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Hello everyone, I am Dr. X.

On July 11, the "World of Warcraft" WLK nostalgic server officially entered the commercial operation stage. Compared with the previous free-to-play soft restart, many new changes have emerged.

Among these, the most intuitive and obvious thing is that the number of people queuing for several newly opened servers has shown a cliff-like downward trend. For example, one can even enter the Ruby Temple directly without queuing.

So the question is, what changes happened before and after the national server started charging that caused the number of national server players, which originally peaked at 6.5 million, to drop to less than 750,000?

Let’s talk about it today.

Key point 1: Super helicopter is also difficult to top? The 11-year studio ran away, and 2.21 million players chose to wait and see

After the vigorous return of World of Warcraft's WLK nostalgic server, a large number of players chose to quit the game due to acclimatization problems. Dr. X has analyzed this before and it is a completely normal phenomenon.

After all, many young people nowadays only have the impression of World of Warcraft from reading a few online novels and hearing some news reports. If you ask them to really go to the nostalgic server to smoke a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of water, and do a map task all night, and then turn around and see that their character has only been upgraded to level 3.5, they will definitely not be happy.

(Most people come to watch the fun when the server is launched)

Therefore, for more valuable data, we still have to look at the comparison between the 2.956 million and 741,000 active players 72 hours before and after the commercial operation of the WLK nostalgic server.

Obviously, about 2.21 million players chose to temporarily quit and wait and see after the WLK nostalgic server was charged.

As for the reasons why they choose to wait and see, there are naturally various ones. The first and foremost one is the "unheard of" 888 luxury annual card gift package in the past decade, and the one-step 298 super helicopter gift package.

The former broke the tradition of "World of Warcraft" that annual membership benefits were only given out during the Chinese New Year by drawing Ghost Tigers, while the latter was the first time in a Blizzard game that a graduation outfit was given out in the middle of a major version.

Unprecedented operations occurred one after another, not only did the players panic, but even the former head of the Chinese server of "World of Warcraft" was shocked.

If there is one or two, there will inevitably be a third. In this wave of gift pack sales with increased quantity but no price increase, many players who are somewhat interested in nostalgic servers are also considering whether NetEase will sell similar "one-click graduation" gift packs again in the P3 and P4 stages, or they are worried that the Homecoming Emblem can be exchanged for better equipment later.

The second point is that after the official commercial operation, you can clearly feel that there is an invisible big hand adjusting the gold price of the national server. The price fluctuations of the Time Badge every day are as ups and downs as a roller coaster.

For those old players who want to get the "ribs" of WLK nostalgic server, they naturally have to weigh whether to choose the domestic server market where risks and opportunities coexist, or to choose the more stable international server market.

The third point is also the most discussed point recently, that is, after the official commercial operation, players have a 99.99% probability of confirming that NetEase has obtained the right to modify data in this agency contract.

From Borean Tundra to Black Temple, and then to Stratholme and the Ecological Ship, a large number of previously popular maps and dungeons have all been "repaired" one after another, causing many manual leveling and studios who made a living from these to collectively break down and quit, and the number of active players has also dropped sharply.

Players will definitely agree that by modifying the drops of monsters and reducing the extremely high profits brought by repeated monster spawning, the stability of the game market economy can be ensured.

But the question is how big the data modification authority is, and what are the rules for determining whether the income from killing monsters is normal or not? NetEase has not made it public.

Finally, there is one point that cannot be ignored.

Under the Holy Light bounty of up to 100,000 Battle.net points for reporting plug-in scripts, the technology parties and studios that use automatic macros and synchronizers for data collection operations are also in trouble, and the number of orders is decreasing day by day.

Some well-established stores on Taobao that have been around for 11 years have chosen to close down during this crisis and will no longer take over projects related to boosting prices.

However, the gray industries such as proxy gaming have always been a love-hate relationship with the real owners. After some cheap and easy-to-use studios for daily clearing, achievement completion, and material production exit the market, it is bound to cause "pain" and withdrawal among certain groups of players.

After all, many people who play World of Warcraft nowadays are relatively old, and it is somewhat difficult to ask them to go online every day and keep up with the pace of version updates.

Key point 2: Should we be happy or sad about the sharp drop in the number of players? The nostalgic warm-up is over, and the official servers and exploration servers are the real treats

When the first wave of players quitting the nostalgic server broke out, Dr. X analyzed that NetEase's operation of first opening the white pot and then the red pot was based on the idea of ​​maximizing KPI and converting players' enthusiasm for the return of the national server into traffic for the nostalgic server.

However, after observing the commercialization of this wave of WLK nostalgic servers, Dr. X realized that the pattern at that time was still small. It turned out that NetEase’s main focus was always on Hongguo——The white pot served first is more or less a test of the water.。

As mentioned earlier, whether it is launching an 888 gift package to boost the game's bottom line, or modifying the rewards for playing games, forcing the power-up studios to exit the game, these "unprecedented" changes will cause the game to experience some "pain" for a period of time, triggering one or several waves of players quitting the game.

But after all the storms, a lot of valuable experience will be left behind, which are undoubtedly urgently needed for the preparation of the official server.

Let's take NetEase's modification rights as an example. Many players are worried that NetEase will tamper with the game, but if the operation team can really stick to the bottom line and control the market gold price of the nostalgic server, the resistance to modifying some monster drops will be much smaller after the official server is launched.

There is also the matter of cracking down on studios. If NetEase can really kill all the troublemakers in the nostalgic server, it can once and for all solve the problem of script technology that was also rampant in the previous official server.

In this way, the gaming environment of the official server will be upgraded to a higher level, and it won't be a big problem to attract the 2.21 million players who are waiting and watching.

To take a step back, even if NetEase's big move causes trouble for the WLK nostalgic server and it collapses, they still hold the trump card of the exploration server, which is much more attractive to old players who like nostalgia than the WLK nostalgic server.

So, in a sense, this WLK nostalgic server that was opened first is more like a World of Warcraft test server.

After-class summary

At present, the situation of the WLK nostalgic server is clear - if you want to be nostalgic, that's fine, you can do it happily; if you want to earn money by doing delivery work, that's fine too, except that the gold coin income has been cut by about 30%; if you want to make a lot of money or are bored with pure MMO and want to find a new game to play, Dr. X does not recommend you to get started.

After all, many of the gameplays of this WLK nostalgic server are backward from today's perspective. Instead of tormenting yourself, it is better to wait for the official server to play dragon taming, quickly upgrade BUFF, and get pre-preliminary graduation equipment.