Rewrite the Technological Landscape

After players gradually abandoned "Paradise 2", everyone's eyes fell on "World of Warcraft" and "Ancient Mythology". In everyone's opinion, these two games have too many similarities.

One is continuity. As I said before, the earliest version of "World of Warcraft" was actually designed with "Warcraft 3" as the background. Seeing the continuity of the Blizzard series, players will have a sense of familiarity and a sense of belonging when playing this game.

The same is true for "Ancient Mythology", which continues to use ancient mythology as the story background, combines many character backgrounds and classic gameplay in "The Legend of God" and "Battle of the Gods", and continues to expand the game background. For the loyal game of Dafeng Group For players, it is full of intimacy.

The second is the obvious local style. "World of Warcraft" is the standard Omi style, and "Ancient Mythology" is the standard Chinese style.

The third is the grasp of game balance, which has been mentioned before.

Fourth, the gameplay is similar. The success of "World of Warcraft" is inseparable from the various gameplays he designed under the background of this era, and the development of "Ancient Mythology" brings the experience summarized from the previous two games and Meng Qian's rebirth advantage , Naturally, it is also to grasp the psychology of the players of the times.

Even in terms of details, "Ancient Mythology" is better than "World of Warcraft". For example, Warcraft first made the large copy too complicated, and then changed it to a small copy after more feedback from players.

However, this advantage is not enough for "Ancient Mythology" to beat "World of Warcraft".

Faced with such a close call, the reactions of netizens in the United States and China were not the same. Netizens in the United States always felt that Blizzard was ashamed, while the players in China seemed quite satisfied.

In fact, the difference can be seen from the very beginning when everyone expressed solidarity. After all, the explosion of online games in China in the past two years mainly depends on the gameplay. More than 90% of the so-called domestic games use foreign game engines, especially in the field of 3D games. , Huaxia has no performance that can give you confidence. You can only see that the Omi game manufacturer is constantly striving for excellence in 3D games.

At this time, some random excerpts from the Internet with a high number of likes can be seen:

"To be honest, it is not easy for "Ancient Mythology" to do this. I heard that the game engine is independently developed by Dafeng Group. At present, it is considered to be at the same level as Unreal 2."

"Because we didn't have our own 3D game engine, we have been criticized outside, and now we don't have to suffer from this anger anymore."

"In my lifetime, I can actually play a purely self-developed high-quality national style 3D online game. I am satisfied."

However, although Huaxia players were very tolerant and expressed their support and satisfaction to Dafeng Group, Meng Qian was not satisfied at all.

After all, whether the product sells well or not is not determined solely by the quality of the product. When the products are similar, then we will work hard to operate them.

On January 6, 2004, "Ancient Mythology" ended its one-month public beta, and issued several statements after the end of the public beta.

The first one is to embed "Ancient Mythology" into Fengxin. From January 6th, when you open Fengxin, you will see the "Ancient Mythology" icon. Click it to log in to "Ancient Mythology" without re-registering an account.

The account registered directly through the game can be bound to Fengxin, and you can log in through Fengxin in the future.

At this time, the Blizzard team is interpreting the statement of "Ancient Mythology" in the company.

"What's the point of this? It's not troublesome to register an account."

"Gale Group also overestimated the value of Fengxin."

"It's just self-consolation, it's useless."

Hey, a group of young people who have never seen the Penguin Empire

In addition to unifying the Fengxin account and the game account, the second thing Gale Group did was to expand the game's publicity.

The promotion of "World of Warcraft" is relatively traditional, that is, game-related channels. Of course, this kind of promotion will be very accurate, but it also ignores the development of the game industry and the development of game players. After all, this is 2004, the global game industry Players, especially online game players, haven't really exploded yet.

In the next ten years, the number of online game players will increase several times. Those who have not yet been developed are not easy to develop through pure game channels.

But Dafeng Group has other channels in its hands, such as novels, comics, and animations.

The novels of the "Ancient Mythology" series have already begun to be laid out, and the corresponding adaptations of comics and even animations have also published several series.

But now, when a novel user opens the novel website, when a manga enthusiast opens the manga platform, they will see the promotion of "Ancient Mythology".

At the same time, Qingfeng.com has been introducing animations since December, and the first batch of online animations naturally included animations adapted from the "Ancient Mythology" series. "Ancient Mythology".

How many people played the game "Zhu Xian" because they liked watching Zhu Xian back then, and they all understand the effect of this kind of propaganda.

As for the traditional channel of the game, Dafeng Group has a hole card that has been used countless times but has not been used badly. Most Internet cafes in most of Asia still use the Internet cafe management system of Dafeng Group. This product was deployed for free until now. Competitive, because the product is good and free, the owner of the Internet cafe will not switch to other products without special reasons.

The Dafeng Group now spends a little money every year to maintain and upgrade the Internet cafe management system, and it can completely afford this money.

From all the actions of the Dafeng Group, it can be seen that Meng Qian has been running for the big IP operation from the very beginning. From "The Legend of God" to "The Battle of the Gods", from novels to animations, they all revolve around the big IP of ancient mythology However, even Blizzard has not yet realized the value and significance of operating a large IP at this time, and has not even found a way.

The person in charge of Blizzard also mentioned in later interviews that the IP of Warcraft began to consider operating a large IP many years later. The reason why the first version of the story background was set as "Warcraft 3" was because there was no update. good idea.

When Blizzard was still using the game itself as a point of competition, Gale Group had already started from IP.

In just ten days, the data has changed significantly.

On January 6, the total number of players in "World of Warcraft" was 1.33 million, and the total number of players in "Ancient Mythology" was 1.51 million. By January 16th, the total number of players in "World of Warcraft" was 1.65 million, but " The total number of players of "Ancient Mythology" reached 2.26 million.

The gap is gradually widening.

But Blizzard is not a fuel-efficient lamp. After so many years of precipitation in the game industry, Blizzard is very keenly aware of the reason why "Ancient Mythology" has recently exploded in users.

Although it is too late for Blizzard to learn from Dafeng Group to build a big IP, at least Blizzard is aware of the huge new player market and the power of channels.

For this reason, Michael, one of the founders of Blizzard, immediately submitted an application letter to Vivendi's top management, hoping that the company can increase operating expenses. Michael and others are relatively confident in the game itself and the team. Go grab users with "Ancient Mythology" first, don't let "Ancient Mythology" pull away the user base, it will be difficult to do it then.

Blizzard's thoughts and reactions are all right, but Meng Qian also thought that Blizzard would do this. When Blizzard asked Vivendi to adopt a money-burning strategy, Meng Qian was talking to Sony's Idei about something.