Chapter 680: Influence

PS: The author's tenosynovitis has flared up, and my typing speed is relatively slow. Updates will be delayed for a period of time. You can refresh later or tomorrow morning. It's just a bit later than usual.

This situation will likely continue until the end of the year. The doctor says it will take this long to recover, and updates should return to normal after the new year.

I apologize for the inconvenience caused to my readers, and I ask for your understanding.

Main text:

April 16th, the day *World of Warcraft* went into public beta.

This day is destined to be recorded in the history of online games.

As early as a few days ago, millions of pre-order players worldwide had already pre-downloaded and were waiting for the arrival of the public beta every day.

Now many single-player games often delay their release dates.

Often, the date when you can actually play the game is delayed by a quarter or even half a year from the date originally set.

This result of hope turning into disappointment is quite a blow to game fans.

Fortunately, *World of Warcraft* didn't inherit such bad habits. It said it would be released on April 16th, so it was released on April 16th.

And although there were many game fans waiting to try it out on the first day of public beta, except for some lag in the first minute after the server was unsealed, it became extremely smooth afterward, and there was no need to queue; you could enter the race and profession selection interface directly.

Many online games and even mobile games have server crashes and long queues when they open, some even lasting for hundreds of years.

But in fact, many of these are self-directed and acted by game operators, using non-existent players to block normal players, creating an illusion that the game is extremely popular.

Sometimes, this method is quite useful, but in more cases, it only causes resentment among players.

Miss Luo Quan never liked this set, so a few days before the server opened, she asked Tencent and Microsoft to conduct pressure tests on the servers every day, just to ensure that there would be no server crashes when a large number of players flooded in.

As for crowding, there is no way for a game to be so popular, but Miss Luo Quan wouldn't show fans the waiting time, only showing them how many people were queuing in front of them, and the servers they could enter directly.

However, on the day the server opened, the effect of these measures was actually not very large.

Just in China, Tencent set up ten district servers, each server subdivided into ten small servers.

But because of the publicity of some local tycoon players, the "Ansu" in the first district was marketed as exclusive to the nobility.

Because Orgrimmar in the second district and Stormwind City in the third district had already been designated as places where high-level players and guilds of the Horde and Alliance would fight.

If ordinary people go to compete with these masters, naturally there won't be any good development.

But if you go to a server with many tycoons, if you get orange equipment or rare transmogs, you might be able to make a lot of money.

Thus, the Ansu server became the most popular district server after *World of Warcraft* opened in China.

Miss Luo Quan also went to Ansu, not to show off her wealth, but simply because there were many people here, and the price of props bought in the auction house would be much lower in the future.

But she didn't expect there to be so many people.

As the boss, the instruction to open the server was given by her. After sending the message, she clicked the button to enter the game frantically.

It stands to reason that she should be able to squeeze in, but after the server opened, the screen just flashed, and it showed that there were 35,612 players queuing in front of her. Please wait patiently, or you can choose other district servers.

Seeing this, the chat burst into laughter:

"Haha, who was just swearing that it wouldn't crash?"

"Don't be malicious; this isn't a crash, just simply can't get in."

"After all, how can you show the game is popular if you don't queue?"

…………

It was also because she spoke too confidently that everyone in the chat started mocking her.

At the same time, *World of Warcraft*, which exploded upon opening, also rushed to the Weibo trending searches without suspense.

However, it didn't crash this time; it was just because the Ansu district server was too crowded, so the tycoons' mentality collapsed.

Si Aomi directly posted on Weibo to curse, telling these people not to come and squeeze Ansu anymore. He just went to the bathroom, and the game opened.

His wet hands hadn't even dried yet, and he clicked into the game, only to find that there were more than 50,000 people queuing in front of him, and the number didn't move at all for a long time.

Fortunately, Tencent quickly issued an announcement, saying that they would stop the Ansu server for a short time around 3:00 AM to expand capacity, allowing more players to join.

