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Hello everyone, this is the World of Warcraft Weekly Report.

[World of Warcraft Weekly Report] is mainly composed of three parts: "Major World of Warcraft Events", "World of Warcraft Competitive Dynamics" and "World of Warcraft Game Updates".

Let’s take a look at what Warcraft news there is that is worth sharing recently!

【World of Warcraft Event】

Confusing operation reappears! Blizzard crosses borders to recruit technology experts

On July 20, Blizzard's new Chief Marketing Officer Monica Austin took office, attracting a lot of attention.

Unlike traditional marketing planners in the gaming industry, although Monica Austin has a very strong resume, having been selected as one of Forbes' 30 Under 30 entertainment elites and having worked for major technology companies such as Facebook, Netflix, and Linktree, she has never been involved in the gaming industry before.

Intuitively speaking, this operation is as inexplicable as asking Musk, who is good at making airplanes, to work as a game planner at NetEase the next day.

It is no wonder that Zhang Dong, the former head of Blizzard China, directly said: "There are always Internet/entertainment companies that believe that the gaming industry can be led by outsiders."

It should be noted that letting laymen guide professionals is not an isolated case in the history of Blizzard's development. For example, in 2021, in order to get rid of the negative public opinion of occupational sexual harassment, they invited Jen Oneal to serve as a co-leader for a period of time. In addition to running away with 2 million US dollars, this young lady single-handedly slowed down the launch time of "Overwatch 2" and "Diablo 4".

Here, we can only hope that Monica Austin can bring some good changes to Blizzard instead of any innovations.

Blizzard confirms participation in CJ, showing new Hearthstone and Overwatch clients in China

On July 19, the official announcement of "World of Warcraft" stated that Blizzard Games has confirmed to participate in the 2024 ChinaJoy. They will bring the latest content of "World of Warcraft" "War to the Core", "Hearthstone", "Overwatch" and other national servers to Chinese players, and provide trial content of the new version of the national server client.

At the same time, three main creative staff members of Blizzard Entertainment: World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale, World of Warcraft Senior Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, and Hearthstone Executive Producer Nathan Lyons-Smith will travel across the ocean to attend this year's ChinaJoy and communicate face to face with players.

It seems that in addition to the official server of "World of Warcraft" to be launched on August 1, Blizzard games such as "Hearthstone" and "Overwatch" are also preparing to restart the Chinese server within the next few months. I just don't know whether their compensation plan has been prepared.

By the way, Lilith, the cover character of "Diablo 4", appeared on this exhibition poster. Isn't this hinting that there is a chance that "Diablo 4" will be launched in China?

The number of paying users is less than half? The number of active players in WLK Classic is less than 800,000!

Unexpectedly, the spell of payment being reduced by half has also come true in the "World of Warcraft" WLK nostalgic server!

Recently, as the nostalgic server entered the official paid operation stage, some players found that the server queue pressure suddenly decreased, and the number of players in the game also decreased visibly. After comparing the number of people through a certain plug-in, it turned out that the number of active players in the WLK nostalgic server is now less than 800,000.

Judging from the number of active players reported by the plug-in, the number of active players of World of Warcraft WLK Classic during the free period was 2.956 million. However, after World of Warcraft WLK Classic entered the paid stage, the number of active players dropped sharply to 741,000, less than 1/4 of the free period.

Now, except for the popular server where the anchor Jaina is stationed, which requires queuing, other servers can be entered in seconds.

In this regard, many players feel that: "The charging model really discourages many people", "I was waiting for the official server, so I didn't want to claim it for 14 days. If it was free, I would play it in spare time", "After all, it's a bit hard to chew cold rice after twelve years", "Now I'm dazed when I go online, and I have nothing to do when fighting a holiday BOSS. The key is that I can't make gold"...

It seems that whether the Chinese version of World of Warcraft can stand up still depends on the official server!

"World of Warcraft" Chinese server return commemorative short film released: Human Emperor SKY guest appearance

On July 14, the Chinese version of World of Warcraft released a short film to commemorate its return, in which the famous former e-sports player SKY Li Xiaofeng appeared. The short film was mainly to promote the return of the official server, informing players that they can receive 14 days of free game time and the loss time of the server shutdown, and there are also exclusive return commemorative mounts such as the "Greed Bear".

In this regard, players can't help but ask:

—The official server can be opened now, why not?

