Some People Line Up, Some Complain, And Some Make Money. What Exactly Is The Nostalgic Version Of "World Of Warcraft" Nostalgic About?

"It's really important to have a wife who understands you!" A player lamented in the NGA gaming community. Not only did his wife not object to him getting up early in the morning to play games, but she also took the initiative to help him turn on the computer and queue up, "Just because I said before , this time may be the last time I play World of Warcraft in my life."

It is impossible to determine whether the story is true or false, but there are many similar posts on NGA. Hedgehog Commune made a rough calculation and found that on August 28 alone, there were 10 posts mentioning his wife in the NGA "World of Warcraft" Classic Server forum.

Author | Chen Bin

Editor | Tielin

The server is full. Queue position: 19213, estimated wait time: 238 minutes.

At 6 a.m. on August 27, the classic server of "World of Warcraft" was officially launched. A certain Douyu anchor tried to broadcast a game live, but the number of players in the game overcrowded the server, causing him to be unable to enter the game. Staring blankly at the queuing interface was not an option, so the anchor could only talk to the barrage.

He's not alone in this situation.

In order to play the game as soon as possible, Weibo netizen @李云锔 was already in front of the computer at around 5 a.m. But what he didn't expect was that before the game was launched, the team had already reached 6,000 people. As for those players who got up late, queuing is almost unavoidable, and the queue position is at least 10,000 people behind.

That morning, the number of anchors broadcasting "World of Warcraft" live on major platforms surged. Embarrassingly, many anchors also encountered the situation of needing to queue up.

Cut from Huya TV

"World of Warcraft" is a role-playing online game with a huge and independent world view. It is produced by the American game company Blizzard and is represented by NetEase. This game has spent 14 years since entering China, and there are still some players today. In the first few years after it entered China, "World of Warcraft" attracted a large number of players and could be called a national-level game at the time.

This popular nostalgic server restores the earliest game version of "World of Warcraft" in terms of content. Players can experience Azeroth in 2005 (Azeroth is the name of this continent in the game world). It's more like a derivative game in nature.

For many young people born in the 80s and 90s, "World of Warcraft" carries their earliest gaming time and youth.

When playing "World of Warcraft", game content such as 40-player dungeons often requires the cooperation of multiple people to experience it, and guilds have become the destination for many players. In this process, some people met like-minded friends in the guild, and some found marriage partners in the guild. The youth of a generation stayed here.

It is precisely because of this that some people have glimpsed the business opportunities early on.

At 6 a.m. on August 13, pre-registration for the Classic Server was opened. Players can register 3 characters in advance and set their own game ID. Because game IDs cannot be repeated, pre-registration has become the best channel to grab a good ID.

On August 10, Xia Yike, a well-known Blizzard game voice actor and anchor, announced the server he wanted to play on his Weibo and hinted that he would be ready to register for an ID when the time comes. When the time came, the IPs of "Xia Yike", "Xia Yike's Deadly Tongue" and others were all registered, and even the ID of her boyfriend "Black Heart Meow" was gone.

"Ah Meow and I are staring at the rising sun in Beijing. We set the alarm to grab the names of the classic servers, not to watch the sunrise," she complained in a post on Weibo.

It doesn't matter if it's a prank by fans, but someone is reselling the IDs of these celebrities on Xianyu. To this day, there are still four users on Xianyu selling game characters who have registered the ID of "Xia Yike". The most expensive one is sold for 9,999 yuan.

Cut from Xianyu

Some power leveling studios are also making moves.

Taobao is full of various services related to the nostalgic server, including power leveling, equipment brushing, dungeon clearing, etc. The prices also vary according to the specific service content. Hedgehog Commune (ID: ) found one of the studios and learned the specific price.

In terms of power leveling alone, the fees are completely different depending on the speed. The slowest one takes 40 days to reach full level and costs 800 yuan; the fastest one only takes 7-9 days but charges 4,500 yuan.

41 people have successfully paid.

This is because players do have certain needs in power leveling. The game of "World of Warcraft" Classic Server is more difficult and the upgrade is relatively slow. Some players have just reached level 10 after fighting in Azeroth for a day, which is considered a relatively rapid progress. The current version has a maximum level of 60, and the higher you go, the slower it becomes.

Even so, players still enjoy it.