But if the server were stopped directly now, the number of people cursing would probably be more than just those on the internet, so whether it was a tycoon or an ordinary player, just wait honestly. This game doesn't have any VIP queue-jumping function.

Although Tencent game operations had discussed this with Miss Luo Quan before, saying they could add a VIP or membership privilege, Miss Luo Quan didn't even look at the specific plan and killed it all.

"My game is not allowed to have any privileged users. I'm the boss and I didn't think about setting any privileges. Why should others be more awesome than me?"

Miss Luo Quan threw these words to Tencent's game operations, which could be considered as keeping this rare pure land.

As time goes by, power-leveling studios will definitely appear, but that is an internal contradiction among players. Whether it is good or bad depends on the player questionnaire survey in the future.

As for VIPs and memberships, they are completely one of the biggest bad habits of Chinese online games, and she certainly wouldn't allow such functions to appear in *World of Warcraft*.

This is also why, on the Weibo trending searches, players who couldn't get into the game cursed, but they only cursed that there were too many people and they couldn't play the game. So far, I haven't seen many people cursing the game itself.

Of course, planners also belong to the disaster area where players focus their fire.

In fact, there are not many things planners can decide, but because they often come out to take the blame, as long as there is a problem with the game, everyone defaults to cursing the planners.

It was also amidst this cursing that the pressure on the Ansu server gradually became smaller, and the players in the waiting queue entered the game one by one.

Compared to the public beta, *World of Warcraft* has improved in image quality and optimization is much better.

In addition, the content of the public beta is several times more than that of the closed beta.

The dungeons in the closed beta only had three five-man dungeons and one multiplayer team dungeon.

And the 1.0 version of the public beta is directly three large maps, seven five-man dungeons, three multiplayer team dungeons, as well as a plot main line lasting 30 hours and 10 hours of side quests.

Even if it's just a plot/scenery party, you can get a quite fulfilling game experience.

And when everyone finishes the plot and reaches the full level, the true essence of this game has just begun.

Like the closed beta, Miss Luo Quan still chose the Blood Elf Fury Warrior, using her own data for face-pinching.

When she finished the novice tutorial and appeared at the gate of Orgrimmar, she was surrounded by tall and strong green-skinned Orcs, Taurens, and Trolls.

The crowd was dense, completely blocking her vision, and no matter where she went, this huge crowd followed.

"Damn, bug?" Miss Luo Quan looked at the screen suspiciously, wondering what was going on.

Soon, the news mixed in the world channel made her suddenly realize:

"Miss Luo Quan, I'm your fan!"

"Miss Luo Quan, can you add a friend?"

"By the way, is there a marriage system here?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Haha, do I still need to ask? (Dog head)"

…………

Now Miss Luo Quan knew that these players surrounding her were fans.

However, it's a pity that *World of Warcraft* hasn't added a marriage function for the time being, but it doesn't exclude the possibility of adding it later.

Although *World of Warcraft* is strictly an equipment-driven MMORPG, it can actually become an open-world online game that encompasses everything.

And the purpose of open-world games is freedom. Players can experience reality in the game, and even some happiness that cannot be realized in reality.

At present, *World of Warcraft* is still lacking in this aspect, with only some simple production-type specialties, and the sense of substitution is definitely not as strong as open-world games.

"Everyone, go experience the game. Don't just revolve around me. This is a prepaid card game; time is money."

After meeting the fans, Miss Luo Quan also typed to let everyone disperse quickly.

Surrounding her like this, not only did she have no game experience, but these fans didn't either.

However, the fans' answers were quite straightforward:

"It's okay, I bought a yearly card; I don't care about an hour or two."

"I actually just want to see Luo Bao's face in the game; it feels so much like the real person."

"I feel like I'm in love again."

"Everyone, don't act like a stalker; let the handsome me come!"

…………

The last sentence was spoken by an Orc who was ugly to the extreme.

I don't know if his face-pinching used a camera to scan himself. If so, that's really a human tragedy.

Even Miss Luo Quan, who was well-informed, was frightened and lost her color after this ugly face appeared abruptly on the big screen.

