Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 91 - Chapter 90 Caught off Guard - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 91 - Chapter 90 Caught off Guard Online - All Page - Novel Next
Chapter 91: Chapter 90 Caught off Guard
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Wu Zhao who was keeping an eye on Thunderbolt Tabletop was panicked by the number of downloads in the first day.
He felt like he severely miscalculated the situation, especially with Chen Mo's tactics.
Wu Zhao did tabletop games himself, and ever since Thunderbolt Tabletop went online, the daily users for tabletop games for Emperor Dynasty Entertainment had dropped by several hundred thousand, which was no longer a small number.
Obviously a big chunk of these players went to Thunderbolt Tabletop, some left in search of something fresh, others left for the prizes.
Moreover, Wu Zhao felt that he was in danger at the first moment. Moreover, he felt deep down that this was only the beginning.
Wu Zhao couldn't do much else but ask Lin Chaoxu for advice.
—
Lin Chaoxu wasn't in such a good mood in his office.
"You said it wouldn't do too much damage to our user base, but look what happened now? Hmm? We lost a few hundred thousand in the first day, is that not a big loss?"
Wu Zhao wiped the sweat off his forehead, "Mr Lin, please let me explain.
"This Chen Mo guy planned it from the start, but the installer he sent us didn't reveal any information like this, causing me to miscalculate the consequences.
"He had planned from the start to promote his game using the prizes. I thought that the tournament mode was just to add some flare to the game from yesterday's demo. I didn't expect he would expand on that, which is why the estimations were so far..."
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Lin Chaoxu asked after a few moments in thought, "Is there any way to save this? Emperor Dynasty Tabletop in particular. We'll give out gaming pods too, ten times the amount he's doing! We'll make more decisions after we manage to retain the players."
Wu Zhao replied, "Mr Lin, It's not as simple as that. We could give out gaming pods too, but we don't have a tournament mode!"
Lin Chaoxu scowled, "If there isn't a tournament mode we'll just give it out using draws. The players will have a chance to win if they play a certain amount of hours or play a certain amount of games. Wouldn't that drag up our daily players?"
"Mr Lin, there's still a problem. The players feel like they won't be lucky enough to make the draw if we do that idea, so it wouldn't get much popularity. We have millions of players, even if we give out ten or even thirty gaming pods, the chance of getting one would be one in a hundred thousand.
"Moreover, players wouldn't actually play the game if we do it that way. Most players would AFK in game or grind it out to make it into the draw, so there would be no incentive to play daily.
"Although Chen Mo isn't giving out much from his competition, just giving out three every week, but he is giving the players a sense of hope. The players think that as long as they are good enough, they will have a chance at winning."
Lin Chaoxu scowled yet again, "How about we make a tournament mode as well. How long would that take, a week?"
"I've already ordered people to work on that, but the rules of a tournament mode is a bit complicated. It would be about 30% of the game, including testing and improvements, I'm afraid it's going to take two weeks," replied Wu Zhao.
Lin Chaoxu was visibly upset, "Two weeks? That's too long. I don't care if you work throughout the night or take adreneline supplements. Finish it within a week. Before that's done, I want you to give out prizes using lucky draws. Gaming pods, phones, PCs, gift cards... Give out anything that is needed to retain the players!"
Wu Zhao nodded without hesitation, "Yes, Mr Lin. I'll arrange that immediately!"
—
Emperor Dynasty Entertainment reacted pretty quickly, doing lucky draws only one day after Thunderbolt Tabletop was released. Players need to play a certain amount of hours and games to have a chance of drawing anything from gift cards to gaming pods.
It was obvious this was in retaliation to Chen Mo's attacks. They weren't dumb enough to just taking, but this method of lucky draws wasn't anything to be proud of.
As Emperor Dynasty Tabletop didn't have anything resembling a tournament mode, that was the only thing that had in the bag for now.
After that, the players of Emperor Dynasty Tabletop started to stabilize, and even showed signs of rebounding. However, most of these players were just there to have a chance at the draws, not many players were actually there to play the game.
On the contrary, a large amount of players at Thunderbolt Tabletop were having the time of their life. In particular, it didn't take long for Thunderbolt Poker to develop its own fans, and more and more players started looking into the strategies for the game.
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Many players realised that better players were more likely to win in Thunderbolt Poker than Dou Dizhu or Mahjong. As long as you keep playing your hand well and folding when you get bad cards, you could guarantee a stable winning.
Of course, many players didn't like this play style, feeling that this card game was too constrained as it required staying calm and not making any rash decisions, otherwise, the chips went out faster than they came in.
However, this didn't affect the popularity of Thunderbolt Tabletop. Even if the players didn't like Thunderbolt Poker, they could play the usual Dou Dizhu or Mahjong.
More and more player discussion of Thunderbolt Tabletop started appearing.
"The new player guides are really nice, it feels like they paid much more attention compared to other tabletop games."
"This game feels nice, free beans every day as well as bankruptcy protection three times a day. It works well for god-tier donors such as myself."
"Previous poster, you're only losing a few thousand beans a day, how could you consider yourself a god. You're probably just a charitable dog."
"I didn't think there would be so many pros. I've always thought I was decent at the game but I don't even have enough credits to reach the top hundred."
"Get out of my way, the VR gaming pod is mine!"
"Although I'm still not that good, the champion next week will be me!"
"I've already decided to switch over to Thunderbolt Tabletop, because this game gives out so many free beans..."
—
Sunday.
There were now more than 1.5 million players, it was growing faster than I Am MT!
Of course, the vast majority of players weren't paying players, meaning that the revenue of Thunderbolt Tabletop would never come close to I Am MT. However, the growth of players was enough to shock industry professionals.
There was no question that Thunderbolt Tabletop was trending, there were even streams who switched over from Emperor Dynasty Dou Dizhu to Thunderbolt Dou Dizhu during their free time.
There were also some tabletop game streamers who changed their title to "Gaming pod winning stream", with tens of thousands of people watching.
This idea was trending without a doubt. The new tournament mode as well as the unique playstyle of Thunderbolt Poker started to spread from tabletop games players to a larger audience.
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Chapter 92: Chapter 91: Burning Money
As the release of Thunderbolt Tabletop had given Emperor Dynasty Entertainment a massive headache, the Chairman of Fantasy Gaming Platform, Ding Xing was also highly anxious.
Fantasy Gaming Platform was also a big distribution in China, but they weren't as big into development as Emperor Dynasty Entertainment or Zen Entertainment.
Fantasy Gaming Platform placed huge emphasis on tabletop games, and was also a huge part in growing their player base. Understandably, Ding Xing was shocked when Thunderbolt Tabletop was released.
What is this?
Ding Xing felt that he was caught between the crossfire. Why was he caught between Chen Mo taking on the titans of Emperor Dynasty Entertainment.
And Chen Mo actually used the promotional spot on Emperor Dynasty Entertainment to promote his own tabletop games?
Emperor Dynasty Entertainment too, why did they actually promote it?
Aren't they giving him the shovel to dig their own grave?
Chen Mo is giving away gaming pods through a tournament too? What a barbaric way to do things!
The most infuriating thing was that the players are actually falling for it?
What is the meaning of this!
Ever since Thunderbolt Tabletop went live, the daily active users for Fantasy Tabletop had dropped by tens of thousands, of course Ding Xin was worried.
Ding Xing also wondered how he was caught in the crossfire when it was clearly between Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Chen Mo.
Ding Xing was now in the same situation as Lin Chaoxu, he wanted to retaliate, but what could he do? His games didn't have a tournament mode at all!
Lucky draws? It wouldn't work well! Even if they had to throw money at it to fix the problem, it wouldn't fix the root of the problem!
However, even if it was in vain, he had to do something. If nothing was done, the players would continue falling, and before long, all of the users of Fantasy Gaming Platform would be gone.
Ding Xing had to bite the bullet, "We are also giving out gaming pods! Everyone will be working overtime to make a tournament mode as well!"
—
Chem Mo's actions had stirred waves within the tabletop games community. There were countless video game designers working overtime just to make a tournament mode. If Chen Mo's hate meter could level up, it probably would've gone up by three levels in one week.
However, the fans that were waiting for drama finally got what they asked for. Around four tabletop games started giving out prizes, and many of them started to log into multiple accounts to try and have a chance at the lucky draws.
However, the efforts by the other games are largely meaningless, as the tabletop games that use lucky draw systems didn't require the player to pay attention. It was only because Thunderbolt Tabletop had a tournament mode that players were inclined to grind out in Thunderbolt Tabletop for credits to increase their placing on the leaderboard.
—
Sunday.
Dou Dizhu, Mahjong as well as Thunderbolt Poker within Thunderbolt Tabletop had started their finals round. After an hour of exciting gameplay, the first three places of all three games finally emerged.
Chen Mo also had his eyes on the matter, livestreaming the entire competition on Weibo, and released the winners at the end of it as well. He also contacted the winners as soon as possible to send out the prizes as early as possible.
When the competition finished, more focus was drawn to the game, and now more players had their eyes on future tournaments.
"I was shaking the entire lifestream. These final contestants are insane! I didn't know there were this many pros in these tabletop games..."
"Transparent competition with no chance of pulling shenanigans. A few of the competitors were my buddies too. I'll have to give Chen Mo a thumbs up for that."
"Impressive. Chen Mo even managed to give tabletop games an interesting gimmick. All I can say is that he's number one at whatever he does!"
"The designers for other games must be super nervous to experience the wrath of Thunderbolt Gaming once again..."
"Chen Mo really has many good ideas. I don't usually play tabletop games and I was still drawn in by this. Even though I never came close to entering the finals, I still continue to play every day."
"There's no way I could go back to other tabletop games after getting used to Thunderbolt Tabletop. Everything else is just too crude! Thunderbolt Tabletop has the best player experience for tabletop games in the market, bar none!"
"Please let Emperor Dynasty Tabletop know that I'm not coming back..."
"1"
"Let Fantasy Tabletop know that I'm not going back either."
"Wait for me, previous poster. I'll be right there after I get my hands on the lucky draw!"
—
After the first week, Thunderbolt Tabletop reached 2.2 million users, the number of users I Am MT reached in a month.
If this hype keeps going, Chen Mo estimated that Thunderbolt Tabletop could bring Thunderbolt Gaming Platform more than eight million users, and optimistically ten million.
How many players were ten million?
In season one of League of Legends, they had 1.4 million users, and when Season 2 came around, that number became 11.5 million.
That was basically slightly under the number of players Dota2 and Overwatch had.
Of course, there were many inactive players in tabletop games compared to MOBAs. Half of the players were probably inactive players, and there probably weren't many loyal players. Most of the players would probably play a game or two before their long hiatus away from the game.
Moreover, the number of players Thunderbolt Tabletop achieved didn't even come close to the two hundred million of Tencent Tabletop from his previous world.
However, Chen Mo was quite satisfied at this number. At least he now had a playerbase to advertise his future games to.
Chen Mo didn't expect this to profit. He planned to return all the profits back into the community, and even use some of I Am MT's profits as well, continuing to host competitions every week, and giving out gaming pods every week.
If he continued at this pace, he would be giving out one million RMB worth of stuff a month. Chen Mo could still afford that cost, even when including the customer service team as well as the cost of the servers.
Just like the wars on ride sharing apps or bicycle renting apps in his previous life, money burning out of your pocket wasn't a sign to stop. As Chen Mo was set on contending the spot on the hill, he couldn't stop until he converted all the players from other platforms.
Moreover, how much did it actually cost? One to two million a month for that many users? That was a good price to pay in the long run.
—
Emperor Dynasty Tabletop and Fantasy Tabletop also started releasing their own tournament modes in the second week, they were also giving out prizes through the tournaments as well.
This managed to salvage a portion of their playerbase, but it was still just in retaliation. As they had a huge number of players, combined with the fact that Thunderbolt Tabletop had a better user experience, releasing the tournament first, Thunderbolt Tabletop without a doubt had all the attention on them in this war of attrition.
The power transfer was already complete. The tabletop games industry which was originally held by Emperor Dynasty Tabletop and Fantasy Tabletop had been severely impacted by Thunderbolt Tabletop's explosive entry to the industry, taking away a huge number of their player base and becoming the third most influential game.
And there wasn't much else the other tabletop games could do other than shiver in their boots.
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Chapter 93: Chapter 92: Not Like the Other Interactive Fictions
—Inside the experience store—
Chen Mo tested Lifeline for one last time and said to Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi, "Alright, it's good."
"Yeah! That's awesome!" Su Jinyu couldn't help but be ecstatic.
That was basically a game she and Zheng Hongxi worked together without Chen Mo's help, so it was particularly special.
(If Chen Mo asking Zheng Hongxi to change the story multiple times didn't count as helping.)
Zheng Hongxi finally breathed a sigh of relief and let out a smile. Despite being asked by Chen Mo to make many changes to the story as well as several big changes to the story, it was finally over.
This process improved Zheng Hongxi's understanding of writing for games as well as his understanding of manipulating the emotions of the players.
Now Zheng Hongxi was looking forward to the reaction of the players, will they like his writing?
Chen Mo installed Lifeline onto Chang Xiuya's phone, "You'll be our first labrat."
—
Chang Xiuya was curious.
Everyone knew that Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi had been working hard to make an interactive fiction, but they didn't know what type of game it would be or anything about the story.
There were many interactive fictions in this world and was one of the more classic genres. Many video game designers who liked story driven games would usually have interactive fiction as their first game.
It was partially because that the game was easy to make, all it needed was a good story. Other resources would include getting a good set of artwork and probably outsourcing someone to do the audio as well.
However, as there were so many interactive fictions on the market, it was significantly harder to break through as well.
The interactive fictions of this world were very much similar to the previous world, mostly city life or transmigration to medieval times. This was because most interactive fiction players are female, and they tend to like these themes more.
Chang Xiuya also played interactive fictions, but after playing a million different interactive fictions, most of their story would coalesce into one, making it quite boring after a while.
If the only difference between interactive fictions were their story, they may as well read novels instead.
Chang Xiuya was worried that Lifeline would be similar to other interactive fictions. However, since the manager overlooked this, his games are usually...
Yep, other than I Am MT being a little bit scummy, the other games were quite creative.
The icon of the game was fairly dark, with a small person in it who looked like an astronaut. The top right of the icon had a weird radio wave icon.
"Umm. Is it scifi? That's fresh."
Chang Xiuya tapped on the icon, entering the game.
She was then met with a pop-up window, "Lifeline is an interactive fiction that spans over a few days. Your gaming experience might be affected without push-notifications. Please enable push-notifications to enhance your experience."
Chang Xiuya tapped on 'Allow'.
A window that looked like a chatting app popped up. Soon, messages started appearing.
Incoming message
Establishing connection
Connecting
"Hello?"
"Does this work?"
"Can anyone hear me?"
Chang Xiuya was a bit shocked after the questioning, but now two different choices appeared in the bottom: 'Who's there' and 'Yes I can hear you'.
Chang Xiuya felt that these had about the same meaning and wouldn't affect the story, then tapping on 'Yes I can hear you."
"Oh, thank goodness! I was finally able to contact someone!"
"I've waited for hours!"
Another two choiced popped up: 'Who are you?' and 'What happened'?
Chang Xiuya thought that it would be better to ask who they were, tapping 'Who are you?'.
After two choices, Chang Xiuya already understood the difference between this and other interactive fictions.
Lifeline didn't have any narration or background descriptions, it was set up entirely as a chatting software. But instead of chatting with real people, the player would be chatting with fictional characters from the game.
Conveying the world using a sci fi chatting app improved the immersion. This included sending the player notifications, giving the player an impression that they were talking to a real person.
Chang Xiuya started chatting to this astronaut named Tyler based on what she felt was right.
Through chatting, Chang Xiuya discovered that Tyler was an astronaut on a cargo pod, but crashed on an alien plant. However, he was now completely lost. He was a student who boarded to perform an experiment, and had no experience in dealing with emergency situations like these.
However, Tyler seemed quite optimistic, even making jokes in such dire situations.
