01
After a farce, "Warcraft" has a bright future
On the evening of April 10th, "World of Warcraft" officially announced that the national server was about to return, and within 15 hours after this official announcement, the number of Blizzard national server players who successfully logged in and completed the reservation reached 2 million, and at the same time, the number of players who left messages in the reforge blood roar event was also approaching 1 million, these numbers all prove that although the super IP of "World of Warcraft" has been absent from the Chinese market for more than a year, it still has super high appeal. So, why does it have to jump sideways repeatedly, exiting for a while and returning for a while?
What is the real mentality of the players, and if they do return, will the saved materials from the previous games still be there, and what version will they come back to, and what content will they be able to play after they go live?
Blizzard's overlord clause forced NetEase to retire and dismissed players
On November 17, 2022, Blizzard and NetEase successively issued statements saying that they would terminate their cooperation for up to 14 years after the expiration of the agreement, and on the evening of January 17, 2023, NetEase issued a statement on its official WeChat, saying, "We believe that Blizzard's proposal, including today's sudden statement, is arbitrary, inappropriate and does not conform to commercial logic." In its excessive self-confidence, it did not consider this kind of behavior of giving and taking, riding a donkey to find a horse, and getting a divorce without leaving, which put players and NetEase in their place. ”
According to people familiar with the matter, Blizzard's renewal condition is that NetEase needs to pay for two years of cooperation in advance, but not based on actual revenue, but according to the growth expectation of the next two years, which is obviously not accepted by NetEase. In addition, Blizzard also requires that the share ratio be further increased than the contract period of 2019~2022, NetEase develops Blizzard's other IP mobile games to be published globally, but only enjoys the revenue share of the Chinese market, and NetEase must pay a deposit.
In addition to the financial terms, the key issues for Blizzard to terminate the cooperation with NetEase were "ownership of intellectual property rights" and "control of millions of player data across China", so the topic of "Blizzard wants China's million player data" also went straight to Weibo's hot search at that time.
When Microsoft announced the acquisition, Activision Blizzard shares soared
And at that time, Blizzard was talking about the acquisition with Microsoft, and on the day the acquisition was announced, Blizzard's stock price rose sharply, once exceeding 45%, while Microsoft's stock price fell sharply, so many media believed that some of Blizzard's executives would leave after the acquisition was completed.
Of course, the biggest victim of the closure of the "World of Warcraft" national server is still the majority of players, many national server players have to find another source during this time, such as the Asian server, Taiwan server, etc., but not only to start from scratch, but also because of the large influx of players and studios, the Asian server has been at full capacity for a long time, queuing and jamming have become the norm, and the most serious time to pick up props has to be stuck for about 10 seconds, which has seriously affected the fluency of the game, which shows that Blizzard's directly operated server is really inferior to NetEase's blade server.
Microsoft is leading the return, and old players are in mixed moods
London time, October 13, 2023, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it has accepted Microsoft's remedy of granting the Activision Blizzard cloud game rights to Ubisoft, approving Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Since then, according to Microsoft's official disclosure documents, the company has completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a total price of about 68.7 billion US dollars (about 501.89 billion yuan), which officially became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft.
NetEase has made ample preparations for the return of the "World of Warcraft" national server
And just after Microsoft completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it was previously "demonic" Activision Blizzard's senior executives, such as the notorious Bob Caldecott who resigned after being overhead, and returning to the national service has become the focus of Blizzard's work, and NetEase has successfully repaired 92,000 accounts after the official announcement of the return of the national service, and the number of accounts successfully recovered has reached 147,000, and at the same time, NetEase officially received thousands of resumes after sending out the national service recruitment information, and the NetEase Human Resources Department even had to release a message saying that the position needs to have a background in relevant activity operation planning, and at the same time, it is also necessary to have in-depth experience of Warcraft.
