also more supported by players in the breakup with Blizzard this time; Operationally, NetEase also has 14 years of experience in serving Blizzard users.
Even in terms of products, MMO itself is NetEase's strong advantage track, although it is not directly benchmarked against the MMO products of "World of Warcraft", it is not difficult to find one from the mature product to do meal replacement.
Indeed, after the breakdown of renewal negotiations, NetEase was the first game manufacturer to react. In the field of chess and cards, NetEase quickly restarted a number of products such as "Secret Realm Showdown", "Endless Warzone", "Marvel Showdown", and the ongoing operation of "Shadow Verse", "Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Link", "Onmyoji: Baiwen Card" and other chess and card products, also with the help of NetEase's previous service advantages, issued invitations to Hearthstone players for the first time.
The MMO track is based on the habits of Warcraft players to streamline and modify the game, and integrate the theme design, the most representative of which is the two pieces of equipment sent by "Against the Cold" to Warcraft veterans: "Frost Giant Sword" and "Undefeated Pegasus", which correspond to the representative objects of "World of Warcraft" "Frost Sorrow" and "Invincible".
But perhaps in order to gain an advantage in the follow-up negotiations with Blizzard, NetEase chose to travel lightly and laid off the previous operation team. The many travel products just mentioned have not played a practical role in the follow-up operation, and they can be regarded as a storm and a quiet walk. On the contrary, it is the self-innovated games "Against the Cold Cold" and "Egg Boy Party" that have achieved NetEase's new opportunities in the development of the game industry.
Where did the wandering operation team go? The wandering team came to Giant Network.
Zhang Dong, the head of NetEase, the team responsible for operating Blizzard's game localization, joined Giant Network as CEO on January 1, 2024. Almost at the same time, there were also core members of the Hearthstone China distribution team, including brand managers, e-sports managers, and live channel operation managers, who settled in the "Full Moon Night" project team of Giant Network's Tick Studio.
Eye Entertainment previously reported that "Full Moon Night" was originally a single-player card battle game, but after adding the tavern battle game of "Hearthstone" at the end of August 2023, it is logical to unlock the multiplayer online PVP mode.
"Full Moon Night" and miHoYo's card game "Call of the Seven Saints", which was launched in December, inherited most of the media and anchor resources left by Hearthstone in China, and are the two games that have truly gathered core players on the Hearthstone proxy game track.
But they also have their own limitations, the limitation of "Full Moon Night" is that its body is not a collection of cards like "Hearthstone", but a stand-alone card game that sells DLC for profit, although it relies on the "Tavern War Chess" gameplay to create a PVP ecology, but the profitability is limited, and the only consumption point in the current PVP link is to buy Battle Pass members. As for miHoYo's "Call of the Seven Saints", the game is a built-in game of "Genshin Impact", which is its biggest limitation.
Compared with the giant's specialization and refinement, Tencent's layout can be described as multi-faceted.
For the FPS track alone, two games with very different styles were launched: FPS Valorant and TPS Calabichu.
The former, developed by Riot Games, bears a strong resemblance to Overwatch, and quickly exploded after its launch in July, becoming the core engine of Tencent's quarterly growth.
The latter is developed by iDreamSky and takes the two-dimensional route of differentiation. The retention and activity data on the terminal game are excellent, so the mobile game is also rapidly advancing into the process.
However, Tencent Games itself is in a high position in the FPS track, putting aside CrossFire and chicken mobile games, only in 2023, there will be two shooting games "Edge of Rebirth" and "The Division".
Tencent's careful layout can be seen even more on the MMO track. The terminal game represented a similar style of "Ark of Destiny", which performed well after its launch in July last year, and the mobile game launched another "World of Taris", which directly played the slogan of "benchmarking World of Warcraft". After getting the version number in December last year, the test started in March this year, but the test reputation was not very good.
Even in the field of chess and cards, he had played the IP card "Magic: The Gathering" that he was good at earlier, but the "Magic: The Gathering: The Gathering" he represented did not get the version number for a long time, resulting in the project not being completed.
Two
As early as May last year, Blizzard continued to show favor by thanking Chinese regulators for approving its acquisition with Microsoft, saying that "we attach great importance to the Chinese market, and we still have many players and employees in China."
At the "2023 BlizzCon Carnival" event in November in the second half of the year, Activision Blizzard President Mike Ybarra once again talked about his hope to return to the Chinese mainland market as soon as possible, because "there are millions of players who love Blizzard" here, and the company hopes to let these loyal players play Blizzard games again.
In addition, it has successively registered trademarks such as "Battle for the Center of the Earth", "The Last Titan" and "Darkest Night" in China. All of them are revealing a message: I don't want to go.
In the face of the encirclement and suppression of domestic competitors, MMO and chess and card tracks, Blizzard's "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" have the advantage, but in the field of MOBA, a message worth paying attention to:
In the list of national server games that were announced to be restored, only the name of "Heroes of the Storm" was missing.
This means that Blizzard has completely given up the competition for MOBA products in China.
And the FPS track, which is also in a weak position, although "Overwatch 2" has also hit the streets again. However, many people are still optimistic about the "Overwatch" mobile game project created by NetEase and Blizzard, which will effectively fill the gap of NetEase in the field of FPS mobile games after the chicken product, and at the same time, it can also maximize Blizzard's production advantages after relying on Microsoft.
It is believed that the emergence of this product will become the biggest challenger in Tencent's FPS track.
This article is from the WeChat public account: 眸娱乐 (ID: mouyuchanye), author: 眸娱乐
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