Chang Xiuya even laughed at the jokes he made.
"So is the final task to help this astronaut escape? Doesn't seem too difficult. It's probably easier than the crazy scenarios from Chinese dramas set in ancient times right..." thought Chang Xiuya.
"There's a white mountain nearby that's a few miles out. But this mountain... looks a bit weird, it's vertically symmetrical so it doesn't seem quite natural."
"The crash site of Varia seems a bit closer than the mountain. What should I do?"
There were two choices: 'Head towards crash site' or 'Head towards mountain'.
Chang Xiuya knew that this was a key choice for the plot. As Tyler hinted, the mountain was shaped weird, and it was further away, obviously he should go towards the crash site!
Chang Xiuya chose 'Head towards crash site'.
"Makes sense, there could be survivors..."
"Alright, I'm heading South. This should take at least one hour. I'll let you know when I get there."
Afterwards, the system displayed a 'Tyler is now busy' message.
Chang Xiuya was shocked, what is this?
There weren't any other choices, and Tyler stopped talking as well. The game just stopped without any further notifications.
Chang Xiuya looked back at what Tyler said.
"It can't be that he's really going to message me an hour?!"
Chang Xiuya was shocked. It was the first time she encountered an interactive fiction like this, making the player wait for an hour for nothing?!
All Chang Xiuya could do now was wait. She didn't close the app, however, fearing that she wouldn't receive the message when Tyler replies.
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Chapter 94: Chapter 93: Lifeline's Unique Features
–After some time–
Taylor sent a message, "Geez, this was much further than I expected. My legs are like jello, and I don't even know if I'm halfway there yet."
"Great, now I'm thinking about jello."
Taylor is now busy.
Chang Xiuya was happy to receive a message under an hour thinking that they wouldn't make players wait for that long, but was utterly disappointed upon reading the message.
Turns out he was just doing a quick reply and going back to being busy right after.
There was nothing she could do other than wait.
It had finally been an hour, and Taylor sent another message, asking Chang Xiuya if he should go to the cockpit or the crew area.
Chang Xiuya remembered that it was previously hinted that she should check for survivors, then choosing to enter the crew area.
Then, Chang Xiuya and Taylor started chatting again. The pace of the story was really well done, cutting off right before something important was about to happen. Everytime that happened, Chang Xiuya was dying for Taylor's reply.
Moreover, the story progression was decent, not too fast nor too slow. There were crucial moments allowing Chang Xiuya to make decisions among the all the clowning around Taylor did.
Under Chang Xiuya's guidance, Taylor explored the spaceship, searching for food and shelter.
Taylor asked, "I want to go to the tail of the spaceship to set up my tent. It should be warmer there. However there's a radiation source there. Could you look up if I would die of a night's exposure of 150 rads? My suit says that the radiation is about that much."
Chang Xiuya was shocked, "Huh? I need to check the amount of radiation?"
It seemed like a crucial moment in the story, Taylor could choose the warmer tail of the spaceship filled with radiation or the colder radiation free body of the spaceship.
Chang Xiuya didn't know which to pick either, how much was one hudnred and fifty rads?
Feeling that it was a crucial decision, Chang Xiuya decided to search up, "one hudnred and fifty rads".
"Absorbing 150 Rads shouldn't have any short term side effects."
Chang Xiuya replied, "Go next to the reactor."
Taylor replied, "To be honest, I've been feeling really guilty."
"What I want to say is, thanks for helping be today. This must be the worst day of my life."
"Which is why I chose to believe you that this amount of radiation is fine. I guess I'll know tomorrow morning."
"With this happy thought at the back of my mind... Goodnight, no matter where you are. Here's hoping that tomorrow will be better."
Taylor is now busy.
Chang Xiuya tapped on her screen, and there was nothing else she could do.
"Do I really have to wait till tomorrow? I feel like I won't get a good night's sleep..."
Chang Xiuya was quite worried, although one hundred and fifty rads shouldn't be a big problem, but who knew for certain that it wasn't a trap? It was too late to worry anyways, it seemed like she had to wait a few hours for Taylor's reply.
Chang Xiuya stood up and asked Chen Mo, "Manager, can I... take the phone back home?"
"Hmm? Did you finish the first day already? You can actually reply anytime, you don't need to reply as soon as possible at all." replied Chen Mo.
Chang Xiuya nodded, "Alright, I understand. But... I still want to take it home..."
Chen Mo laughed, "Sure, take it home then. Don't keep Taylor waiting."
Chang Xiuya replied, "OK! Thanks, manager!"
—
Chen Mo was relieved after seeing Chang Xiuya's reactions to the game, suggesting that the story of the game was fairly well done.
In his previous life, the reason Lifeline blew up was because a few famous authors such as Ma Boyong promoted it on Weibo.
After a Chinese version was released, it didn't take long to enter the first place of paid games. It was a huge achievement for such a simple interactive fiction.
In reality, it wasn't something super innovative. It was just a sci-fi looking chatting app with a fictional character who never shuts up.
It's story wasn't even as good as interactive fictions released a few years ago. If you only read the text, it would seem incredibly stale.
However, the amazing part of the game was that its pace wasn't decided by the reading speed of the reading, but the actual flow of time.
The players were required to wait for every single thing Taylor does, a few minutes to a few hours. This matched perfectly with how people communicate online nowadays. Not only would this keep the players from feeling bored, but gave the players something to look forward to.
Moreover, as the story progresses, Taylor would be met with many obstacles, potentially having to choose between difficult decisions. This made it easy for players to reach bad endings. Every one of Taylor's deaths would move the emotions of the players too.
Therefore, players would need to search up or discuss to carefully suggest ideas to Taylor, fearing that one bad decision would kill him.
In this process, the players would feel increasingly connected to Taylor, treating him as an actual human instead of an AI, someone stuck in outer space waiting to be rescued, a... friend.
And this connection would increase the satisfaction of getting a good ending. The tension the players feel would finally be released, and would feel as though they saved an actual human life.
This pacing, story and connection gave a simple interactive fiction gave it a lot of life, receiving many good reviews.
—
The next day, Chen Mo released Lifeline.
This game was just something Chen Mo assigned Zheng Hongxi to practice on, as well as to test how big the user base of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was.
This time, Lifeline wasn't released on the official app store, but only on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform for just one RMB.
At the same time, Chen Mo sent out a Weibo.
"Our new game Lifeline is now available on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform. It is an interactive fiction about an astronaut who ended up in the crash who could contact you occasionally. The whole process would be you chatting to him, no pictures, just words. The time in game and out of the game is the same. Remember to allow push-notifications."
There weren't any other methods of promotion, just Weibo and through Thunderbolt Gaming Platform. All the players using Thunderbolt Gaming Platform would notice that a new game was released, and could start playing after paying one RMB.
"I've just released it, we'll see how it does in twenty-four hours," said Chen Mo to Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi.
Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi were quite nervous. The game was incredibly simple and had no other methods of promotion. How many players would notice and download the game?
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Chapter 95: Chapter 94 Gathering of scammy games!
It didn't take long before games took notice of Lifeline on Thunderbolt Platform and discussion to start.
"Interactive fiction? My goodness, I thought Chen Mo fell into the abyss of pay to win games and was a lost cause. I didn't expect him to release a standalone game."
"A scammy game, then a tabletop game, then an interactive fiction. This amount of tossing and turning is impressive!"
"My god, Thunderbolt Tabletop had only been out for a week. This guy is printing out these games!"
"One RMB is quite cheap, buy first talk later..."
"Clearance sale! It's the genuine stuff! There's no need to ask for the price, everything here is one RMB! It's just one RMB, you wouldn't even feel scammed at that amount. If you can't even spare one RMB you wouldn't be able to buy anything, you're just poor!"
"My goodness, I almost thought you were a sales person hired by Chen Mo, previous OP."
"Has anyone tried it? Is it good?"
"I tried it and it seems quite interesting! I'm not going to spoil the story, but I'm really into the game right now."
"Anyone else look up 150 rads like I did?"
"The story is amazing, did Chen Mo write that? I only just found out that he was this good as writing, I'm impressed."
"Are you guys serious? Could you be that into an interactive fiction? Have you guys not seen a real game? Whatever, I'm done with you guys I'm off to chat with Taylor."
"Help, has anyone gotten the perfect ending?
—
It didn't take long before the downloads for Lifeline to explode.
As the popularity of Thunderbolt continued to increase, there were millions of users everyday, and each and everyone of them would see Lifeline.
And the ratings of Lifeline were quite high, maintaining around 4.5 stars, which also drew players to get the game.
Moreover, at just one RMB, Lifeline was a steal.
Many players shared the game to their friends and on Weibo. 150 rads even became a trending topic on search engines.
Soon, the number of sales of Lifeline for the first twenty four hours was released, thirty-nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-four!
This was double the amount of sales Plants vs Zombies achieved, but it was slightly lower than Guardian of the Holy Spring.
Of course, this also had to do with the lower price as the game was a tenth of the price. In terms of revenue, Lifeline might only bring in thirty to forty thousand, a ways away from Plants vs Zombies.
Moreover, the difference in revenue will be even bigger down the line as it had a niche audience.
However, it didn't matter as Chen Mo intended to use it as a test for how well Thunderbolt Gaming Platform did as a distribution platform. And from the looks of it, Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had similar effects to that of a middle of the road advertising space on the official app store.
This wasn't a bad result to be able to compete with strong foes in an environment like this. It could even be called a miracle for being able to gather this many players in a week.
—
Lin Chaoxu didn't think that just one promotional space on the first page managed to cause so many waves.
He thought that Chen Mo would use that promotional space to promote I Am MT to bring another ten million or so revenue to his pocket every month, which wouldn't have done too much damage to Emperor Dynasty Entertainment.
But upon seeing Thunderbolt Tabletop, Lin Chaoxu knew that Chen Mo wasn't a shortsighted videogame designer, and his ambition was much higher than everyone thought!
A young man who hadn't even been in the industry for a year managed to make four games from different genres, all of which did really well!
The release of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform further revealed Chen Mo's true intentions.
But at this point, there wasn't much more Lin Chaoxu could do as Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had gathered a very loyal fanbase.
Now Chen Mo had money and the user base, the only thing he was lacking was a product to be his poster child.
A game like I Am MT wasn't suitable despite it bringing in a lot of revenue, it's public image was terrible. On the other hand, Plants vs Zombies was just a casual standalone game. Many players and industry professionals felt that Chen Mo couldn't stand side by side with other video game designers.
It would need to take a few more months for the dust to settle, and many players and designers were waiting for Chen Mo's next move.
What was he trying to do?
Make more scammy games? Continue expanding his userbase? Or will he make another game from a different genre?
Nobody knew what Chen Mo was planning.
—
Within two months, the playerbase of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform grew steadily.
The user base of Thunderbolt Tabletop stabilised at around nine million, with around 2.7 million daily active players, becoming Thunderbolt Gaming Platform's biggest and main game.
Although Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was still unable to knock down Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform and Fantasy Gaming Platform, it was now at least a small player in the industry.
I Am MT was operating as usual, although the monthly revenue dropped slightly, Chen Mo still managed to get close to ten million net revenue every month from it.
And there were a few changes within the industry in this time.
There were now around eight new tabletop games on the official app store as well as other major distributors, all of which had different themes such as Wuxia, Fantasy, anime, homebrew IPs, popular novels, and animations. However, they all shared the same feature, they were essentially carbon copies of I Am MT.
From combat system to the VIP system, even the player guides, they were all referencing I Am MT. The changes they would make would only be aesthetically as nobody dared to change the core of the format.
As the designers didn't comprehensively understand the mechanisms that made I Am MT so profitable, they were afraid that any changes they made to the game would cause it to perform terribly.
Even Emperor Dynasty Entertainment who released a game called Demon Slayers, based on a popular web novel by the same name, had a gameplay comparable to that of I Am MT.
It couldn't be helped as I Am MT was entirely unique, from its gameplay to its method of revenue. No matter how other games try to hide it, players who've played I Am MT would be able to easily tell that it was based on I Am MT.
If they really wanted to make it different from I Am MT, that would mean making a game of a different genre and profit method, completely losing the meaning of copying.
These games were released within two to three weeks of one another, all of them wanted to release as early as possible, as being late to the party would mean missed opportunities.
It didn't take long before the players cracked.
Was one scammy game not enough? Look at now many of you guys are gathering together now! Why did you have to choose Chen Mo of all people to mimic?
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Chapter 96: Chapter 95 Virtual Gaming Experience
"What's going on? How many games have there been that shamelessly copied I Am MT!"
"You can tell what the game is about just from looking at the introduction. Card game, who would've thought. There's no difference between this and I Am MT! It's just a reskin!"
"No much else needs to be said, just leave a bad review and go."
The comment sections of these games were on fire, there were many communities who banded together to leave bad reviews, driving the ratings down. They might've started at eight, and would drop all the way to 6.5.
As Demon Slayers had a higher score than the others because it was more refined, and yet it was sitting at a measly rating of 7.1.
There were many players who commented on Chen Mo's Weibo, "Look at what you did. You were a bad influence to all the other videogame designers, now all them making all these garbage games.
There were haters and bad reviews, but it didn't take long for them to realise that although the ratings were terrible, there were very many downloads and just as many players.
The players were speechless, who was playing these games?
—
Demon Slayers discussion forum.
"I want a main character card so bad. I can't hold back the urge to spend money anymore!"
"Here comes another guy saying that we copied them..."
"So what, just ignore them. We'll play our game."
"I think that it's better to trust our money with a large company like Emperor Dynasty. I Am MT wasn't bad, but it's a small company other all, I feel like money isn't well spent."
"The quality of Demon Slayers isn't bad either, it isn't worse than I Am MT at the very least."
"Moreover, it didn't the artstyle for Demon Slayers fit quite well."
"Remember to add others to help in combat!"
—
Soon, the revenue for the card games were released, and none of them were anything to scoff at. The results for Demon Slayer were the best, and industry professionals estimated that its monthly income could come close to the 23 million I Am MT managed.
It was inevitable that the fans would attack one another, but this time Emperor Dynasty Entertainment chose to keep their mouth shut no matter what their fans were saying after learning from last time.
After this batch of games, many video game designers realised that this format was suitable for many different themes, as long as they made an original one, they could also make money.
Sure they would get a lot of hate, but it made money!
After this wave of card games, another wave of card games followed as the videogame designers who were just spectating also started pushing forward their development of an I Am MT clone.
During this time, the entire mobile game ecosystem was turned upside down.
Or perhaps...hazy and polluted.
—
On the other hand, Chen Mo showed no signs of activity.
Thunderbolt Tabletop had been taken off the promotional spot on Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform after a month, but Chen Mo continued to give out prizes.
The promotional spot wasn't important when he had this many players.
After Lifeline was released, Chen Mo had not announced any plans he made. The other videogame designers took this opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief, but couldn't help but wonder what Chen Mo was planning.
Now that Chen Mo had the money and the players, if he continued the streak of success from his previous games, those games would grow at a frightening speed.
Many designers were wishing: Hopefully that freak takes a break for a year or something, I can't keep up!
—
Chen Mo touched the wall in front of him.
The feedback he felt on his fingertips felt incredibly realistic.
Walking, jumping, moving his hands... Chen Mo tried out a few actions, all of which felt quite lifelike, other than the significantly boosted speed and strength.
Chen Mo felt that he was an athlete, one who wasn't out of breath after running for a bit.
"The VR games in this world are at this level? Impressive."
Chen Mo couldn't help but be impressed.
Yes, Chen Mo was laying down in the gaming pod in his office, trying out Earth Online, a VR game from overseas.
At its peak, this game was one of the most popular games, with more than seven million users worldwide.
Of course, this number may seem small as Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had tens of millions of users. This was due to the high cost of making VR games, as well as the gap between normal PCs and VR gaming pods.
VR gaming pods would cost around fifty to two hundred thousand RMB.