However, the data seems to be very lively, but it is not necessarily for players, we also interviewed the old players of "World of Warcraft" around us, their mentality does not seem to be as enthusiastic as imagined, for example, Doctor Mad said that he does not plan to return, "The old players of games like "World of Warcraft" have entered the mentality of health, and it is a habit to go online every day to do daily work, and last year's national service offline is equivalent to taking the initiative to quit, and I am already playing other games now, and I guess I don't have time to play it again. ”
The second brother of the computer newspaper, who has also played "World of Warcraft" for more than ten years, said: "I am very disappointed in Blizzard's games, for example, "Diablo 4" is far inferior to "Path of Exile" and "The Last Era" and other latecomers, and the gameplay of "World of Warcraft" is too old now, plus the popular new games are emerging in an endless stream, I really can't afford to play this old game." Hardware editor Lele also said: "I'm just a casual player who goes online from time to time to take a look, and Blizzard only releases monthly cards and doesn't issue point cards, which is really discouraged." ”
After confirming the return of the national service, NetEase started the recruitment mode as soon as possible
After all, in MOBA (multiplayer online tactical competition, such as "Honor of Kings"), TPS third-person design (such as "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds"), family carnival (such as "Egg Boy Party" and "Yuan Dream Star") and other domestic hottest tracks, Blizzard either has no products or is not popular.
The "Hearthstone" national server, which returned at the same time as "World of Warcraft", has been updated three or four versions during the suspension of the national server, and each version has a large number of new cards.
The national server "World of Warcraft", these gameplay methods are worth looking forward to
Of course, there are two sides to everything, some players are not optimistic about the return of the "World of Warcraft" national server, and naturally some players are interested, so what version of the current "World of Warcraft" has developed?
The current stage of the official server is still "Dragon Age", and "Battle for the Center of the Earth" has also been announced, and the current dragon version has been opened to the fourth quarter, judging from the schedule released by Blizzard, there are a total of four major updates this year, namely 10.2.5, 10.2.7, 11.0 eve and 11.0 official opening, of which version 10.2.5 has been opened in January this year, so the national server is most likely to return with the 10.2.7 version that is expected to be launched on June 21.
A tribute to Chinese players in the new Mount of Panda Man's Mystery, the Starlight Dragon
On the same day as the official announcement of the national server,Blizzard officially released the official server 10.2.7 version will launch the news of the "Mystery of the Panda Man" Remix event,Obviously,This Mystery of the Panda Man event is to pay tribute to Chinese players,To commemorate the cooperation with NetEase again,To commemorate the reopening of the national server,After all, the "Mystery of the Panda Man" expansion was originally created by Blizzard specifically for China, and it is also the first expansion in the history of the national server to be launched simultaneously with the world.
Blizzard also designed a large number of transmog and mounts in this event, among which the most important is this golden starlight dragon mount, the dragon is a symbol of China, and this year also happens to be the Year of the Dragon, it can be said that this is Blizzard's gift to the Warcraft that the national server restarts. Not only that, but there are also Chinese-style back transformations, such as the back basket with a chicken hanging from the egg basket, and the transformation of the hat and barrel of Chen Storm Spirits, which can be said to be full of Chinese elements.
Interestingly, Blizzard has recently launched a goblin boss suspected of mocking Bob Caldick in the World of Warcraft PLUS version, the name in the game is Gobb Goldnick, which evolved from Caldecott's English name Bobby Kotick, because it dreams of a negative image of profits and commissions, so Blizzard has set up a skill for it called "Spending Money", obviously such a character setting is used for players to ravage and vent their anger.
Exploration Season is the only mode that Chinese players haven't played, and it's the focus of this return
In addition, players can also play the new mode "Exploration Season", which is a gameplay that Blizzard launched shortly after the end of last year, and it is also the only mode that players in the national server have not played, and it is also the biggest popular version after the reopening of the national server. Season of Exploration has a lot of magical changes to the level 60 Vanilla Era, a lot of new designs, and a lot of updates to skills, quests, and drops, which can be said to be very well worth playing.
02
Blizzard is back, and the gaming giant has started a new campaign
As the two giants in the game field, NetEase and Tencent originally had their own areas of expertise, but with the return of "World of Warcraft" and the siding of Blizzard and Microsoft, the delicate balance of the entire game ecosystem is being broken......
Build a high wall to accumulate grain, and actively prepare for the end game market
In the past few years, the scale of China's mobile game market has grown rapidly, and in addition to its low threshold for play, the "short, flat and fast" development model can enable a mobile game of acceptable quality to be quickly developed, launched, and profitable.