A large number of players finally queued into the server, only to find that the novice village was completely dark and full of people. Everyone is rushing to kill so many monsters that the killing speed is obviously faster than the refreshing speed. Everyone can only wait until the monsters are refreshed.

At this time, some players proposed to queue up to do the task, and the scattered crowd immediately gathered into a straight line. One player tried to jump in line and was immediately scolded by many people, "You are in your thirties, don't jump in line."

Picture source Weibo@banniangxiaowei

Some players were disconnected within a few hours of entering the game and had to queue up again. Angry players began to complain about The Ninth City.

The9 was the earliest national server agent of "World of Warcraft". It was not until 2009 that the agency operation rights of the game were transferred to the current NetEase. Today, gaming is no longer The9’s main business. In March this year, The9 founder Zhu Jungang reached a cooperation with Jia Yueting to join the field of electric vehicles.

But for players, since it is a nostalgic server, the agent must also be "nostalgic". Today, The9’s Weibo post about electric vehicles has gathered more than 600 comments complaining about the classic server of “World of Warcraft”.

Some players were really angry and directly posted accounts such as "Hangzhou Internet Police" and "Hangzhou Consumer Protection Committee 315" on Weibo in an attempt to protect their rights.

Picture source Weibo @charge money to become stronger

The Classic Server, like the main body of "World of Warcraft", uses a monthly card charging mechanism, which means you need to spend a fixed amount every month. They spent 75 yuan for a monthly pass, but were unable to play for a whole day, which meant that the cost of this day was wasted.

Some people also took the opportunity to show off their affection.

"It's really important to have a wife who understands you!" A player lamented in the NGA game community. Not only did his wife not object to him getting up early in the morning to play games, but she also took the initiative to help him turn on the computer and queue up, "Just because I said before However, this may be the last time I play World of Warcraft in my life."

It is impossible to determine whether the story is true or false, but there are many similar posts on NGA. Hedgehog Commune made a rough calculation and found that on August 28 alone, there were 10 posts mentioning his wife in the NGA "World of Warcraft" Classic Server forum.

Abroad, the "World of Warcraft" classic server is also extremely popular, so much so that Blizzard's stock also experienced a surge. According to data from foreign analyst Ahmad, Activision Blizzard's stock price soared nearly 6% within one day of the launch of the classic server, reaching its highest peak since November 18 last year.

Blizzard, which has been "scarred", finally has a chance to breathe.

Blizzard was once one of the leaders in the global gaming industry. Whether it was "World of Warcraft" or later "Hearthstone", "Overwatch", etc., it had caused quite a stir around the world. Among domestic fans, the slogan "If a Blizzard product is produced, it must be a high-quality product".

Today, Blizzard is going through its "midlife crisis."

In recent years, the influence of Blizzard's various games has been much less than before, although games such as "Hearthstone" and "Overwatch" still have a large number of players.

Even worse is the brain drain. A large number of Blizzard's core talents, including Frank, the co-founder of Blizzard, and Ben Brode, the "father of Hearthstone", left the company one after another and began to set up their own businesses, and various negative news continued.

The great success of the "World of Warcraft" classic server has finally helped Blizzard win back a victory, which indicates the strong appeal of this IP.

But how long can such success last?

In fact, the gaming experience of the "World of Warcraft" classic server is not particularly good. In addition to the much-criticized servers, there are still two major problems that need to be solved in the classic server.

First, the game lacks a sense of surprise. When playing a game, the sense of surprise when exploring the unknown can often attract players very well. But for players who have experienced the early version, everything in the nostalgic server is old and there is no sense of surprise. After the emotions are exhausted, how to retain players becomes the biggest problem.

The second issue is the rhythm of the game. As mentioned before, some team copies of "World of Warcraft" require guilds to work together to clear the level. Some of these high-difficulty dungeons require hours or even days of continuous game time just to clear the wasteland once. For modern people whose pace of life is getting faster and faster, they often cannot afford so much time and prefer to consume time in fragmented ways.

It is precisely for this reason that when the charging method of "World of Warcraft" was changed from point card to monthly card, it was criticized by many old players. The so-called point card means charging on time. Only if you spend a lot of time playing games every month, the monthly card will be more cost-effective than the point card.

But for all the players coming in, none of that matters anymore. As long as I can shout "For Azeroth" with familiar people again, this carnival will be worth it.

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