There wasn't an upper limit for top-spec gaming pods. Many manufacturers provide customization options for gaming pods, as long as you were willing to pay, you could add anything onto it.
The price you had to pay to experience VR games wasn't expensive nor cheap.
Different VR games had different hardware requirements. Games such as Earth Online required the most well specced VR gaming pod to run.
Moreover, VR games cost quite a bit themselves.
The cost to develop VR games would be ten times the price of PC triple A titles. Those would usually cost forty million USD, and in order to make a VR game of the same caliber, it would easily take billions of dollars.
In China, only companies like Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Zen Entertainment could afford to pay the huge sum of money required for development.
When the development cost is high, the price goes up naturally. Earth Online sold for three hundred and ninety-nine USD, corresponding to two thousand to twenty-five hundred in China.
The people who were willing to spend hundreds of thousands to buy a VR gaming pod, then another few thousand to buy games for it were few and far between. Most normal players think that although VR games are great, spending the money on a car would be money better spent.
Because VR gaming pods were so expensive, that created a market for VR internet cafes. These would charge fifty to two hundred RMB per hour. The people who can't afford VR gaming pods would have to go to a VR internet cafe to experience VR games.
Because of its high development cost as well as small player base, the expansion of VR games hadn't been entirely successful. VR games were still a
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Chapter 97: Chapter 96 Flaws of VR Games
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
The specifications of the game were also written with great care. Players will receive tickets for driving offenses, fines for jaywalking, and in the event when the player gets hurt, they'll have to pay hospital fees too.
Of course, one good thing about the game was that players couldn't die, but could faint and recover in the hospital.
This game was designed with helping players feel the void they have in real life, as well as to utilize the biggest advantage VR games have.
Chen Mo left the room and walked around and indeed, everything looked really realistic, and the flaws suggesting that it was only virtual were barely noticeable.
For example, the bodies of the players aren't as detailed as in real life, similar to high quality CGI from his previous life. Although it looked incredibly realistic, you could tell it was computer generated.
This included the walls, tables, cars, street lamps... Although they were also very detailed, it was possible to tell that they were computer generated.
However, it still shocked Chen Mo that it was this detailed.
Of course, despite being named Earth Online, it was just a name, the developers didn't recreate the entire Earth.
Earth Online was just placed in a city, similar in size or slightly larger than GTA 5 in his previous world.
But the resources required to render one virtual city was incredibly eye watering.
After trying out some more features, Chen Mo exited Earth Online.
He didn't exit the game pod however, instead going into another VR game.
This was Zen Entertainment's poster child, and was one of the best performing VR games in China.
Chen Mo also tried it out a bit. The game was essentially a Wuxiao world in a VR environment. Other than the great feeling of being able to walk on air, its combat system as well as playstyle was fairly average compared to other MMORPG.
Chen Mo tried out another seven popular VR games before getting out of the VR pod.
Chen Mo felt tired after having played for around four hours, but at least he didn't have a headache or felt dizzy afterwards.
This was one of the problems of VR games. The players must be completely immersed in the game, meaning that all their senses are cranked up to eleven to take in all the information. Therefore VR games are as tiring as working a day job.
Players might even have to focus even more during key battles or quests.
Therefore, VR pod manufacturers recommend that players play for a maximum of eight hours at a time, taking a break afterwards. The players will face a test to test their cognitive abilities every time they log in. If they were considered to be tired, they would not be able to enter the VR world.
This was designed with the health of the players in mind.
However, this also exposed another flaw of VR games, they are much more taxing on the body than PC games.
Many would be able to play PC games through the night, and many teens would play over ten hours in one setting. They would also completely recover after those sessions after a good night's sleep.
However, you couldn't do that in VR games as it will forcibly close connections. It would most certainly affect the health of the players if they were allowed to play twenty plus hours in one sitting.
This was also a problem that wasn't addressed with current technology, severely impairing the expansion of VR games.
Many of the players would be working a day job, and after their job, they would go back home and do some chores, not to mention the need for a good night's sleep. They might only be able to squeeze out two or three hours for VR games during a workday.
They might have more time on weekends, but not by much, as it gets more and more difficult to have a calm relaxing weekend.
This was another reason people would choose PC or mobile games as their source of entertainment during their free time, because VR games were more physically demanding.
The rich and carefree would have much better things to do, such as planes and yachts, or beachside parties. They wouldn't be spending their time in a virtual world in a VR game.
There were various reasons VR games replacing PC games would still be a long time away.
In other words, with current technology, it's impossible for VR games to replace PC games.
Basically, when VR games came out it was groundbreaking, but everyone slowly got used to it.
Just like when the first triple A titles were released, drawing much attention from gamers. But as triple A titles got more common, they didn't even bat an eye.
—
According to Chen Mo's research, VR games could compete with PC games in these Genres.
First, action games, shooter games(FPS), or fighting games.
These games had a strong emphasis on realism, and were basically extinct on the PC ecosystem.
After all, shooting a gun in a VR game compared to a PC was a completely different ball game.
Second, adventure games.
There wasn't much to talk about, looking at views on PC compared to VR, or rock climbing or surfing on PC vs VR were completely different.
Third, RPGs. These were also quite significant, but with different reasons from the previous two. As RPGs didn't rely on being realistic at all, but rather the social aspect as well as the composition of the world.
A key point of RPGs was the roleplaying aspect, which is why the world they live in were hugely important as well. VR games took a huge amount of resources. Using the same resources, a PC could render a world ten times bigger than the VR world. In terms of richness, VR games couldn't keep up with PC games at all.
Moreover, many developers would release PC versions of their VRRPG games to test the waters, only continuing development if it was well received. This meant that many RPGs were available on both VR and PC.
Therefore there were quite a few RPGs that were doing quite well on PC.
Fourth, strategy games, and business simulation games. These types of games weren't affected much by VR.
Because there was too much micromanagement required by the player, requiring them to play from birds eye view. Adapting them to VR only made it more satisfying to play, and didn't add much to the gameplay unlike the aforementioned genres.
Moreover, because of how big the investment was to develop a VR game, it would be wiser to make the first few genres rather than strategy or business strategy games.
Therefore, despite being challenged by VR games, PC games still remain competitive, and would likely remain so for quite some time.
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Chapter 98: Chapter 97: PC Gaming Research
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Chen Mo did some stretching before going downstairs.
There had been more customers in the experience store recently as many players in the Imperial Capital wanted to have a 'nice meeting' and take a few photos with Chen Mo.
After all, Chen Mo was now a 'famous videogame designer".
The players who were talking about sending razor blades turned out to be quite friendly in real life. They were especially happy after Chen Mo agreed to give them early access to the beta test for his next game.
Su Jinyu couldn't help but shake her head at these people, "Is this what they refer to in history textbooks when they talk about how weak and comprisable the petite bourgeoisie were..."
After talking to a few of the new customers, Chen Mo put on his jacket in preparation of going out.
"Hmm? Are you going out, manager?" asked Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo seldom went outside and would spend most of his time in the experience store. If he wasn't making new games, he would be thinking about making new games.
Everything that could be done online would be done online. This included shopping and food delivery.
Which was why Su Jinyu was shocked that Chen Mo would be going outside.
Chen Mo replied, "Yep, I'm going for a walk. I'll be back before the store closes."
Chen Mo then left the experience store and walked towards Fates Internet Cafe on the other side of the road.
Chen Mo had already experienced VR games and had a certain idea about it, the next step would be to check out how the PC market was doing.
Chen Mo had only dabbled in the mobile games up until now, and therefore didn't have too deep of an understanding for the PC or VR side of things.
However, Chen Mo wasn't satisfied with being known as a famous mobile game designer, he wanted to expand into PC games as well.
And of course, he needed to do some research before entering the industry, and the best way to do research was to visit an internet cafe.
It was easy to tell how popular a game was just by looking at how many people were playing said game in an internet cafe. This number would most likely be more reliable that lists or leaderboards online where it would be easier to fake numbers.
At the front desk, Zhuo Yao was sitting there eating sunflower seeds while watching drama.
Zhuo Yao noticed immediately when Chen Mo walked in, hastily throwing away the shells into the bin, "Hey, a rare customer. Come in, come in."
Chen Mo laughed, "Aren't you the owner of this internet cafe? Why do you have to work as the cashier too?"
"Sigh, it's to cut costs. I do have a cashier, but I can't have her keep watch day in day out. I've been contemplating on hiring another one, but that'd cost a bit. And since I didn't have much to do, I decided to do this myself," replied Zhuo Yao.
Chan Mo laughed, "What a way to pass time. Are there any free spots? I'll take one."
"Yeah, just swipe your ID here. It has never been all that busy here, I'd always have empty spots other than the nights of holidays.
Chen Mo said, "Alright, I'll go find some place to sit."
"Alright, if you have anything, ask for the administrator. That guy right there."
Zhuo Yao pointed at a man wearing glasses.
Chen Mo nodded, "Alright, thanks."
Zhuo Yao waved her hand, "No need for thanks. I'm still waiting for you to develop a game that is able to rival VR games."
Chen Mo laughed, "Alright, I'll be playing then."
After swiping his ID, Chen Mo paid twenty RMB and settled at a quieter seat in the store.
As the Imperial Capital had fully banned smoke in all public places, the internet cafe was quite clean and didn't smell of cigarettes.
As he walked to his seat, Chen Mo took a quick sweep of what the other players were playing.
MMORPG and RTS games took the top, other genres such as strategy games, business simulation games, and action-adventure games had fewer players.
The last few genres either had a smaller audience, or were dominated by VR games, and had less good PC games of its genre as a result.
There were quite a few playing MMORPGs, and Chen Mo had already managed to identify three of the more popular games as he walked towards his seat.
Legend of the Sword, Moon Lord's Prophecy, and Warring Three Kingdoms.
Legend of the Sword was a Wuxia game developed by Zen Entertainment. The VR version was widely considered to be one of the best VR games in China, and was Zen Entertainment's proudest work.
It was quite common in this world to have a game both on VR and PC. As the cost of developing VR games were quite high, if it were to fail, it would be hard even for a company like Zen Entertainment to take the hit, so companies are incentivised to develop a PC version to test the waters.
It was because of the success of Legend of the Sword that Zen Entertainment decided to develop the VR version, making the Wuxia game into what their company was known for.
Moon Lord's Prophecy used a Eastern fantasy theme, and was based on a popular web novel by the same name. This was developed by an Qiu Jiang, an S-grade video game designer from Emperor Dynasty Entertainment. Its VR version was also in the makes, and could be released before the end of the year.
Moon Lord's Prophecy had more players and better revenue, however, it wasn't as well received as Legend of the Sword.
Warring Three Kingdoms were different from the other games. It was an MMORPG that featured battle between nations. It had a small player base, but had high revenue as well as having loyal players. However, as the company developing this game was short on cash, they didn't have a VR version planned.
There were a few Western fantasy RPGs outside of China, such as Heavenly Ring. As if cursed, every overseas game with a Western fantasy game that tried to expand into China didn't end up so well. Even a huge IP like Heavenly Ring plummeted straight into the ground.
This could be caused by what the players were used to, but it also could be cultural differences. In short, this saved the big companies in China a lot of effort.
Other than MMORPGs, there was a RTS game called Legion Conquest that was incredibly popular in China.
"How could an RTS game be so popular? And even comparable to MMORPGs? Incredible."
Chen Mo found Legion Conquest on the computer, and launched the game.
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Chapter 99: Chapter 98 RTS games
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
It didn't take long for Legion Conquest to launch after Chen Mo clicked on it.
This was an RTS game that used modern themes. One could easily tell from the loading screen filled with planes and tanks among other fancy high tech weapons.
The UI was quite clear, with Campaign mode and Versus mode as the two main modes.
Chen Mo felt that this game bore some resemblance to Red Alert. However, this game had better graphics and had a much more different weapons system.
This game didn't have the Apocalypse tank or Prism tank, but instead used tanks that were used in real life, with a few more futuristic tanks.
However, this game didn't focus on the cold war, and didn't split the players between the allies and the soviets.
Legion conquest was set in a fictional world after a third world war, where many countries had been subverted as the bigger armies armed themselves for an all out war.
And in the campaign mode, the players would be playing as a leader of one of the countries, with the objective of conquering the world.
There were many weaponry from real life, such as battle tanks and bombers that were available to every player, blurring the lines of the differences between countries. This was likely in consideration of the international audiences.
After registering an account, Chen Mo started Campaign mode.
In summary, the quality of the game was quite high, and the tutorials weren't bad. However, the story was quite lackluster as the story, with barely any story progression after beating two levels. Basically the player would invade wherever the game told them to, with no attention to the story at all.
Of course, this was likely also a side effect of being set in a fictional world with the line between countries in the movie, meaning that the story was also restricted.
However, the story isn't important in an RTS game anyways, not affecting its popularity at all.
The controls of Legion Conquest were also quite crude and were quite similar to that of Red Alert. Chen Mo didn't find that interacting with the world, hotkeys, and clicking to assign orders as particularly intuitive.
Selecting units, moving them, and attacking with them were all done by mouse, and right clicking would cancel the assigned orders, which Chen Mo found very unintuitive.
Chen Mo looked into it deeper as he played.
At this time, an internet addicted teen sat next to Chen Mo, and looked at Chen Mo's screen while waiting for his PC to load.
Chen Mo controlled a tank towards seven or so soldiers, and under the firing of the soldiers, Chen Mo's tank exploded.
"What the!" Chen Mo was speechless, it was just as illogical as Red Alert, how would a few soldiers with machine guns defeat my tank? Is the armor on the tank fake?
The guy next to him asked, "Are you new?"
Chen Mo nodded, "Yep, I'm new."
The teen said, "The tanks in this game are garbage. Either you rush soldiers or save up for air troops or super weapons. The mid game tanks are a waste of money."
Chen Mo was speechless, "Aren't tanks the main force of modern warfare?"
The teen replied, "I've been thinking about that too, but that's the way the game was designed."
The teen also launched Legion Conquest and started searching for an online match.
It didn't even take a minute of searching to find an opponent. He was assigned into a 4 person map for a 1v1.
The teen stopped chatting to Chen Mo and focused on building and training his army.
Chen Mo decided to pause his game to watch the teen.
Mining, building, training, scouting... the teen seemed as though he was following a script, and was quite serious about it.
Early on, his opponent drew the teen into a corner, luckily had had sufficient defences and managed to hold off a few more waves. After saving up thirty or so pilots, he launched a counterattack to win the game.
"Yes!" the teen said excitedly.
Chen Mo scowled, "This game's balancing is kinda terrible."
The teen glanced at him, "You think this is terrible? It's currently the best RTS game."
Chen Mo said, "Three tanks losing to twenty or so soldiers makes no sense at all."
"Well, there's nothing much you can do. It's already the most well balanced RTS game, you'll just have to accept that fact," replied Chen Mo.
Chen Mo asked, "Why don't you play RPGs?"
"They are too taxing. There isn't much skill to those games, it's just endless grinding, and whoever spends the most time would be better at the game. Unlike RTS games where whoever has more skill wins."
"Hmm," Chen Mo nodded.
"If you want to play RPGs, it's probably better to play in VR. Shooter games and adventure games are best played on VR as well," added the teen.
"But if you want to play RTS games or business simulation games, most of them are on PC as it just isn't worth it to convert it to VR. Moreover, these games don't take up as much time, one game would only take twenty to thirty minutes, and you could take a break afterwards if you want."
"Is there a ranked mode for this game?" asked Chen Mo.
The teen was shocked, "Oh, there is a ranked mode, I just played that."
Chen Mo asked, "So the ranking is probably what makes the game so fun then huh?"
The need nodded in reply, "Yeah. You start with the campaign mode then move onto ranked. It's only fun when you play with the pros. This is similar to how actual war works, and is the core of RTS games. There's a lot of strategy involved, and has a high skill ceiling."
Chen Mo asked, "Are there LAN competitions?"
The teen replied, "Of course there are LANs. RTS games are quite popular for LANs. Most of the big ESports clubs have players too, all of them are gods at the game."
