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Game-Time report/After more than 440 days, domestic players finally waited for the official news of the return of Blizzard’s national server.
Although according to media sources, Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase did begin to contact each other at the end of 2023. After the Spring Festival, the NetEase Interactive Entertainment Operations Center in Guangzhou has established a closed base for Blizzard’s national server, which is mainly responsible for daily operations, customer service and other work. The general person in charge is Zhang Fengyi, vice president of NetEase Games, was responsible for the “World of Warcraft” project in his early years.
But it was not until 9 a.m. on April 10 that NetEase Games and Blizzard China officials simultaneously announced on Weibo and other platforms that “Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase updated the agreement to bring the beloved games back to China; Microsoft Games and NetEase launched an update With the statement of “Extensive Cooperation”, the two officially settled their differences.
Later, a celebration was even held downstairs in the NetEase Hangzhou building.
As soon as the statement was issued, terms including #Blizzard Official Announcement Return, #NetEaseBlizzardRemarriage, #NetEaseBlizzardOfficial AnnouncementReunion, etc. were on the hot searches on multiple platforms. Countless domestic Blizzard players and netizens were excited about this.
Some people lamented, “I still love it”, while others laughed at themselves. Everyone is a “part of their play”.
Of course, among all the speeches, the official blog speech of the MMORPG product “Taris World” developed by Ledong Excellence Technology and distributed by Tencent was the most joyful. As an MMO game that is regarded by many players as the QQ version of Warcraft, The current situation of “ex-husband getting back together” directly caused his official blog to “break the guard” and said: “I gave gifts to my eldest brother when he remarried, and the clown turned out to be me.”
Many players also joked in the comment area of relevant Weibo, “Tazi, don’t contact me in the future, I’m afraid Blizzard will misunderstand”, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t have me in your world, you have to be happy on your own.”
But joking aside, although there is currently no specific release date for Blizzard’s games, as the first announcement of the combination of the two, Game-Time was word-for-word and found a lot of news worthy of attention and even some surprises.
Although further details of the return of Blizzard’s national server still need to be disclosed by NetEase in the future, and everything is subject to official information, but while waiting, we can open our minds with Game-Time and “over-interpret” the existing information. Have something to look forward to.
Old games are worth looking forward to, but new games are worth surprises
Today, Game-Time believes that many bloggers and media have made analyzes and speculations about the return of Blizzard’s old games.
For example, the most basic thing is that many of Blizzard’s products will not return all at once. “World of Warcraft” will most likely be the first product to resume operations in the national server this summer (most likely three months?). Players’ Data can be inherited, there will be corresponding out-of-server compensation activities, domestic anti-cheating capabilities will be much stronger than foreign servers, versions and activities that players have missed (such as World of Warcraft’s WLK with its own out-of-service buff), etc.
Game-Time will not go into details here. Interested users can go to NetEase Master to retrieve their Blizzard account, and then wait patiently for the return of their favorite products.
If you think about it, the first thing Game-Time noticed was that the description of the return of the game in the statements of both parties did not simply list the product names, but gave a rather large scope, that is, “a series of games in their respective game universes.”
If you want to think carefully, this may be to adapt to the special situation of products such as “Return of Overwatch” in China, and also include “Heroes of the Storm” which is still expected by many people in China but was not mentioned in the statement.
But if we are bolder, this description actually means that mobile games like “World of Warcraft” mentioned by Game-Time in previous reports are likely to be resurrected, and even derivatives and adapted games of Blizzard’s future IPs, NetEase will at least have priority right.
For example, last year Blizzard released “Warcraft Arclight Rumble” overseas. The product’s revenue in the first month successfully exceeded 100 million. If it were to be introduced into the country, the agent would most likely be NetEase.
Another example is the RTS game “StarCraft”. Although Blizzard has announced that major updates will be stopped, the IP still has considerable appeal in the game industry, and it is not impossible to develop strategic mobile games based on the IP on the mobile platform.
In short, when it comes to new game development or distribution, NetEase will naturally be the first choice compared to other companies around the world.
This is certainly not Game-Time’s nonsense. After all, although the signatures of each platform statement are basically “Blizzard Entertainment and Game Publishing Team”, the Microsoft behind Blizzard is actually more noteworthy.
In statements from both parties, it was mentioned that “Microsoft Games and NetEase have also reached an agreement to try to bring new NetEase games to Xbox and other platforms.”