Including other players around, they couldn't stand it either, and they complained that he was too scary.

However, thanks to this brother, the players surrounding her gradually dispersed, and Miss Luo Quan was able to receive the first main quest and start her journey in *World of Warcraft*.

To tell the truth, this journey was not particularly smooth.

As soon as she went to the wild to fight monsters, she could always encounter Alliance players who came in groups to kill her.

Just like playing *League of Legends* and encountering enemy junglers targeting you, Miss Luo Quan was also targeted.

Ordinary players seem to have quite high interest in torturing celebrities.

However, after hearing that their goddess had been killed several times, the Horde players immediately formed a group to ambush beside her, waiting for the rabbit.

Then, they guarded the wild resurrection point and started whipping the corpse over and over again.

But the Alliance side was not a soft persimmon that the Horde could handle at will; they shouted directly in the world channel that the Horde was guarding the Alliance's corpse.

Countless, hundreds of Alliance players immediately came to reinforce, including several tycoons who had already saved up a set of early-stage small top-grade equipment through "money power."

Compared to servers where high-level players and guilds gather, the competitiveness of the Ansu noble server is not so intense, and most people are actually playing for fun.

So, when everyone heard that there was a fight, they put down the main quest and ran to the wild to fight the hostile camp.

This was also the first camp war since *World of Warcraft* opened, and the fuse was Miss Luo Quan.

The initial conflict was caused by her, but in the subsequent war, she was also at the forefront, leading the Horde warriors to kill the Alliance.

But as more and more people participated in the war, the frequency of character deaths became higher and higher.

Although death does not lose experience, the durability of the equipment on the body will drop.

And the gold coins in the early stage are very limited, so spending them on this is really not worth it.

So Miss Luo Quan fought for more than half an hour, then continued to go through the plot to upgrade.

It wasn't until she had dinner in the evening and was brushing Bilibili that she found out the war was still going on, and it even trended.

"Ten thousand people war broke out in Ansu, Alliance and Horde fight endlessly!"

This is the news issued by the official Tencent game account. The perspective also uses the characters in the game, and in the distance is the battlefield where various light effects flicker.

"According to the war reporter, the cause of this war was that Miss Luo Quan was sniped by Alliance players in the wild. Horde players of the same camp, in order to protect her, started guarding the corpse after a successful ambush."

"The Alliance side couldn't take it, immediately called people to counterattack, and then the war intensified."

After the cause and effect came out, there were soon related questions on Zhihu:

"How to view the war between the Alliance and the Horde in the wild on the Ansu server of *World of Warcraft*?"

The highlighted answer is:

"Miss Luo Quan used herself as an example to vividly interpret for everyone what is called 'a beauty is a disaster.'"

"There have been too many wars in ancient times because of beauties. Although everyone says that beauties are just an excuse and the war was launched purely for expansion and wealth, what role can women in ancient times play?"

"But the fact is, women can sometimes really play a big role."

"Originally, just after the server opened, everyone was still burying their heads in leveling and going through the plot. As a result, after hearing that the goddess Miss Luo Quan was sniped, protectors immediately came to escort her."

"And this is also the beginning of everything."

"If it were in ancient times, Miss Luo Quan would probably not be able to escape the name of a disaster to the country and the people."

"However, with her appearance, it is normal to trigger such things, whether in the game or in reality."

………………

In just half a day, *World of Warcraft* set off a surging storm on the internet.

Not only in China, but the discussion abroad is also terrifyingly high, and the trending searches on Twitter in various countries have entered the top ten.

And the latest global concurrent online number has also come out, which is a terrifying 6.2 million.

Except for *League of Legends* in its peak period, no other game can be compared with it.

And in recent years, the last game with such high popularity was the last one.

Yes, it is *Final Fantasy*, which was just released a while ago, also produced by Blizzard Studio, and the popularity is still explosive.

However, by comparison, the durability of the popularity of single-player games is definitely not comparable to online games.

And the glory belonging to *World of Warcraft* has just begun. ===== CHAPTER 681 =====