After chatting for a little while more, the teen went back to playing.
Chen Mo on the other hand looked deeper into how the numbers were set in the game before leaving the internet cafe.
What surprised Chen Mo was that his previous world had already left RTS games, and yet they were still quite popular in this world.
It made sense after he gave it some more thought.
VR games applied a lot of pressure to PC games, but PC gamers hadn't all converted to VR. Compared to RPGs, RTS games were more fragmented and strategic, which was why it managed to stay as one of the mainstream genres.
As for MOBAs? Nothing resembling it!
Chen Mo was a bit hesitant to make RPGs as it would currently take him a lot of effort, but he had found something that would make the transition smoother.
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Chapter 100: Chapter 99: You Want to Learn? I'll Teach You
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Chen Mo was now back in the experience store.
"Manager, welcome back," greeted Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, I just went to the internet cafe to do some research and gather some inspiration."
Su Jinyu was happily surprised, "Wow, you're planning another game already? Manager, you're birthing games like a sow to piglets."
"... Couldn't you have picked a better metaphor?" replied Chen Mo.
Chen Mo grabbed a can of drink, "Goldfish, how has the mobile game market been lately, have you been keeping an eye on it?"
Su Jinyu replied, "Oh, Lifeline has been doing quite well."
Chen Mo was speechless, "I didn't ask you that! Stop watching your own game, I'm asking about the other games on the market."
"Uhh, other games? There's more and more games that are copying I Am MT... Moreover, more and more tabletop games are copying Thunderbolt Tabletop as well.." replied Su Jinyu.
The usually quiet Zheng Hongxi added as well, "Basically half of the mobile game industry are copying you."
"Oh, that's great," replied Chen Mo.
Su Jinyu was speechless, "Huh? How is it great when so many people are copying you?"
"What do you know, if they copy us, that means they've lost their ability to create new things. That also means that whatever they make will never be better than mine," replied Chen Mo.
Su Jinyu said, "Wow, manager, I think you're too... optimistic. Demon Slayers are edging ever so close to the revenue I Am MT is making."
"It's only getting close, it hasn't exceeded right? What's the big deal? By the way, how much do you guys know about RTS games?" asked Chen Mo.
Su Jinyu replied, "Uhh... not much. I'm just an intern."
Zheng Hongxi said, "I'm just a writer."
Chen Mo was speechless, "Wow, you guys are setting the bar too low. You guys will be your own video game designer one day alright? I'll give both of you three days to understand the RTS market and hand it a research report afterwards."
Su Jinyu was shocked, "Huh? But I've never been able to play those kinds of games..."
Chen Mo replied, "I'm not asking you to become a pro player, so it doesn't matter if you don't play. I'm just asking you to understand the market. Regardless, I want to see a research report in three days. You guys better submit different reports, I'd hate to see two similar ones."
Chen Mo retreated upstairs after assigning them work.
Su Jinyu facepalmed, my goodness, what's a research report, I've never written one!
—
Back on the second floor, Chen Mo started brainstorming his next game.
Chen Mo could make a PC game next, but he felt that he needed a bit more help.
Zheng Hongxi was able to save Chen Mo a lot of trouble in terms of writing, and Su Jinyu could handle some features or concept arts, but he was still lacking in the numbers and level design department.
Chen Mo had been searching for this person for a long time, but never managed to find one.
"Numbers, level design. Right, I'll check the forums."
Chen Mo checked out the forums for I Am MT in search of someone who was good at analyzing the numbers/ balancing for I Am MT.
The numbers were quite complicated for card games like these. If someone was able to analyse the numbers of I Am MT with some integrity to it, they basically had all the foundations for the role.
Chen Mo looked through a few hot threads.
Garbage game, refund me my money!
Analysis of the Draw Ten mechanism
Tips for grinding purples
Perfect strategy to control the battlefield!
How much should you spend? V12 player tells you how to get the bang for your buck.
—
After looking through the posts, Chen Mo couldn't help but press CTRLW.
These were horrible!
Pseudo science posts like 'Analysis of the Draw Ten mechanism' and 'Tips for grinding purples' made Chen Mo feel like he was farther away from the science and maths he was looking for.
Chen Mo didn't give up, and continued his search in Thunderbolt Poker's forum.
There was also a lot of statistics knowledge required for Texas hold 'em analysis. If someone could more or less calculate the probability of winning for every type of hand, they probably had some mathematical blood in them.
Chen Mo looked through a few stickied posts.
Offline Thunderbolt Poker Club: XXXXXX
Offline Thunderbolt Poker Club: XXXXXX
Offline Thunderbolt Poker Club: XXXXXX
—
Chen Mo silently pressed the report button before pressing CTRLW once again.
What is the meaning of this!
Chen Mo was losing hope. Did none of the players use more scientific methods to perform some analysis on the game?
Yep, it seemed like these players were more suited to games that would make them stronger by paying money.
Chen Mo opened the forum for Plants vs Zombies, but this time he was pleasantly surprised by the most highly voted post, an introduction to a mod!
Introducing the mod I made, improved the stats for plants and zombies, with 8 new plants and 5 new zombies.
The title was incredibly long, but the thread was incredibly popular too. It was only posted two weeks ago and it managed to reach over one hundred pages in replies.
Chen Mo was also curious. He opened up Plants vs Zombies to discover that the most popular mod was the mod he just saw.
Chen Mo tried it out, and discovered that the main changes were adding the new plants and zombies, but they also made adjustments to the stats of the plants and zombies to adjust the difficulty of the game.
This mod wasn't the most genious, but was the most complete and most balanced, which was why there were so many fans.
"Yep, this guy isn't bad. Let's see if I can get him on board."
Chen Mo got their phone number through the Thunderbolt Game Pass once again.
"Hello?" it was the voice of another man.
Huh? Why would you say another?
Chen Mo said, "Hello, I'm the creator of Plants vs Zombies, Chen Mo."
"Oh, hi," replied the man.
"Uhh, aren't you suspicious of my identity at all? Aren't you afraid that I could be pretending to be him?"
The man on the phone laughed, "Who would steal your identity and have tons of angry fans after them."
Chen Mo was speechless.
"I'm just kidding. I'm Qian Kun, spelt with a Q."[1]
Chen Mo replied, "Oh that one, alright."
"Ahem... I'm actually quite a big fan," said Qian Kun.
This made Chen Mo quite happy, 'Huh? Really?"
Qian Kun replied, "Yeah, before you made I Am MT."
This left Chen Mo speechless once again.
"But I became a bigger fan after you made I Am MT. I think being able to use numerical simulations to make such a profitable game is incredibly amazing!" said Qian Kun.
Chen Mo was speechless, why does this kid say things in such a roundabout way?
"You wanna learn?" asked Chen Mo.
"Of course I do!" replied Qian Kun.
"Come over to Imperial Capital then," said Chen Mo.
TL note: [1] His same has the same pronunciation as another word, and he was just clarifying which one it was.
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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 101 - Chapter 100: Scammed by Draw Ten - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 101 - Chapter 100: Scammed by Draw Ten Online - All Page - Novel Next
Chapter 101: Chapter 100: Scammed by Draw Ten
Qian Kun, fourth year mathematics student at a university in Imperial Capital, same year as Su Jinyu. Based on their results, this guy would be the best in terms of studies, receiving National Scholarships every year and had already been invited to do research.
However, this guy wasn't interested in research, but planned to enter the workforce instead.
It didn't take long for Qian Kun to reach an agreement with Chen Mo when he arrived at the experience store.
Qian Kun also joined Thunderbolt Entertainment as an intern, and was paid eight thousand a month as well. Chen Mo didn't mind paying them more either, but he wanted them to give time more time to gather experience and to hire time after they graduate, then giving them a proper salary.
Of everything about Thunderbolt Entertainment, Qian Kun was most interested in I Am MT because he thinks that the game has some mysterious power to be able to get the players to fork out too much money just from having a properly balanced game.
"Nice, now there's someone else to take the blame when I make another scammy game," Chen Mo thought secretly.
—
Now that the research was almost done, and he gathered all the manpower he needed, Chen Mo could finally start preparing for his next game.
Chen Mo had something in mind for the game, but he wasn't sure if he would execute it with his current abilities, therefore...
Yep, pay to win games.
Chen Mo was now quite wealthy from the ten or so million net from I Am MT, which happened to be Chen Mo's main source of income. Games like Plants vs Zombies and Lifeline were still selling, but at the same time the money was being redirected into Thunderbolt Tabletop, breaking even at the best.
Chen Mo estimated that his various video game designing skills were around eighty, art was around forty, music twenty, and storyboarding 13.
Chen Mo planned to max out the first levels of his video game designer skills, then level up art, music, and storyboarding skills a little bit as well as these would directly affect the quality of the games.
Chen Mo wanted to compete with high quality RTS games such as Legion Conquest, but the quality of the game might even be higher than the ones in his previous life.
Washed hands, washed face, and a cleansing bath.
Chen Mo topped-up five million RMB in exchange for fifty million credits.
Chen Mo did 7 draw tens to draw a lucky capsule.
Afterwards, Chen Mo took the capsule right away and spent all his remaining credits for spinning.
He might even get addicted to this drawing thing.
After all the draws, Chen Mo checked his loot.
Since he now had more money, Chen Mo didn't mind as much if he didn't get the bang for his buck, and managed to remain fairly calm.
Yep, very calm.
Designer Skill Books: 250.
Special Skill Books: 150.
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Special Equipment: 100.
Yep, a perfect 5:3:2 ratio.
Equipment details.
250 Designer Skill Books, 74 numerics skill books, 61 level design skill books, 49 System Skill Books, 66 Story Skill Books.
150 Special Skill Books.
27 Original Art Skill Books.
49 3D Art Skill Books.
30 Animation Skill Books.
21 Music and Audio Effects Skill Books.
23 Storyboarding Skill Books.
One hundred Special Equipment.
Fifty-eight Memory Playback Potions, nineteen Reaction Speed Serums, twenty-two Hand Speed Boost Potions, one lucky capsule (already consumed).
"Hmm?"
Chen Mo was shocked to see the list of equipment.
Obviously the number of Designer Skill Books have already reached the upper limits, and in particular I've already maxed out the first level for story writing. Why did it give me sixty-six of those? Those cost ten thousand RMB each!
Can I convert them into Special Skill Books? I'm in desperate need of leveling up by art and music skills!
Also, what are these Reaction Speed Serums and Hand Speed Boost Potions!
What use would that serve me as a videogame designer?
Whatever, I'll consume them first.
After calming down, Chen Mo started consuming the story writing skill books.
A pop-up appeared on the screen: "Your other abilities are still at level one. You'll be able to draw level two skill books after all your skills reach level two to continue leveling up your abilities. This level one skill book is now useless and will be converted to thirty thousand credits.
"Pfft!!"
Chen Mo almost died from shock, What is this scam!
The book cost him one hundred thousand credits, but he only got refunded thirty thousand credits. This amount of refund is just amazing!
Holding back the urge to destroy the bracelet, Chen Mo consumed the other designer skill books.
System, numerics, level design, and story writing have finally been levelled up. But now he was left with one hundred ninety or so books that were converted into 5.7 million credits.
But level two hadn't been unlocked yet, it seemed like other skills such as art, music and storyboarding were also included...
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After consuming the special skill books as well, Chen Mo checked out his attributes.
System, numerics, level design, and story writing were all at one hundred, waiting for level two and were at level two.
However, he was unable to continue to level his numerics stats as he needed to reach level two for everything else to be able to draw level two skill books.
Original Art: 80
3D art: 84
Animation: 40
Music and Audio Effects: 41
Storyboarding Skills : 36
Chen Mo felt satisfied with the stats and didn't feel the need to draw more. The numerics stats was also good enough to make an RTS game.
Because of the perspective of RTS games, he didn't need his art stats to be too high, unlike the requirements for first person action games. Therefore, his stats for Original Art and 3D Art was good enough for now.
But he was a bit lacking in the music and storyboarding department, but he could just spend more money in the CG department to compensate.
Chen Mo's stats in the Illusion Game Engine was as such:
Chen Mo: Videogame designer (C-grade)
Creativity: 49
Systems: 57
Numerics: 65
Level Designer: 53
Story Writing: 45
Original art: 39
3D Art:1
Monthly Resources Quota: 133MB/5GB
Chen Mo had made three games ever since he became a C-grade videogame designer, including I Am MT, Thunderbolt Tabletop, and Lifeline, but he was still a C-grade designer, yet to reach B-grade...
Creativity, Level Designer and 3D art didn't go up one bit.
Systems, Numerics, and Original Art were increased slightly from I Am MT and Thunderbolt Tabletop. Story Writing on the other hand, was increased because of Lifeline.
Although it wasn't much, his Monthly Resources Quota was increased to 5GB.
It feels as though the people responsible for this were quite cocky. Obviously they don't recognise I Am MT, thinking that it wasn't much in terms of design despite how profitable it was.
However, they decided to get Chen Mo a higher resources quota to 'have fun' with since he was now a frequent visitor of the best sellers leaderboard on the official app store.
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Chapter 102: Chapter 101: RTS Masterpiece
Chen Mo felt that the 1.6GB he was given before was more than enough, especially for mobile games.
There were only two uses for this quota, one of which was downloading public artworks and music.
Of course, entry-level video game designers would tap into that resource, but would only use it as a placeholder. In order to increase the quality of the game, most designers would opt to make their own resources from scratch.
Another was using the engine to generate a framework from rules for the game, taking up system resources.
Games like I Am MT were really simple and would take at most 30MB to generate, so little you could basically neglect it.
Chen Mo didn't worry about this at all while making his previous mobile games.
However, more complicated games such as RTS or MOBA games that had more complicated rulesets would take up much more system resources from the game engine.
Chen Mo would be a little bit apprehensive if he was to make an RTS game using the 1.6GB quota, but he could be more liberal now that he had 5GB to work with.
Moving onto the special equipment.
Chen Mo wouldn't complain about the extra Memory Playback Potions and would be happy to receive more.
As for the Reaction Speed Serums and Hand Speed Boost Potions... They seemed kinda useless, but may as well use them both as their effect lasts forever.
At least it could be useful in games in the future.
Chen Mo didn't feel any different after consuming all of it.
"Alright, that's it for now."
Chen Mo decided to work on a new design document for his next game.
—
Now that Chen Mo had users and money, Chen Mo wanted to work on his brand.
Just like how he entered the mobile gaming industry with a fury using Plants vs Zombies, Chen Mo wanted to have the same effect with the PC gaming industry with a classic game.
Chen Mo was a tossing between RTS and MOBAs, unable to decide which one he wanted to make.
From a long term perspective, MOBAs would be the best choice. Recreating League of Legends would be more than enough for Chen Mo to do nothing for six to seven years.
Based on his previous world, RTS games would start declining once MOBAs were introduced.
However, Chen Mo still decided to make an RTS game after doing market research, settling on a Blizzard product: Warcraft
First, in terms of difficulty, MOBAs are much more difficult than RTS games as MOBAs need a lot of attention to the numerics side of things to properly balance things. Moreover, one small problem could lead to a huge chain reaction of balance changes, and one bad patch could kill the game.
Although RTS games required balancing as well, it was easier and wasn't as complicated as MOBAs.
Second, from a promotional point of view, players of this world had never seen MOBAs, but were plenty familiar with RTS games. It would probably take long for a MOBA to get off its feet compared to RTS games.
Moreover, Chen Mo wanted to incorporate the World of Azeroth into a game as soon as possible. The sooner the world becomes a game, the more players would recognise the story, making the game spread even faster.
Therefore, Chen Mo decided to make Warcraft first as there wouldn't be any point making an RTS game after making a MOBA.
—
Next up was planning the foundations of the game.
Warcraft technically was a series of games. 'Orcs Humans', 'Tides of Darkness', 'Beyond the Dark Portal', 'Reign of Chaos', 'The Frozen Throne', were all technically Warcraft, but the differences between them were huge.
Setting aside the story, there was still a substantial difference between games in terms of gameplay.