—I wanted to shoot a down-to-earth story, but I ended up shooting a drama about a youth literature idol. Is the film mainly for the old players? Who in this group would be interested in this kind of youth literature?

—This server closure caused Chinese players to miss out

1. Season set transmogrification, season mounts, season set special effects, and PVP illusions for seasons S2 to S4

2. Diablo linkage: transmogrified backpack, transmogrified one-handed hammer, transmogrified staff, transmogrified two-handed hammer, hearthstone toy, flag toy

3. Hearthstone Legend Linkage: Transmogrified hat, transmogrified belt, transmogrified robe, mount, pet, toy

4. How to compensate for World of Warcraft anniversary mounts?

【World of Warcraft Competitive Dynamics】

Why is the Chinese region locked? The second beta of "Kingdom and Freedom" has started, and the summer update has a huge amount of content

The international version of the large-scale MMORPG online game "Kingdom and Freedom" developed by NCsoft and operated by Amazon globally will be launched on September 17. From July 18 to 23, the international version conducted a large-scale multiplayer test without qualification, which attracted the attention of some MMO players.

But what is quite puzzling is that the Korean game, which has always been friendly to Chinese players, chose to lock the domestic area this time and did not provide a Chinese option. It seems that the global agent Amazon still does not intend to accept the kindness of Chinese players.

In Europe and the United States, the second beta test of "Kingdom and Freedom" has received good feedback. Some players praised this new game for maintaining the aesthetics of Korean companies in character creation. In addition, the game quickly attracted more than 60,000 players shortly after the public beta test was launched.

At the same time, the Asian and Korean servers of "Kingdom and Freedom" released a preview of a large-scale summer update with rich content, including a new skill talent system, new life secondary occupations, a new map Toland, new dungeons and a series of other content.

Therefore, friends who want to play are advised to play on the Asian server directly operated by NCsoft. There is no need to play on the global server of Amazon's locked country area.

Monthly active users exceed 10 million! The first month data of the public beta of Jian Wang 3 Unbounded Edition is released

On July 15, "Jian Wang 3" released the data report of the first month of the public beta of the borderless version.

It is reported that in the first month of the borderless public beta of "Jian Wang 3" on all platforms, the monthly active users reached 11.46 million, of which 6.91 million were returning players, accounting for 60.39%. Among the returning players, 78.81% were old players who had lost before 2017. It can be seen that the launch of the borderless version has indeed solved a big problem for many old MMO players who want to return but are too lazy to play on the computer.

At the same time, the number of pure new players has reached 1.53 million. From this, it can be seen that this game has the ability to convert fresh blood.

So, now the pressure is on other old MMO games. When will they be able to achieve interoperability across all platforms?

【World of Warcraft Game Update】

Tanks are as fragile as paper? The official server's class balance is criticized

Recently, the designer of the official server of "World of Warcraft" announced the news of the first major profession balance patch in version 11.0, which attracted collective complaints and explosions from players.

What confuses everyone is that the designers increased the endurance of all professions by 60%, and then cut the damage reduction and blood recovery capabilities of the MT profession in half. This not only greatly reduced the tank's ability to withstand damage, but also made many healing professions fall into the anxiety of "not being able to replenish blood".

You should know that the AOE damage in the 11.0 version of the dungeon is already high. If the tank profession cannot take care of itself under high pressure, it means that the healer needs to take care of the health of everyone in the team, and the amount of operations will increase greatly. This will undoubtedly make the tank and healer, who no one wants to play, even less popular, and the DPS profession may also have to take time to play with the mechanism.

In short, this change does not substantially improve the game balance except for increasing the operational burden of all players.

Most importantly, Blizzard kept such a large-scale change hidden during the B test phase, causing many players to not know what profession they should launch first on the eve of 11.0, and began to curse the World of Warcraft balance team for teaching players how to play the game again.

Zandalari Rise! Cataclysm Phase 2 will be available on August 1st

The overseas nostalgic server of "World of Warcraft" will launch the P2 phase of Cataclysm, namely the Rise of Zandalari, on August 1. Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman will return in the form of dungeons, and the main rewards are Swift Zulian Cheetah, Armored Ra'zath Raptor, and Amani War Bear.

Compared to the previous nostalgic servers, judging from the pace of rushing to P2 after P1 was opened for more than two months, Blizzard designers are indeed intending to speed up the pace of Cataclysm so that players can quickly go through this version with little nostalgic value.