However, with the release of the Measures for the Administration of Online Games (Draft for Solicitation of Comments) issued by the National Press and Publication Administration in December 2023, which restricts the "pre-test of games" and the prevalent charging mode of mobile games, the mobile game industry may usher in a bottleneck period of development, which also gives more opportunities for time-based and buyout terminal games (The first two years of the launch were buyouts, with a total sales of more than 20 million copies) and other types of games ushered in a boom era, and the return of "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" undoubtedly made NetEase have more strong players in the terminal game market.
Changes in the terminal game market naturally attracted the attention of Tencent, another major game giant, before the news of the return of "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" came out, Tencent was responsible for publishing the new MMORPG game "World of Taris" has opened the final test, "World of Taris" is a mobile PC cross-terminal game set in the Western magic world, which has undergone a total of 4 rounds of testing since it was announced in January last year. According to the time of this round of testing, the goal of the work may be to be launched in the summer of this year. On TapTap, the game has also been shown to be expected to be launched on June 14, which is somewhat "colliding" with "World of Warcraft" at the same time.
"The World of Taris" is called the "domestic version of Warcraft"
In the subdivision of the terminal game MMORPG game, "World of Warcraft" has a certain degree of similarity with "World of Warcraft" from the world view to various mechanisms and gameplay, and many people believe that its launch will fill the gap in the market segment caused by the closure of the "World of Warcraft" national server, but the return of the "World of Warcraft" national server will directly have a certain impact on the basic disk of "World of Warcraft".
Tencent is not desperate in the end-game market, and one of its plans to succeed "CrossFire" "Valorant" has run well in the FPS track, and has become a frequent visitor to the live streaming platform Twitch's popularity list after the overseas open beta. In addition, Tencent's "Operation Delta" and "Counter War: Future" are two highly anticipated FPS games this year, and with a large number of experience, players and IP accumulated in the field of FPS games, Tencent still has a pretty good advantage in the FPS track of terminal games.
Compared with Tencent, NetEase has more say in the MMORPG track in the field of terminal games, from last year's "Against the Water and Cold Mobile Game", to this year's "Condor Shooting" and "Yanyun Sixteen Voices" and "Infinity", the launch of a number of MMORPG masterpieces with different themes has made NetEase's voice on this track bigger and bigger. At the same time, NetEase's "Condor Shooting" is also the RPG game that all players pay the most attention to this year, and the three labels of "martial arts", "RPG" and "plot" are NetEase's advantages.
Overall, the return of "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" will not have a particularly big impact on the entire terminal game market, but it can consolidate NetEase's advantages in the MMORPG segment track, and whether it is Tencent, which is good at FPS terminal games, or NetEase, which has a great voice in the RPG field, are currently accumulating content to consolidate their advantages in the segment track, but with the official return of "World of Warcraft" and "World of Tarith" Officially launched, NetEase and Tencent, the two terminal game markets, will start a battle on the MMORPG track.
The mobile game market is fighting again, and Blizzard has become Microsoft's "stepping stone"
Compared with the restraint of the terminal game market, the two giants of NetEase and Tencent are much more fierce in the offensive and defensive battles in the mobile game market. After more than two months of fairy fights in "Egg Boy Party" and "Yuan Dream Star", NetEase has raised its eyebrows in the mobile game market in the past year with "Egg Boy Party" and "Against the Cold", but in the face of Tencent, which is backed by strong social traffic and has many super IPs such as "Glory of Kings" and "Peace Elite", NetEase wants to go further in the mobile game market, it needs to have more heavyweight IP explosions, and Blizzard, which has many IPs, has naturally become the best partner for mobile games.
Previously, the mobile game "Diablo Immortal" cooperated by Blizzard and NetEase was estimated to have a turnover of more than 900 million in the first month, showing the growth potential of Blizzard's IP series of mobile games. However, both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard lack the strength to transplant medium-to-heavy games like "World of Warcraft" to mobile phones, and NetEase, which has teamed up with Blizzard to create "Diablo Immortal", has strong mobile game research and development strength, and has the game version number of Blizzard's family bucket series, has become the best choice for cooperation.