For example in Warcraft 2, Blizzard had discovered their style, pioneering left click to select, and right click for attack and movement. Moreover, the "Fog of War" concept had also spread to many other RTS games.
In Warcraft 3, the concept of Heroes becomes key in the design of the game, striking a balance between teamwork and individuality, allowing the world of an RTS game to feel much richer.
And when Wrath of the Lich King came along, Warcraft 3 continued to get balance patches, and the story of the game reached its peak, which allowed Warcraft to become a classic game.
Chen Mo felt that he didn't need to go through all the trouble that Blizzard went through, and decided to skip right to Warcraft 3.
In The Frozen Throne, the two most popular heroes, Illidan and Arthas dueled it out for the Frozen Throne, and pushed the story of the world of Azeroth to its limits. There were many players who started playing the game or spent more time looking into the lore because of these two heros.
Chen Mo decided to condense all the main parts of the story from Reign of Chaos, resulting in a combination of both Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne.
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The other versions such as Tides of Darkness or Beyond the Dark Portal could be done as DLCs if the players were enthusiastic about getting more.
—
Chen Mo split the designing process of Warcraft into six different parts, namely rules and specifications, battle mechanics, races and units, story, level and map design, and multiplayer.
As there was so much to do, Chen Mo wasn't in a rush to finish it. After writing down some concepts and key points, Chen Mo went downstairs.
Qian Kun started working yesterday, and sat next to Zheng Hongxi.
Zheng Hongxi and Su Jinyu were playing League Conquest while working hard to finish their research report on RTS games.
"Are the reports done?" asked Chen Mo.
Chen Hongxi saiid, "Almost done."
Su Jinyu said unconfidently, "I'm... done."
Chen Mo nodded, "Alright, you guys can keep it. I won't be looking at it."
Zheng Hongxi and Su Jinyu were visibly confused.
Su Jinyu was dumbfounded, "Manager, if you weren't going to look at it, why make us put so much effort into it?"
Chen Mo replied, "If I didn't ask you to write reports, would you play the game so seriously? Moreover, the reports are probably garbage, and I don't even need to look at it to know that."
Zheng Hongxi and Su Jinyu were both speechless.
"Alright, I've got the plans for the next game, I'll talk more in the meeting room." said Chen Mo.
Chen Mo handed out the design concept to the rest of them around the meeting table.
Zheng Hongxi was shocked, "Wow, you're finally working on Azeroth?"
"RTS! Huh, seems like it's going to be a big project! Are we able to do it...?" said Su Jinyu.
Qian Kun rubbed his chin, "Not a scammy game huh. Disappointing..."
Chen Mo was speechless, Is that the only thing this kid thinks about?
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Chapter 103: Chapter 102: Troop and Building Planning
It didn't take long for the three of them to read the redesign concepts.
The design document gave an overview of the game, including what would make it fun and its basic composition. The three of them had a basic understanding of Warcraft after reading the design document.
However, Chen Mo was surprised that the three of them didn't like the name of the game.
"Monsters? I think that's a weird name, why not call it the war of Azeroth?[1]" Zheng Hongxi said, confused.
"I like the use of war, and I think it suits RTS games. However, doesn't the game sound similar to Legion Conquest?" asked Qian Kun.
"But what are demons... There are orcs and undead, but there aren't any demons..." Zheng Hongxi struggled to come to terms with that point.
Su Jinyu however was worried about the future of the game, "Manager, I've realised during my research that RTS is still dominated by Legion Conquest. There are a few other companies that have tried doing it and have failed. Are you sure we can make it to Legion Conquest's level?"
Chen Mo was speechless, why were they worried about such weird things?
But to be fair, the Warcraft was known as Warcraft in english, which doesn't have anything to do with demons. But this translation represented the game really well as well as sounding epic. That was why it became the official translation, turning demon into a proper noun."
"Relax, you guys don't have to worry about my abilities to come up with names, nor do you guys have to worry about predicting how well the game does, " said Chen Mo.
Su Jinyu said, "Wow, manager the great and almighty. So when are we starting?"
"Hold up, we'll need to split the work first."
"First, Hongxi. You'll work on the story. I'll give you a quick overview of the story, and it'll revolve around the relationship of Arthas and Illadin. You'll need to keep it in mind.
"You should know what to do with the descriptions of quests, dialogue, units, and buildings, I shouldn't need to remind you of that.
"And from that will be the different buildings the various races will have as well as the settings for the units. So far we have four different races, humans, orcs, elves, and undead. The found different races will have completely different buildings. You'll need to consider how well it's going to fit to the story, which you'll need to discuss with Qian Kun.
"It's not enough for the story this time to be at the same level as Lifeline, so you better mentally prepare yourself. The story for the game will need to end up as a classic."
Zheng Hongxi wiped the sweat off his forehead, "I'll try my best."
Chen Mo continued, "Qian Kun, you'll be responsible for level design and the balancing. The balancing of the different units, difficulty of the levels, and the growth of the attributes of heroes. You'll need to discuss with Hongxi.
"You'll need to make a model for the balancing first, you should already know how to do these things. This is going to take some time, so don't worry about getting it first try."
Before Chen Mo could finish, Su Jinyu added, "Yep, because the manager will tell you: Not bad, but redo it."
Zheng Hongxi confirmed, "Yep, that's true."
Chen Mo and Qian Kun were both speechless.
Chen Mo continued, "Jin Yu will help me by making art work and concept art for characters and backgrounds. You'll also need to work on some of the specifications of the game."
"I understand, "Su Jinyu confirmed with a nod.
"Look up World of Azeroth when you have the time, as there are many things that could be directly used there. Other than that, you could probably use content from other Western Fantasy representations as reference such as Heavenly Ring."
After having their assigned jobs, everyone started working.
Of course, it was unrealistic for Chen Mo to expect that Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun to completely recreate the Warcraft, which was why Chen Mo had to build a foundation for them to work off of.
Back at his office, Chen Mo used another Memory Playback Potion and started recalling his lost memories.
Back to many years ago where he would spend entire afternoons at internet cafes.
First were the units.
There weren't too many units in the game as there were four races, and around twelve different types of units for each race.
Chen Mo started a column chart, with columns for attributes of units, including their cost (Gold, Wood and Food), attack speed, attack range, move speed, attack type, defence type, health, mana, weapon and armor type, special abilities, etc.
Afterwards, Chen Mo filled them in for all the units, starting from Night Elves: wisps, archer, glaive thrower, hippogryph...
The attributes of every single unit will need to be filled out according to the column chart he set out.
Moreover, Chen Mo could probably remake all the numbers for the units without the use of Memory Playback Potions based on his current abilities.
However, in order to get Qian Kun some training, Chen Mo decided to make the foundation to allow Qian Kun to get some practice.
Next up were the buildings.
The building system was quite complicated in Warcraft, unlike Red Alert where they only served one purpose and were all extremely squishy.
It only took a dozen machine gun wielding conscripts to destroy a military camp. This wasn't logical no matter how you thought about it.
The buildings in Warcraft were more like a layer of armour for the base. Only a few specialised units were able to quickly destroy buildings, low tier units would merely tickle the buildings, nothing a few hammers from the peasants wouldn't fix.
Moreover, players could block off areas using buildings to make their base more secure.
After including the buildings into the balancing system, sneak attacks that were common in Red Alert were nowhere to be seen.
Moreover, Warcraft did a good job on upgrading buildings and training units. A building would be able to be upgraded from level one to level three. Should the player work on building buildings to make higher tier troops or spam low tier units and rush early? The addition of an upgrade tree greatly expands the amount of strategies the players could use.
In addition, the players would also need to consider what units each building produced, what techs each unit had, as well as the positioning of buildings.
For example, Ancient of War from the night elves. Other than being able to train lower tier units such as archers and huntresses, it also had one thousand HP and strong attack. It could even consume trees to regenerate health.
And it's also because of this that many players choose to use the Ancient of War to help kill neutral creeps, which was a common strategy among night elves.
These points made it clear that it was worth Chen Mo's time to plan it properly as units and buildings were all integral to Warcraft.
TL note: [1] In Chinese, the game is directly translated to something along the lines of warring demons.
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Chapter 104: Chapter 103: Arthas's Sketch
The planning of units and buildings only took two days with the help of the Memory Playback Potion. But of course, Chen Mo had just the numbers, with no images for reference at all.
Chen Mo had previously posted a few concept arts of the World of Azeroth, including gryphons and hippogryphs, but most of the units still lacked artwork.
As Chen Mo had so many other things on his hands, he decided to hand over the buildings and units to Qian Kun.
Qian Kun built a system according to the attack/defence types of the different units and buildings to achieve a sort of balance between different races and units.
Su Jinyu on the other hand was creating artwork for a portion of the units based on her concept art, and the rest of it were outsourced to an art company.
As for the story, Chen Mo only left the story for The Frozen Throne to Zheng Hongxi, asking to make a draft for the story (including the plot and campaign), before revising it in the future.
After assigning the jobs, Chen Mo started to work on the most important part, the foundations of the specifications for maps.
The Warcraft world editor (aka WE) was very powerful, leading to the development of many minigames.
Moreover this game birthed classic minigames such Chenghai 3C, Dynasty Warriors[1, and DotA. DotA was especially important as it started the long MOBA saga.
Blizzard didn't know how powerful the world editor was, but Chen Mo did. Because of how useful it was, Chen Mo wanted to make sure he did it right, and even make it better than the one in his previous life.
Not only did the mainframe of the world editor needed to be good, other hero mechanisms(respawning, reviving, invulnerability, etc.) also had to be added, becoming part of the editor.
Moreover, the resources for the map were also very expansive.
The map settings included map size, terrain, texture, as well as water and land.
There were also settings such as time(night and day) which would affect the vision range as well as if they were sleeping. It could even influence the strategy for different races.
Night Elves for example, where a few of the heroes and units would get invisibility upon standing still during the night, as well as increased health regeneration and improved vision range.
Because of the limitations of the game engine, controls for Warcraft weren't as crisp as Starcraft 2 or other MOBA games, and Chen Mo felt that it was a point he could improve on.
—
The development of the game continued steadily.
Chen Mo would spend most of his time making the engine for the world, and would spend the remaining time making sketches of different units, buildings or areas for Su Jinyu to finish and colour.
These sketches didn't need to be as detailed as the cards as the players would mostly focus on the character models as opposed to the artwork.
As when the artworks were finished, there were still character models to work on, and after that were animations, collision boxes and many more items. This was why Chen Mo decided to focus on finishing the concept document, as it was a bottleneck for everything else.
First floor of the experience store.
"Goldfish, can you tell me what genre the game will be? Is it an RPG?" asked Wen Lingwei.
Su Jinyu replied, "Geez, relax, you'll know when it comes out."
"But the concept art is pretty good, the urge for me to help you colour them in are so strong I could barely contain myself," replied Wen Lingwei.
Jia Peng also added, "It seems related to Azeroth, but it's not a cute version this time. Perhaps it's a more realistic I Am MT?"
Su Jinyu was speechless, "You guys are underestimating the manager, is he that type of guy? The type of guy to scam players for money on the basis of a reskin?"
Wen Lingwei facepalmed, "What do you think?"
"You don't have to worry about that. This game is completely unrelated to I Am MT. It completely rests on the story from the World of Azeroth," said Zheng Hongxi.
"Isn't the World of Azeroth and I Am MT the same thing?" asked Jia Peng.
Zheng Hongxi shook his head, "Of course it isn't the same. Haven't you noticed that the story the manager posts of the World Of Azeroth is the world behind I Am MT, but the characters in I Am MT never appeared in World of Azeroth?"
Jia Peng gave it some thought, "Uhh, that's... true."
Wen Lingwei was also confused, "Why is that?"
"You guys still don't know? Names like Rogue and Priest clearly aren't normal names of Western Fantasy characters, it's just the bastardisation of their english pronunciation. I'm guessing that the manager is afraid that the people aren't ready to accept Western Fantasy, which was why he decided to make the game and animated series more cute and suited to local tastes as promotion.
"That means that I Am MT is basically a parody and has nothing to do with the actual story in Azeroth."
Everyone finally understood, "So that's why! The manager sure thinks far into the future."
Wen Lingwei scowled, "Therefore, now that the manager thinks its the right time, he decided to tell the story of the actual World of Azeroth?"
Zheng Hongxi nodded, "Exactly. I can't tell you too much, but I can tell you that the story is insane. That's right, insane."
...Is it as good as you make it out to be?
—
As they were talking Chen Mo came down stairs.
"I've sent a new batch of sketches to you, Goldfish," said Chen Mo.
Everyone gathered around Su Jinyu as she opened the sketches.
It was a young man wearing dark green armor with ashen hair, with eyes filled with evil intent.
There was another sketch on the same image, a flaming skeleton horse running, as well as a two-sword with magic inscriptions on it.
The sketch also had the name of the character: Arthas Menethil, his mount Invincible, and his weapon Frostmourne.
"Is this the new Undead hero? He's so handsome!" exclaimed Su Jinyu.
Wen Lingwei also joined in, "He's so good looking! Is this the main character?"
Jia Peng said, "Umm... looks like the antagonist. That smile sends shivers through my spine."
"The sketch for Arthas is finally done? Let me see! Crazy! This is amazing!" exclaimed Zheng Hongxi.
Everyone had nothing but praises for the sketch.
Chen Mo's sketch of Arthas fully conveyed his possible good or bad nature, especially with his mount Invincible and Fortmourne, everyone were able to imagine the heroic figure of Arthas leading the Scourge to take over Azeroth.
This picture was enough to make their blood boil!
After giving the sketch another look, they had more to say about it.
Although the sketch was far from complete, it was more than enough to convey the idea and characteristics of the character. From a design point of view, it was basically perfect and could even stand toe to toe with Heavenly Ring!
Wen Lingwei said, "Alright, I've decided that I'll colour this sketch, free of charge!"
TL note [1: Names of WOW minigames, and Dynasty Warriors here doesn't refer to the actual Dynasty Warrior series
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Chapter 105: Chapter 104: Always Copied, Never Bested
Everyone was getting excited just from the sketches, especially when they thought about how the world of Azeroth would be made into an RPG game.
Wen Lingwei, Jia Peng and the others did not expect that Chen Mo would want to make an RTS as it was dominated by one overseas company, and none of the Chinese companies were able to properly integrate into the market.
Which was why the others thought that Chen Mo would make an RPG, because it would be the safest choice.
All of a sudden, Wen Lingwei mentioned, "By the way, manager, have you seen Zen Entertainment's newest game?"
Chen Mo shook his head, "Nope, what is it?"
"I think it's called 'Seven Heroes'. It's a Wuxia themed large scale RPG on the PC," answered Wen Lingwei.
Zheng Hongxi said, "Oh that, I think it just entered closed beta today, and would enter public beta in two months."
That managed to grab Chen Mo's attention, "Really? What type of game is it?"
Zheng Hongxi replied, "I watched the trailer, and it feels like a reskin of Legend of the Sword, swapping out the Xianxia theme into Wuxia theme.
"Huh? They're doing that? Zen Entertainment sure is lazy," said Jia Peng.
Zheng Hongxi said, "It's not really lazy. Because of how successful Legend of the Sword was, any small changes could completely destroy the game. Copying their own game would be a safer choice."
Chen Mo nodded in agreement. This was actually quite common in his previous world. A large majority of the companies don't have the courage to make big changes to a game that was already successful. It isn't easy to create something new too, and I may even have the opposite effect.
Therefore, the safer choice would be to reskin their own game, changing out Xianxia to Wuxia. They would need to change things such as the content, how it's sold, jobs, and the combat system, but the core of the game would remain the same, minimizing the risk of failure.
Qian Kun said, "It seems like they are just testing the waters. If it was successful as a PC game, they'll make it into a VR game. Same old plan."
"The PC version will probably be successful, as in China, Legend of the Sword still has the best of the best gameplay," said Zheng Hongxi.