This actually means that what Microsoft and NetEase intend to reach is not just a short-term game agency agreement, but a longer-term, future-oriented cooperation contract. NetEase hopes to develop multiple platforms through cooperation and at the same time gain more initiative in the future development of Blizzard’s game IP. Microsoft also hopes to use the cooperation between Blizzard and NetEase to promote its mobile game dream.
As for NetEase, even before the two parties officially announced their remarriage, Game-Time had predicted that if the two reunited, NetEase would definitely be the more proactive party in the cooperation.
This is not only because NetEase holds the version number and player data, but more importantly, today is different from the past. Compared with more than ten years ago, NetEase has now become one of the top ten game companies in the world. Whether it is with Blizzard or Microsoft, The cooperation is based on the exchange of interests between both parties, rather than the more urgent and passive needs of one party.
What’s more, the revenue from Blizzard’s current game lineup is difficult to stir up waves in NetEase’s financial report. NetEase’s second cooperation after the breakup last year must be for longer-term interests.
As for Microsoft, not to mention Xbox’s current passive position in the console market, Sony has MiHoYo but does not have a similar cash cow background. Microsoft has publicly stated many times that it acquired Activision Blizzard Mobile because of King’s mobile games. Development capabilities.
In December last year, according to Bloomberg, after communicating with Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft’s Xbox division, it was confirmed that Microsoft has started the construction process of the Xbox mobile game app store and has begun to contact external partners.
You must know that the Microsoft App Store on PCs is currently represented by NetEase and Oriental Pearl in China. It is reasonable to bring the Xbox mobile app store to China through NetEase in the future.
The MMO track is huge, don’t panic everyone
After thinking about it, Game-Time believes that although everyone is happy to post pictures online, there is actually no need to worry about many MMO games. The MMO track is large and can accommodate more than one large ship.
Although Game-Time has previously reported that after the national server of “World of Warcraft” last year, many domestic MMO products have experienced double-digit revenue growth.
But the causal relationship is actually uncertain. For example, the current top players in domestic PC MMO online games, “Ni Shui Han” and “Jian Wang 3”, are both old products that have been in operation for many years, and the player base has long been fixed. According to Xishanju’s financial report, “Jian Wang 3” 》Still achieved growth in 2023.
Although the actions of “World of Warcraft” will indeed affect the entire MMO client game market, before 2023, everyone can actually be beautiful in the same market. Now, even if the players who previously came from Warcraft leave these old games, their Their foundation actually determines that the impact they receive is extremely limited.
If “Jian Wang 3” can still compete with “World of Warcraft” to some extent, the impact will be relatively limited. Products like DNF mobile games will most likely not be affected by “World of Warcraft”. In terms of gameplay, what it needs to worry about more is actually similar to MiHoYo’s “Zero”.
According to Game-Time, the only thing you need to worry about with new games such as DNF mobile games is the collision with the return of “World of Warcraft”. According to App Store data, the DNF mobile game is scheduled to be released on June 30, which is in the hot summer. If the game is just launched and coincides with the launch of the national server of “World of Warcraft”, social media and players will inevitably pay attention to it. Totally on World of Warcraft.
Considering that the national server of “World of Warcraft” has a history of full servers and queues, related topics may even last for several days, completely overshadowing other games.
What’s more, before and after the launch of the national server of “World of Warcraft”, NetEase will inevitably announce the launch schedule of other games. This means that for a long time, new and old games will compete with Blizzard games for the spotlight.
The only game that Game-Time believes may have a slight impact is the “World of Taris” mentioned at the beginning of the article, but it is also quite limited. After all, both are products for the global market. There is no “coming and going” situation for Blizzard games overseas. “World of Taris” still performs well despite the existence of “World of Warcraft”. It can be seen that as a new game, It actually has two brushes.
As for China, although officials and players are laughing at themselves, the joke has passed. Players outside the industry may not be well-informed, but after all, the publisher of the game is Tencent. Could it not know about the “highly confidential” little moves between Blizzard, Microsoft and NetEase?
It may pretend to be crazy, but you can’t think it’s really stupid.
Game-Time believes that “World of Taris” has actually been ready for the return of “World of Warcraft” to the national server, and is quite confident that it can gain a firm foothold in the market.
Of course, the subsequent performance of the game still needs to be observed in the longer term.
Conclusion:
Although as a veteran Blizzard game player, the author has a lot of emotional things to express, but now, at this point, Game-Time just hopes that everyone can calm down and wait patiently for the return of Blizzard’s national server, and hope that this will be the last Once, similar twists and turns happened to domestic players.
Regardless of whether everyone chooses to return with Blizzard or whether they respond as usual, everything will be fine.