"Diablo Immortal" is a good start for the cooperation between NetEase and Blizzard
NetEase has made many structural adjustments for Blizzard's return to the interior, and unlike the outside world's assumptions, NetEase Blizzard did not recall the employees of the previous NetEase Blizzard Cooperation Department on a large scale after resuming cooperation, and only a very small number of positions received invitations. Only within the Thunderfire Business Group, an independent publishing team has been formed, with the intention of making the national server better serve players. Previously, the main operating body of "Blizzard Family Bucket" was Shanghai NetEase, but with the breakdown of the cooperation between Blizzard and NetEase two years ago, NetEase was dissolved, and employees were also dismissed.
Founded in 2007 on the banks of West Lake, Leihuo is NetEase's first game studio in Hangzhou. After more than 10 years of development, Leihuo has become a business group with more than 3,000 employees, with first-class R&D, operation and marketing strength in China, and has successively developed many IP games such as "A Chinese Ghost Story", "Against the Cold" and "Naraka". This move was interpreted by industry insiders as NetEase or planning in advance for the development of Blizzard's IP mobile game. Previously, NetEase's functions were mainly agency operations, and it lacked game research and development capabilities, which may be difficult to meet NetEase's future needs.
For NetEase, the addition of Blizzard games will not have much impact on its entire game pattern, but based on Microsoft's idea of wanting to enter mobile games, NetEase will develop domestic and overseas markets together with Microsoft through possible Blizzard IP mobile game research and development in the future, and may be in multi-terminal interoperability, strategic alliance with Microsoft, and jointly attack the global game market, which is probably the focus of NetEase's current planning.
The drunkard's intention is not to drink, but to the overseas market
NetEase and Blizzard will put aside the "grievances" and get back together, obviously will not just focus on the interests of "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" in the domestic market, in fact, the return of Blizzard's games such as "World of Warcraft" will indeed be good for NetEase's performance in the short term, but the overall growth rate of the company can be relatively limited.
Affected by the suspension of Blizzard's national server, NetEase's terminal game revenue in 2023 will decline by a total of 4.01 billion (only 3.9% of NetEase's total revenue in 23), but with the launch of key mobile game new products such as "Egg Boy Party" and "Against the Cold", NetEase's mobile game revenue has grown rapidly, as of the fourth quarter of 2023, NetEase mobile games account for 76.7% of game revenue, and there will also be new products such as "Naraka: Bladepoint" mobile games in the future, and the dependence on Blizzard series products is expected to continue to decline in the long run. Compared with the benefits generated by Blizzard's games such as "World of Warcraft", NetEase chose to cooperate with Microsoft and Blizzard this time, and I am afraid that it is more important to focus on overseas markets.
At the NetEase MCTalk Game Overseas Practice Salon in May last year, NetEase revealed: NetEase Games currently accounts for 10% of overseas revenue, and the goal is to grow to 50%. But as early as the fourth quarter of 2019, the official revealed that overseas game revenue accounted for more than 10% of the company's game revenue. After four years, the weight of NetEase's overseas revenue internally is still very small.
As a comparison, the situation of the first echelon is as follows - Tencent 2023, Tencent's game revenue in the international market will be 13.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25%, and Tencent's overseas game revenue has reached about 38% of local game revenue. Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's overseas game revenue accounted for about 36.54% in the first quarter. Liu Wei, founder of miHoYo, said that the company's overseas market revenue has reached 50% in 2023.
The overseas market is probably the purpose of NetEase Games
NetEase Games, which once swept China with popular games such as "Onmyoji" and "Fantasy Journey to the West", is indeed a little faltering in the pace of going overseas. Before the return of "World of Warcraft", NetEase launched the overseas publishing label "Exptional Global" to start the launch of games such as "Blood Strike", and the terminal game "Naraka: Bladepoint" has successfully landed on the Xbox platform, and this time it has reached a new game publishing agreement with Microsoft and Blizzard Entertainment, providing new opportunities for NetEase to promote self-developed new games with the advantages of Microsoft's platform.
From this point of view, when NetEase chose to re-cooperate with Blizzard and Microsoft reached a new game publishing agreement, a game around the global game market has already begun to be laid.