As they were discussing, Su Jinyu exclaimed out of nowhere, "Huh? Take a look guys at Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's Weibo! They are releasing a new game!"
Everyone took out their phone to check their Weibo. Indeed Emperor Dynasty Entertainment posted a Weibo on their new game,
After the launch of I Am MT, Chen Mo developed Thunderbolt Tabletop as well as Lifeline. Including the development time, as well as testing, pre-release preparations and everything else was around four month's of time.
It was now evident that Emperor Dynasty Entertainment hadn't been slacking during that time.
The Weibo was as follows : Our newest game Ain World is now in closed beta! Expansive world, rich character customisation and different races, providing you with a unique RPG experience!
There were a few artworks included in the Weibo post, human knights, orc warriors, and elven archers. There were also a few artworks for the background setting, giving off strong Western Fantasy vibes.
Zheng Hongxi was also shocked, "What is this? Why would Emperor Dynasty make a Western Fantasy game?"
Wen Lingwei said disapprovingly, "It's even called Ain World. It's a knockoff of Azeroth right?"
"Manager, what do you think?" asked Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo laughed, "What is there to think. Western Fantasy as a theme is currently in limbo in China. Emperor Dynasty and Zen have avoided it like the plague in the past, but decided to try it again out of nowhere. Moreover, it's a completely original fictional world. Obviously..."
Zheng Hongxi finished off his sentence, "They're copying Azeroth."
Chen Mo nodded, "Bingo."
"Wow, that's really a new low for Emperor Dynasty, they copy everything the manager does. Does a huge company like them have no sense of dignity?" Jia Peng said angrily.
Wen Lingwei added, "They've even copied it before we made it."
Chen Mo laughed, "Don't worry, out of all the knockoffs they've made, was there a single one that performed better than the original?"
"Well, we can't do nothing about it, right? Copying fictional worlds like this should warrant a lawsuit right?" said Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo said, "They've already made changes no? Look, obviously they've based it off Western Fantasy, and just 'referenced' some content from World of Azeroth, they wouldn't dare reference too much."
Su Jinyu was still unsatisfied, "Well, manager, does that we're not going to do anything?"
Chen Mo shook his head, "Of course not. Am I the type of guy to just take it? Hand the great Chen Mo his mobile phone, Goldfish."
Su Jinyu was shocked, "Huh?"
Chen Mo pointed at his phone on the table, "Over there."
SU Jinyu was speechless, "You're such a drama queen, manager. Couldn't you have done that yourself? And even went as far to refer to yourself in third person..."
Su Jinyu still walked the few steps to pass Chen Mo his phone.
Everyone was curious as to what Chen Mo was going to do. Was he going to start something that would benefit him again?
Chen Mo sent a Weibo with only a picture: Arthas's concept sketch.
After some thought, he added a sentence :"Always copied, never bested."
His Weibo basically followed Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's Weibo, with only a five minute gap between them.
The drama hungry fans were surprised upon seeing the Weibo!
They were about to start trash talking Emperor Dynasty Entertainment upon seeing their Weibo, but upon seeing Chen Mo's Weibo, all their attention was shifted!
Although Chen Mo only posted a picture and one sentence, the message was clear as day.
There were dozens of entries on the World of Azeroth on Arthas. Therefore, everyone knew that he was a key character in the world of Azeroth, a fact that even the drama waiting players knew.
Even without context, the art for Arthas was amazing in and of itself.
The design, the expression, the setting, and when combined with the skeleton horse and Frostmourne, there were only two words that could be used to describe it: Extremely handsome!
Compared to this sketch, the detailed artwork for Ain World was like a woman with heavy makeup. No matter how much foundation they put on, they were completely overshadowed by the beauty of Chen Mo's sketch!
The knockoff aspect became even more obvious.
Moreover, Chen Mo added a 'Always copied, never bested.' which he didn't need to.
Yeah, that rings so true!
Plants vs Zombies, I Am MT, or Thunderbolt Tabletop, no matter what theme, what genre, and no matter how good or ill of an intent the game had, the other designers would copy Chen Mo. It was starting to get hard to watch!
Moreover, Emperor Dynasty decided to copy the World of Azeroth now? That's a new level of ridiculous!
But looking back at Chen Mo's games, none of them were bested! No matter how they copied it, Chen Mo's next game would undoubtedly be better!
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Chapter 106: Chapter 105: It's an RTS Game?
It didn't take long before that sentence blew up
The drama hungry players left many comments underneath Chen Mo's Weibo.
"Always copied, never bested! Crazy!"
"Hahaha, Emperor Dynasty Entertainment are still in their own happy place when the real Azeroth is releasing soon. Do you think they are worried?"
"You got them right on the mouth!"
"I feel bad for Emperor Dynasty. They were going to generate hype for the game, but all it took was one sentence from Chen Mo to draw all the attention away from them. Hahaha."
"Why do I feel that Chen Mo planned this from the start?"
"I can imagine what Emperor Dynasty was planning. Hasn't Zen released a game called Seven Heroes lately? Then Emperor Dynasty decided to make Ain World to borrow some hype of Azeroth for itself. They even did it while Chen Mo didn't have the ability to make large scale RPG games. But who would've thought that Chen Mo already saw this come! Just look at this sketch, it's more than enough for Emperor Dynasty to start sweating!"
"But I'm worried. Is Chen Mo able to make a large scale RPG?"
"Previous poster, can Chen Mo make casual games? Can he make mobile card games? Can he make tabletop games? Every time you thought he couldn't do it, didn't he do exactly that?"
"But RPGs cost a lot of money!"
"Chen Mo lacking money? Is that a joke?"
"Yeah, Chen Mo isn't lacking any money at all, every single game he makes is insanely popular, how could he be lacking money? How could you even say that after being drained of money by I Am MT."
"Wow, I thought there would be two to three years before I could play Azeroth, but turns out it's already in production. I'm so excited!"
"I just wanna be a Tauren running around in the plains..."
—
The number of reposts and comments on Chen Mo's Weibo was growing rapidly. Five hundred, one thousand, two thousand...
On the other hand, Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's Weibo was much more quiet. The most infuriating thing was that the best comment was 'Always copied, never bested'!
It even became a trending topic, how could Emperor Dynasty not be mad?
Not only were the drama waiting fans surprised by the Weibo, it even surprised industry professionals!
Many video game designers were getting stressed from their past experiences with Weibo. It didn't concern them too much while he was still in the mobile game market, but does this mean he's entering the PC ecosystem? And he's starting off with an RPG, was he trying to contend with Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Zen Entertainment?
Wow, he's really not afraid of anything!
This was also extremely time sensitive, first was Seven Heroes from Zen Entertainment, then Ain World from Emperor Dynasty Entertainment, then followed by Chen Mo's World of Azeroth?
They were announced so close together it was hard to tell who would be winning and losing!
Zen Entertainment had experience from Legend of the Sword.
Emperor Dynasty Entertainment had a promotion using the Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform.
Chen Mo... didn't have anything, but it was Chen Mo!
This guy was incredible right off the bat. He only bullied others, there was nobody bullying him yet!
Performance like this was incredible, and difficult to believe if you didn't see it with your own eyes.
The drama loving fans were now extremely satisfied, and Chen Mo managed to siphon a lot of attention to the World of Azeroth.
—
Much discussion had started within the videogame industry.
The biggest question was what type of game was Chen Mo planning?
So far Chen Mo only released a sketch and a super pretentious comment.
Many players thought that Chen Mo must be making an MMORPG, as the content of World of Azeroth would fit an RPG so well it was practically designed for it.
But many industry professionals didn't but it, mainly because of how demanding the content for an RPG was, could Chen Mo manage that?
Chen Mo had also done some bait and switch in the past. He released an animated series as well as a website before he released I Am MT, but ended up releasing a hundred something megabyte mobile game.
Similarly, Chen Mo only released a sketch this time, who could be sure that he wasn't going to make another scammy card game?
However, there were also some industry professionals who thought Chen Mo would actually make an RPG as he now had the money and user base. Combined with an expansive fictional world and some hard work, it wasn't out of the line to make an RPG that would go down in history.
It wouldn't make too much sense to make another scammy mobile game. Just as the boy who cried wolf, the players would eventually get tired of this antics, ruining a fictional world as well done as World of Azeroth was.
There were many different opinions, with no consensus.
—
Chen Mo was tight-lipped about the matter. No matter how many times the fans asked, he wasn't revealing anything.
At the same time, the development was going on as planned.
After Su Jinyu finished another batch of concept art, Chen Mo found another company to outsource the 3D model production.
Of course Chen Mo provided their scales, actions and other specifications as Chen Mo wanted to best represent the uniqueness of each unit.
The details on character models didn't have as high requirements as RPG games, as most of the time players would be playing from a top-down view of the world. There weren't any 'gentlemen requirements' such as being able to peek at the panties of the models.
There were hundreds of models including the units and monsters in Warcraft. If the models for terrain and buildings were included as well, it was going to be quite big, but still within the realms of acceptance.
Other than that, Chen Mo also had Zheng Hongxi rewrite the story for the Frozen Throne four more times.
The story would directly affect things such as the terrain, level design, enemy locations. Chen Mo had to meticulously adjust them one by one to make sure it fit with the story.
Music and audio effects weren't big problems either. He could outsource the dubs and sound effects, and Chen Mo could compose a rough BGM to be finished by professionals.
The drama hungry players were eagerly waiting for Seven Heroes, Ain World, and Warcraft.
On the fifth next month, Seven Heroes would enter public beta.
The date for Ain World's public beta was also confirmed, on the tenth next month.
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Chapter 107: Chapter 106: Game is Now Live!
Jia Peng and Qian Kun were being quite rowdy as they were playing games in the experience store.
"What the, why is your Blademaster here again? You're so annoying, stop killing my peasants!!"
"Heh, you think I don't know that you're trying to hide the fact that you're leveling up your buildings? I'll kill your wisps!"
"What, don't make me do this!"
"My goodness, it self-destructed!"
To be frank, guys usually have an advantage when it comes to RTS games. The two of them had beat the campaign fairly early on, and quickly moved onto PvP.
Jia Peng liked the game a lot as RTS games weren't as heavy on RNG. Of course he would never play heroes like Blademaster or Demon Hunter, as a Blademaster who doesn't crit posed no threat.
The girls weren't entirely interested in combat like these, and only wanted to get through the campaign. But for their skill level, they were struggling through the campaign levels...
Other than Wen Lingwei, all the other girls were still on the Undead level.
"Manager, could you do some cheating for me? I really can't beat this," pleaded Chang Xiuya.
Chen Mo took a look, and indeed, RTS games weren't too suitable for these girls.
"Alright, I'll teach you a spell," said Chen Mo.
"A spell?"
Chen Mo nodded, "Open the textbox and type in 1, no wait, I mean whosyourdaddy."
Chang Xiuya could barely hold back her laughter, "What do you mean! Are you asking the computer who's your daddy?"
Chen Mo said in a serious tone, "I'm serious, try it."
Chang Xiuya typed in the cheat in the chat just as Chen Mo instructed, then hit enter.
"Hmm? It feels like nothing has changed," said Chang Xiuya.
"Try and hit that monster over there."
Chang Xiuya commanded her Death Knight to attack the monster, and it died in one hit!
Chang Xiuya was shocked, then tried to hit the other monster, which all died to one hit. Moreover, her Death Knight was also invulnerable, not losing a single bit of HP no matter how many enemies there were.
Chang Xiuya exclaimed, "Wow, it really is a spell, that's amazing! Anyways, how would you add something like this, manager."
Chen Mo laughed, "There are many more spells in the game, you wanna learn?"
Qian Kun typed in 'whosyourdaddy' in the chat in the match against Jia Peng.
Jia Peng replied in chat: "???"
"Ah! Manager, that spell doesn't work, you lied to me again!" cried Qian Kun.
Jia Peng was speechless, "Geez, you planned to cheat? What happened to your dignity."
Chen Mo laughed, "Stop thinking about ways to cheat. Anyone would know that you couldn't use cheats in versus mode. Did you really have to try?"
Chen Mo looked at the match between Qian Kun and Jia Peng and they were still at the early stages in terms of skill, with basically zero micromanagement. They wouldn't be fighting when they were training, and there was no training when fighting.
Their strategies were also extremely monotonous, they would always train the highest tier minions and the match would be decided in one fight. They were also not inclined to kill neutral creeps as they would suffer heavy casualties when doing so.
They were still quite new to the game after all, and were quite far away from actually understanding the core gameplay.
However, Chen Mo decided to let them explore, holding back on teaching them advanced strategies. As the game grows and players increase, the strategies would develop themselves.
—
It was almost time for the release of Warcraft, and the game was more or less at the same level as the original version now.
But the game engine, graphics and multiplayer aspect were much better than the original.
Especially the multiplayer aspect, where Chen Mo included a scoring system for ranking, from zero to four thousand.
Fifteen hundred was designed to be around the average player, less than fifteen hundred would mean you were terrible, at four thousand meant that you were a pro player.
Moreover, Chen Mo added a replay system, and each replay file would only be a few hundred KBs, allowing players to easily watch matches between high skilled players in order to learn from them, which would in turn increase the skill level of the average player.
It was also because of these match replays that allowed a few classic matchups to be spread all over the world, and allowed a few classic strategies to be improved upon/
—
This time, everyone in the experience store, including Su Jinyu had nothing but praises for this game. Even the girls who weren't used to playing RTS games were really satisfied with the game.
The only person who had questions about the game was Qian Kun. He questioned why it didn't use the same modem as I Am MT, but was shut down quickly by Chen MO.
Everyone was confident that Warcraft would be an amazing game, not only challenging Legion Conquest for the top spot for RTS games, but also defining the idea of RTS games!
—
Warcraft was now officially live at 2pm, the first.
Chen Mo decided to only have it on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform and the official app store, ignoring all the other miscellaneous platforms.
Moreover, Chen Mo didn't feel the need to please the other distribution platforms. This was the reason he spent so much time and effort into promoting Thunderbolt Gaming Platform and developing Thunderbolt Tabletop.
Of course he had to send out a Weibo.
"The true Azeroth story, defefining RTS games. Warcraft: The Frozen Throne is now officially live!"
The drama loving fans downloaded the game on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform at moments notice.
Chen Mo didn't use the usual profit model for this game, but instead chose to make the first chapter of the campaign mode free to play, but requiring players to pay for the other chapters as well as the multiplayer mode.
Warcraft: The Frozen Throne was set at eight-eight RMB, which was quite expensive in China. Legion Conquest was selling for forty USD outside of China, and repriced it to ninety-nine RMB in China, due to the differences in countries, the developers couldn't directly convert the cost.
As Chinese players had a lower level of consumption, and couldn't go shoulder to shoulder with the other developed countries. Therefore, in order to sell more copies, developers choose to reduce the price.
Chinese mobile games usually cost ten to twenty RMB, and RPGs usually charge by playtime, reducing the upfront cost.
Games like Warcraft that are charging almost ninety RMB upfront were quite expensive
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Chapter 108: Chapter 107: Ten Years In Video Games, Nine Years in CG
Chinese RTS fans were also discussing this brand new RTS game.
In a community of Legion Conquest players.
"I heard there's a new Chinese RTS game that is quite popular recently."
"I've also heard. I think it's called Warcraft. It uses Western Fantasy."
"...Really? I thought Western Fantasy and RTS games are taboo in the Chinese video game industry. Didn't Emperor Dynasty and Zen break themselves trying? Who would be daring enough to try the two together at once?"
"Thunderbolt Entertainment, the one owned by Chen Mo."
"Chen Mo? Never heard of him."
"You've heard of Plants vs Zombies and I Am MT right?"
"Huh? Isn't that a mobile game company? They're moving onto PC games? RTS games at that?"
"So brave..."
"But I've heard this guy has some magical powers or something, no matter what genre they tap into, the game becomes insanely popular. I'm downloading Warcraft as we speak, I'll let you guys know how it goes."
"Go forth! The people of our village will be waiting for your good news!"
—
Everybody in that community were RTS fans, and a large majority of them played Legion Conquest.
One of the admins in the group, Kaiser asked, "What? New RTS game? Send me the link, I'll try it out too."
Many replies came after the message.
"Wow, K-god wants to try it himself? Alright, I've got something to look forward to too.
"Even K-god is getting the itch, alright, I'll try it out too."
"K-god, you can download Warcraft from Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, it's just a search away."
This Kaiser guy was well known in the Chinese RTS community. There are a few superstars in LEgion Conquest, and Kaiser was one of them.
However, Kaiser wasn't the best of the best, and was only top ten in the country. The reason he was famous was because he'd always criticise Legion Conquest on various forums, and was even known to give the developer suggestions, and of course, almost none of them have been used.
Kaiser was seen as the prime source of opinion in the RTS community in China. He had also made a tutorial series for Legion Conquest, and also had his own fan base.
This guy was usually quiet year round, and seemed like the cool, quiet type. But they couldn't help but speak out after hearing about a new RTS game being released.
In reality, this K-god with a huge fan base was just a second-year senior student.
Xue Kai, game ID: Kaiser, 17 years old, legend in Legion Conquest.
Xua Kai came from a well-off family, a huge fan of RTS games, and gained a huge fan base through streaming and videos. However, he still had many strong opinions on LEgion Conquest.
He had also expressed his opinions to the developers, as it's an overseas game, even if Xue Kai got someone to translate his recommendations, the developers of Legion Conquest wouldn't even bat an eye.
Therefore, Xue Kai had been waiting for a better RTS game to appear. Upon hearing that a Chinese designer developed an RTS game, he tried it out filled with hope.
What if. What if the game was actually kinda fun?
After finding Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, he registered a Thunderbolt Game Pass and downloaded Warcraft.
It didn't take long before the download finished.
The icon was a young man who was filled with evil intent. Although it was difficult to tell from such a small icon, it felt really nice.
Xue Kai double clicked the icon to enter the game.
The logo of Thunderbolt Gaming flashed across the screen/
An ominous gust of wind, the camera zoomed through the clouds, free as a bird.
Following the ominous winds, a melodious tune started playing.
A crow flew over the snow covered peak, through a desolate gorge, finally reaching a populous human city.
The palace of humans, the imperial capital of Lordaeron
There was chattering, and the king, Terenas, sat on the throne deep in thought.
At the same time, the crow flew out of nowhere right in front of the king.
The background music turned dark, and the ominous crow drew the attention of the king.
As everyone else in the room was chattering, the crow started to glow a suspicious green, and turned into a human as people were panicking.
Medivh.
His face was hooded, but his voice could be heard throughout the entire castle.
"Humans are in danger. The tides of darkness will arrive again, and the world is on the edge of war!
"The only hope for your people is to move west, to the forgotten lands, Kalimdor!"
The king was visibly upset, standing up from his throne, "I don't know who you are or what you believe in, but now is not the time for prophecies! If our country goes to war, we will decide how to protect our citizens! Not you!"
At this moment, the background music turned into a sad melancholic tone.
Medivh's now had a disappointed tone, "I've once lost my humanity, but I won't let that happen again.
"If you can't solve the problem, I'll get someone else you will."
Medivh turned around and took his leave, leaving one message behind.
"I've warned you, and the fates are in your hand."
The screen turned black, signaling the end of the cinematic before entering the game.
Although it was short it contained a lot of information. Xue Kai didn't pay much attention to the story of Azeroth previously, but he had gotten a lot of information from this cinematic.
Humans were currently under attack by the orcs, and there was an unknown disease spreading too. A mysterious person entered the palace of the humans, but his words weren't taken seriously by the king.
This short cinematic managed to bring out everything that was important, although Xue Kai didn't know who Medivh was, nor did he know what his human city was about, but it was more than enough that the story captured his attention.
Moreover, the cinematic was really well done.
In this world, China wasn't lacking good animation or CG companies, nor were they lacking in good sound effects companies or voice actors, the only thing lacking was money.
Good CG could be achieved with enough money, it wasn't the best of the best, but it wasn't too far off either.
The only problem was that many of the developers weren't willing to spend that money.
These cinematics would be two to three minutes long, and the money to make that cinematic was almost enough to make a mobile game.
Why would Chen Mo spend so much money on CG?
It wasn't known how much Blizzard spent on CG, but it was commonly accepted that the three minutes for the CG for Wrath of the Lich King was around five million USD.
In the parallel world, due to the improvements in animations and CG, as well as the lower pay meant that it was much cheaper.
Chen Mo didn't even pick the highest quality CG, but a slightly cheaper one, one that he was happy with.
Even so, Chen Mo still spent around thirty-seven million RMB.
And this was the result of it, a cinematic that summarises all the key scenes from the previous versions, minus many many parts to reach the thirty-seven million price tag.
For example, the opening scene for Warcraft was changed to when Medivh warned the king, cutting out everything before it.
Chen Mo spent a huge chunk of money from I Am MT just to make this cinematic. Some parts that couldn't be fit into the budget had to be replaced with rengerings or pure narrations in order to save money.
Truthfully, if Chen Mo wasn't financially supported by a game like I Am MT, he would've never been able to spend money on things like these, and would've needed to settle for something cheaper.
If Chen Mo went all out on the cinematics, the cost of the game would easily surpass hundreds of millions, there was no way he could've spent that money.
The game itself, including the artwork and the like didn't even come close to the cost of the cinematics. Chen Mo finally understood the meaning behind, 'Ten Years In Video Games, Nine Years in CG'
Only Chen Mo and Guo Feng from Dazzling Aurora Studios knew about this, whereas Su Jinyu and the others were completely in the dark. Su Jinyu and Qian Kun would probably die from shock if they found out.
It was a huge risk after all. If Warcraft didn't garder many players, wouldn't Chen Mo be out tens of millions?
If he spent that money on a scammy mobile game like I Am MT, he would make so much more money!
But Chen Mo knew the worth of spending that money on CG.
It might not work out for other games, but it was definitely worth it for Warcraft! Every single cinematic in this game would go down in history, it was worth it even if it would cost double the price!
The reason Chen Mo was willing to spend all this money was not because of the immediate return, but to build up the brand of Warcraft to enable future games.
Moreover, thirty-seven million was only about six million USD, considerably cheaper than the original!
—
Xue Kai was very impressed at this level of dedication. There were very few overseas companies who were willing to spend this amount of money, and even less so in China.
Moreover, this cinematic wasn't just about the quality of animations, it was also content rich!
Xue Kai was completely shocked for a few seconds before starting campaign mode.
After the human price Arthas exchanged a few words with Lightbringer Uther, the combat started.
The game started off with a few simple tutorials, guiding Xue Kai to left click to select, and move units with right click.
"Huh? The controls are different compared to Legion Conquest."
Xue Kai was shocked as Legion Conquest was the gold standard for RTS games, there were very few RTS games who even dared to deviate from that combat system.
As a senior RTS player, Xue Kai didn't start playing immediately, but chose to look deeper into the controls for Warcraft.
Left click to select, right click to move, and after the unit it selected, there were a few more commands, including move, stop, hold, attack, patrol and abilities.
Moreover, all these actions had shortcut keys.
"Hold? Patrol?"
Xue Kai clicked on patrol then somewhere on the map, then Arthas began to run between the two points.
"The control system is so rich in this game. This has much more depth than Legion Conquest," exclaimed Xue Kai.
Moreover, he found the design of Hero Abilities quite refreshing. In LEgion Conquest, although there were a few special units, there wasn't a 'Hero' class.
In Warcraft, heroes were a part of the game, there was an icon of the hero on the top left, and heroes would even have special abilities that were very useful in battle.
Moreover, there was an inventory in the bottom right. Although he didn't have anything, it was obvious that this game supported the use of items.
"Interesting, there are so many new innovative things in this game."
Controlling Arthas, Xue Kai started completing the objectives.
During that process, Arthas kept talking, responding to Xue Kai's commands.
"Of course."
"For glory!"
"May the Holy Light bless my people."
This was similar to Legion Conquest, it wasn't perfect there, and was quite awkward at times.
On the other hand, the voice lines for Warcraft were managed by Chen Mo himself, using the original ones as reference. Xue Kai felt that these voice lines were very natural, keeping to the Western Fantasy theme without all the awkward translations.
It didn't take long for Xue Kai to beat the first level.
As Xue Kai had a strong background in RTS games, the campaign levels didn't pose much of a threat to Xue Kai as he swept through them.
After beating the first level, Xue Kai didn't continue immediately, instead sending a message to the group chat.
Kaiser: "This game is amazing. Legion Conquest doesn't even come close to this!!!!"
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Chapter 109: Chapter 108: RTS Community Gone Wild!
The entire chat group flipped out when Kaiser sent that message.
"Oh my, did K-god get hacked? I've never seen K-god praise an RTS game like this!"
"K-god are you serious? Is the game that greaT?"
"I trust K-god, I'll try it out now!"
The chat group was filled with long-time RTS players. Upon hearing from Kaiser than this game was way better than Legion Conquest, they couldn't wait to try the game.
Xue Kai was so happy with the game, he felt that it wasn't enough to promote it in the QQ group. He went on Weibo and praised the game yet again.
He even decided to livestream the game as he decided it still didn't receive enough praise.
A game like this can't be enjoyed alone, the more players the better!
Moreover, it's rare that a Chinese company releases such a nice game, of course he was going to support it!
Xue Kai launched the streaming software.
Xue Kai didn't receive as many viewers as was still the afternoon, and Xue Kai usually streamed during the night. But there were many fans who followed Xue Kai who started watching the stream.
"Wow, K-god is streaming? It's only afternoon, that's weird."
"Wow, I've got nothing to do this afternoon anyways, feels good to watch K-god."
There were more and more people watching and chatting, and it didn't take long before he reached two hundred thousand viewers.
Xue Kai had a million fans following his stream, so this number wasn't much. RTS games weren't as popular as MOBAs in the previous world too, combined with the fact that there were usually less people watching streams during the afternoon and less people watching streams in general, this number was reasonable.
However, Xue Kai was still quite a big streamer with a million followers.
Xue Kai started displaying Warcraft on his stream, then changing the title to "Trying out Warcraft".
Xue Kai said as he controlled Arthas to beat the level, "I've discovered this new game called Warcraft today. It's made in China and from the few moments I've played before this, it felt quite nice. I'd recommend everyone to try it out."
The viewers also started discussing the game. There were many that had their eyes on the game and started promoting it to others.
The other fans who hadn't paid too much attention to it couldn't help but download the game under all the peer pressure.
—
Xue Kai was one of the first Warcraft streamers, but he certainly wasn't the only one. The news spread quickly in the RTS community, and many viewers went to other streams begging the streamer to play Warcraft. It didn't take long before it became a phenomena on the streaming platform.
The next day, many Legion Conquest streamers were now playing Warcraft.
A lot of players have been drawn in by the high quality cinematics, charismatic playstyle and incredible story, it didn't take long before Warcraft became immensely popular in the PC community.
Xue Kai forked out money to buy Warcraft with no hesitation. He thought that he game was going to be popular for sure, and eighty-eight RMB for a game of this quality wasn't bad at all.
As time went by, Xue Kai started to discover that the game had rich gameplay and heart grabbing story.
There were now eight hundred thousand viewers watching Xue Kia playing Warcraft, greatly surpassing many other RPG streamers as well as being his new top view count.
After beating another chapter, another cinematic started playing.
Xue Kai was shocked, another cinematic? The designer must be rich to be able to throw this much money based on how detailed they were. How many of these did he make?
A far away bell sounded.
In the sacred and magnificent melody, the camera flew over the city of Lordaeron and returned Arthas.
Arthas enters the city after a drawbridge was dropped. The citizens of Lordaeron cheer with petals filling the air as they welcome the return of their price.
As the petals fell, Arthas who had a black hood on looked up and grabbed a petal.
At this moment, the melody turned depressing.
The petal slowly wilted in Arthas's hand.
Arthas threw the flower to the ground and looked towards the sky with his cold, lifeless eyes.
Arthas then entered the hall of the palace.
Arthas greets his father kneeling with his sword out. Nobody noticed that the weapon in the price's hand wasn't a holy battlehammer, but the dreadful Frostmourne.
The king stood up to welcome Arthas, but there was another voice in Arthas's mind.
"You don't need to sacrifice for your people."
"You don't need to take up the responsibility of the king."
"I've arranged everything."
With the voice of Frostmourne in his mind, Arthas walked forward with his sword in hand.
The camera panned to the shadow of Arthas on the wall, with the king yelling, "My son, what are you doing?"
Arthas replied completely emotionless, "Continuing the legacy, father."
The king fell following his scream.
As the blood flowed down from the throne, Arthas exclaimed emotionlessly, "This country will be destroyed.
"But from it's rubble, a new order will be born, and it will shake the world to its core!"
—
Before Xue Kai came back to his senses, the chat was going wild.
"Oh my goodness, this is a Chinese game? You're telling me this is a Chinese game?"
"This cinematic is insane! Mom's asking me why I'm on my knees!"
"The righteous son broke in the end? My goodness, does the story need to be this good! The father and son are gone!"
"I knew from the beginning that it wasn't going to turn out well!"
"Get a move on, K-god. We wanna see the end!"
—
The players were already going wild from the story before they even got the Versus mode.
The setting of the story completely outmatched Legion Conquest. Not to mention the otherworldly quality of these cinematics blew the stale and boring settings of Legion Conquest into smithereens!
This even drew up the visits to the World of Azeroth website. There were more and more comments under Arthas and Illidan, with several more comments every refresh.
Within the experience store, everyone had their eyes on the statistics for the game.
Although I Am MT had been on the best-selling leaderboards, PC games are on a different level to mobile games. Everyone was highly confident in Warcraft, but nobody knew for sure how well the game would sell.
Su Jinyu asked, "How's the sales like, manager?"
Chen Mo replied, "Didn't you ask that an hour ago? How much would it grow in an hour."
"Quick, come take a look," ushered Su Jinyu.
Chen Mo took a look and said, "It's at twenty four thousand nine hundred and sixty right now, growing at about seven hundred an hour.
"Wow, that's amazing! Over twenty thousand sales on the first day!" exclaimed Su Jinyu.
Qian Kun also said in a happy tone, "That means it's more than a million RMB in a day! That's amazing!"
Plants vs Zombies also had twenty thousand sales on the first day. But it was a mobile game after all, one priced at ten RMB at that, only resulting in two hundred thousand RMB.
Warcraft was a large game sold at eighty-eight RMB, and selling twenty thousand copies meant 1.7 million RMB, a completely different level from mobile games.
"You're happy with that? I think the sales can go higher still," said Chen Mo.
"Higher?" Su Jinyu was surprised, "Any higher and there'll be no traces of Legion Conquest left. Isn't that a bit unrealistic?"
Chen Mo laughed, "Unrealistic? It'd be unrealistic if that didn't happen."
Everyone else felt that the number of sales Warcraft had was already quite amazing, but Chen Mo was far from satisfied.
In his previous life, Warcraft sold 1.6 million copies in China. At that time, priating was commonplace in China, and being able to sell 1.6 million copies were
Although Chen Mo set the price a bit high at eighty-eight RMb, pirating games was a much rarer occurrence in the parallel world and was more or less non-existent. Combined with the fact that there wasn't much competition among RTS games, Chen Mo was confident that he could sell around two million copies in China!
Moreover, this was just the sales in China. A game like Warcraft could totally be sold overseas and could get immensely popular like Legion Conquest did.Warcraft also happened to be Legion Conquest, but better in every single aspect.
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Chapter 110: Chapter 109 Ain World Fails Miserably
The popularity of Warcraft continues to grow, Chen Mo's works, story of Azeroth, revolutionary RTS game, excellent Chinese game were all trending topics that made it to large video game forums and streaming sites.
In particular if you were in the RTS community and didn't know Warcraft, you'd probably be made fun of.
Once the topic got started, it started gaining more and more momentum. Warcraft managed to get forty-three thousand sales on the third day, double that of the first.
That means that on the third day, there were nearly one hundred thousand downloads in total, resulting in eight million RMB in profits.
Extrapolating this data, Warcraft could read eight hundred thousand sales in the first month resulting in about seventy million in profit.
This drove the gaming community crazy, and the drama hungry fans were getting really excited.
There was a lot to PC games as RPGs games were able to reach tens of millions in profit in a month. But Warcraft was a sell by copy RTS game, and Chinese companies wouldn't even touch RTS games with a ten foot pole!
The community felt that Chen Mo was super cool by entering the PC gaming ecosystem with a bang using an RTS game, and even putting an overseas game like Legion Conquest under its feet.
Moreover, the reviews for Warcraft were incredibly high for players and industry professionals like. The ratings for Warcraft were consistently above 9.5, and many video game reviewing companies had nothing but praises for the game.
High Quality Chinese RTS game: Warcraft!
Entering PC classics with a storm!
You don't believe that it's a Chinese videogame from these cinematics!
From I Am MT to Warcraft, how much more can World of Azeroth provide?
Rating of 9.5, this came could become a milestone in RTS games!
RTS game legend: This game destroys Legion Conquest!
Professionals say: Incredible high quality game!
The entire video game media had nothing but praises for the game, and in a few days most of the videogame media had become Chen Mo's diehard fans, prasing Warcraft again and again.
Many players would dedicate their own time to promote Warcraft to other players.
In no time at all, Warcraft became incredibly well known. Even players who didn't play RTS games knew about the great game.
—
On the fifth, Seven Heroes entered public testing.
On the tenth, Ain's world Entered private testing.
These games were supposed to become hot topics of the both, but never managed to garner much attention. Seven Heroes actually gathered less players during its public beta compared to private.
Ain World had it even worse, when it entered closed beta, Warcraft was on its rise. When the two games were compared, Ain World's statistics were an eyesore.
After experiencing the story and cinematics from Warcraft, the players have developed a specific taste. The players who tried you Ain World for its western fantasy theme didn't last too long before quitting.
"What are these character designs, and that hairstyle? It's so obvious that it's a cheap knockoff."
"This opening cinematic looks like it's made for children. You guys should take a look at Warcraft's opening."
"Emperor Dynasty Entertainment made a game of this quality? You guys are a huge company, yet failed to compete against a C-grade videogame designer who just entered the industry a year ago? You guys are making me laugh."
"Seriously, is the story written by a teenager?"
"I'll make a joke, an RPG game is destroyed to nothing by an RTS game."
Even diehard fans of Emperor Dynasty Entertainment couldn't make up a single excuse for how big of a flop Ain World was.
It might've been better without Warcraft. But with Warcraft in everyone's mind, all the flaws in Ain World were glaringly obvious.
The cinematics and story were on a completely different level. The most infuriating thing was that Warcraft belonged to a genre where story wasn't important. On the other hand Ain World was an RPG!
Tang Dagang was stuck in a hard spot. You can't blame me, Emperor Dynasty Entertainment didn't give me enough resources at all!
The internals of Emperor Dynasty never reached a consensus with regards to Ain World. Qiu Jiang and Qin Xiao were strongly against Ain World, but Yan Zhenyuan and Lin Chaoxu were quite cautiously supportive, unwilling to commit too much resources onto Tang Dagang.
Tang Dagang was angry at the fact he didn't get the best Emperor Dynasty Entertainment could offer for things such as story writing and art.
But in reality? So what if he got the best?
Chen Mo didn't even bat an eye.
Seven Heroes and Ain World weren't popular at all. They were completely overshadowed by Warcraft on Weibo's trending topics.
Emperor Dynasty Entered and Zen Entertainment didn't expect that works that they have put time and effort into got beaten by an RTS game of all things.
The only thing worse than dying with a bang was to die quietly. Ain World had some haters at the start, but as time went on, nobody even bat an eye.
This MMORPG that wanted to copy World of Azeroth failed miserably.
—
At this time, RTS fans were pulling their hair trying to figure out the strategies for Warcraft. They were shocked by how much more complex the gameplay was than they originally thought.
At the beginning, everyone just tried to train a bunch of high tier units for one big battle later on. The players were highly focused on making strong units and completely neglected the heroes.
Later on, a stronger player discovered the use of heroes, focusing on getting skills and grinding mobs. Strategies involving harassing players when they were building up using Blademaster or Demon Hunter started becoming more common.
Afterwards, scouting, group farming, rushing, and distributing resource gathering started appearing. RTS players from Legion Conquests were playing Warcraft day in day out to try and figure out new strategies.
Chen Mo included a complete ranking system in Warcraft as well as a replay system. Players could watch strong players battle it out, learning strategies first hand as well as being able to revise old strategies, allowing new ones to be developed even faster than before.
In a week, Xue Kai and other RTS titans managed to reach twenty-four hundred points. They were even ready to give up sleep in order to climb even higher.
Warcraft even infiltrated communities that didn't play RTS games. Players who never played Legion Conquest started playing Warcraft because of its rich story.
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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 111 - Chapter 110: Expand Overseas? - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 111 - Chapter 110: Expand Overseas? Online - All Page - Novel Next
Chapter 111: Chapter 110: Expand Overseas?
It was late at night.
Horrific screams can be heard from the second floor of the experience store.
"What the! Give me storyboarding skill books!!"
"My goodness why is it an animation book again!!"
"I want to go to the second level! Stop messing with me and give me that storyboarding skill book!"
If the experience didn't have good sound-proofing, his neighbours probably would've called the police on him.
It had been a month since Warcraft went online, and the official sales stated that he sold seven hundred and forty thousand copies, meaning that Chen Mo got nearly forty-one million RMB into his pocket.
As there was a large portion of sales that came from Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, a lot of his profits went straight to him without giving cuts to the official app store, which was why it was higher than expected.
This was also one of the positives of having your own platform.
The number of sales did drop in the last couple days of the month as there were limited numbers of RTS players, but Chen Mo had managed to make a decent chunk of change despite that, coming close to breaking even in the first month.
This wasn't surprising as Warcraft as a classic. Games like these are in limited supply, and Chen Mo wasn't quite satisfied by a performance like these.
It was difficult to predict how many more copies he could sell, but Chen Mo felt that his previous estimation of twenty million was a bit too conservative.
After receiving the money, Chen Mo spent them on spinning as he tried to max out all his skills to enter the second level.
In the end, the more money it spent, the more it hurt to spend.
Mainly because Chen Mo's designer skills were already full, therefore every subsequent book had to be converted into credits. Every single skill book he draws meant that he was losing seven thousand RMB. It was basically robbery.
Among the special skills, Original art, 3D art, animations and so on were not maxed out yet, and he still needed two hundred and fifty five books.
According to the 5:3:2 ratio he calculated before, including the fact that he could draw duplicate skill books and refunding those skill books for credits, Chen Mo needed to make at least another eighty of these draws.
All these draws translated directly to money! Although Chen Mo had the funds, he didn't want to spend it like this.
After another few more draws, the rate of improvement slowed dramatically.
With the fact that he was still quite far away from level two, Chen Mo hesitantly decided to call it for now.
That's it for now, I'll think about this later.
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The only good thing that came out of it was the special equipment.
Half of those were Memory Playback Potions, and everything else were Reaction Speed Serums and Hand Speed Boost Potions.
Holding back his pain, Chen Mo consumed all the special equipment.
What use do these things have?
Based on the name Reaction Speed Serums improve your reaction speed, and Hand Speed Boost Potions improve the speed of the hands. These were things that were important to professional video game players.
Other than playing games, these things were meaningless.
What is the meaning of this? Is this a sign from the heavens for me to repay society?
Chen Mo was stuck in a tough spot, wouldn't it be a waste of all this Reaction Speed Serums and Hand Speed Boost Potion if he didn't play games?
Chen MoWent to sleep with the painful thought in mind.
RTS players didn't know about what kind of nightmare they would be facing in the future...
—
There were several video game media who wanted to interview Chen Mo during this time, but Chen Mo declined all of them.
Chen Mo also gathered a lot of fans on his Weibo, now having more than a million fans, he was considered a decently famous designer.
Despite their image of him, Chen Mo was actually quite humble about this, not posting anything on his Weibo for a month and declining every single interview. Many fans were suspicious that maybe he took the money and disappeared.
It wasn't that Chen Mo was being humble, he just wasn't used to seeing good things said about him.
Hmm, I think scammy games are more my style!
Chen Mo's ratings on the Illusion Game Engine had grown explosively.
Chen Mo: Videogame Designer (B-grade)
Creativity: 78
System: 67
Numerics: 76
Level design: 77
Story Writing: 85
Original art: 77
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3D art: 46
Monthly Resources Quota: 0KB/180GB
Every single attribute saw explosive growth, and Story Writing grew explosively to a score of eighty-five.
Chen Mo finally became a B-grade video game designer after releasing a classic like this. Of course, his abilities were better than some of the good for nothing A-grade video game designers. But as Chen Mo was still so young, the officials didn't consider raising Chen Mo to an A-grade videogame designer right away.
However, Chen Mo didn't care about arbitrary titles like that. He felt that the ratings within Illusion Game Engine were completely meaningless and he had his own scores for the games he released.
—
Chen Mo woke up at the same time as usual the next day.
There were already people waiting outside the experience store before it had opened. It was completely full ten minutes after it opened.
After Warcraft became popular, Chen Mo's experience store also gained plenty of attention. Nearby players chose to visit his experience store to play Warcraft instead of nearby internet cafes.
Chen Mo planned on playing on one himself, but he decided against it as he wanted to visit the internet cafe anyways.
After dealing with a few fans, Chen Mo left the experience store.
At this moment Chen Mo received a call from an unknown number.
"Hello?" answered Chen Mo.
It was from someone he'd never heard from before, "Hello, are you Mr Chen Mo, designer of Warcraft?"
Chen Mo cleared his throat, "Yep, in the flesh."
After two seconds of silence, the caller said, "Hello, I'm calling from the overseas department of Meteorite Technology. I'm calling today to discuss opportunities with Warcraft."
Chen Mo was shocked, Meteorite Technology?
Meteorite Technology was quite a famous company in China. They focused on translating Chinese games into other languages to ship overseas.
Their services included translations, release, overseas approval processes, so there wasn't much the designer had to do.
Chen Mo was actually thinking of an overseas distribution company, and this time they came at the right time.
It wasn't surprising as Warcraft did so well in China. It already had potential of beating Legion Conquest, and the Western Fantasy theme would also do very well in the western market.
Therefore, companies like these have also seriously considered getting the rights to distribute Warcraft overseas.
Chen Mo gave it some thought before replying, "Alright, we can talk about it. How about we discuss it in person in the experience store tomorrow.
After deciding on the time, the caller left the call filled with joy. Getting to Chen Mo before other companies did was certainly an opportunity they never expected.
Chen Mo didn't put too much attention on this matter as he felt that based on Warcraft's quality, it wouldn't do bad no matter which company did it. Knowing that, the only thing to consider was the pricing.
After grabbing a can of drink from the experience store, Chen Mo headed towards Fates Internet Cafe.
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Chapter 112: Chapter 111: 1v1?
Chen Mo got on a computer after swiping his ID.
Zhuo Yao wasn't there today, and in her place was a woman who didn't know Chen Mo.
Chen Mo walked around the internet cafe to discover that almost half of the players were playing Warcraft.
Ever since Warcraft got popular, many internet cafes started having them preinstalled on their computers. The players could log into their accounts using Thunderbolt Game Pass to play against other players.
As there were quite a few players in the internet cafe, Chen Mo settled at a random spot he found.
Chen Mo logged into his Thunderbolt Game Pass after launching Warcraft.
As he was quite busy before, he never truly got to play Warcraft other than a few testing rounds. This was the first time he was playing as a player.
Enter nickname: Silent.
Notice: nickname in use.
Chen Mo scowled and called Su Jinyu.
"Hey Goldfish, could you enter the management portal and check who's using the ID silent in Warcraft? Yep, change his name. To what? It doesn't matter. Yes, and give him two hundred RMB as compensation and let them know that that nickname is not allowed. Yeah, right now."
Chen Mo tried again in five minutes and managed to get his nickname.
Chen Mo first played a custom game, picking random race for himself, and his opponent was an Insane level Undead.
Chen Mo got bored after twenty seven minutes and steamrolled the computer.
Although Insane would be the nightmare of average players, as the designer of the game, Chen Mo knew the plans of the AI in and out. Moreover, his reaction time and hand speed were on par with professional players, combined with high game knowledge, he basically toyed with the Insane bot.
As he hadn't played for a long time, he decided to play against an Insane bot to get used to the game again.
Chen Mo felt warmed up after the game, and started searching for a real player to play against.
His was considered unranked with a ranking of 0. He would get his ranking after ten matches, then would be matched against players of his caliber.
One, two, three matches.
He crushed all of them. Especially the third one where Chen Mo was paying the Orcs. He destroyed his opponent just using Blademaster and two other units, and his opponent quit the game before hitting the ten minute mark.
"...I feel like a bully."
It can't be helped as it was where the newbies hung out. Chen Mo had the skills of a professional player, and had strategies that would best anyone in this world. He even felt ashamed of himself playing against noobs, doing whatever he wanted.
At this time, someone behind Chen Mo said, "Yo, you seem good, wanna play?"
Chen Mo turned around to discover a chubby guy standing behind him. He looked around nineteen and looked quite dopey with his round glasses, looking like a pandaren.
Another nearby guy said, "Fatty, are you challenging others again. Are you going to bully every single one that plays Warcraft here?"
Another guy said, "Yeah, can you believe that a 3000 elo player is bullying noobs?"
Fatty said, "Stop talking, did I ask you? I just watched his guy play two matches, this guy is proper good."
He introduced himself to Chen Mo, "Greetings, I'm Zou Zhuo
Chen Mo was shocked, "Cho?"[1]
Was this guy a Pandaren in his previous life?
Fatty waved his hand dismissively, "Not Cho, Zou."
"Ohh, Zou Zhuo." Chen Mo asked in return, "Do you know me?"
Zou Zhuo was confused, "Do I... know you?"
Chen Mo shook his head, "Don't worry, I'll play a round with you."
Zou Zhuo was shocked by Chen Mo antics, but he hurriedly sat across Chen Mo after managing to find someone worthy to play against.
"I'll sit across you, no screen peeking," assured Zou Zhuo.
Chen Mo was sad as a self proclaimed Warcraft god didn't know who he was. Didn't you know that the developer of this game was sitting directly across from you?
But now that he thought about it, Chen Mo didn't have photos of him on his Weibo, and players wouldn't usually look up what the designers looked like, so it was quite normal for him to not know who Chen Mo was.
"Alright, I'll create the lobby," said Zou Zhuo.
Although there was a ranking ladder, it was more common to create private lobbies in internet cafes. Afterall, it wasn't as fun playing with matchmaking as they couldn't see one another, it was more exciting to be able to see your opponent.
It didn't take long before Chen Mo joined the lobby.
Zou Zhuo asked, "Brother, what race do you play? I play undead."
Chen Mo replied, "Me? I'll go random."
"Huh?" Zou Zhuo was shocked, "Random? Don't you have a main?"
"I usually play blind, don't worry, let's go ahead," replied Chen Mo.
Zou Zhuo was a bit hesitant, "What if I'll set myself at 80% health?"
Chen Mo laughed, "Don't worry, we'll play one round first."
Zou Zhuo nodded, "Alright, let's start then."
The match started.
A few Warcraft players huddled around and started watching.
"Wow, random huh. This guy isn't giving fatty any respect!"
"Hurry up, it's starting!"
Their mouses and keyboards were being smashed in as the screen kept flickering.
Buildings were being built quickly, and the peasants were collecting resources, with some sent to scout.
Zou Zhuo was a 3000 elo player afterall. As the game was fairly new and there weren't many high skilled players, combined with the fact that it was difficult to gain elo, three thousand was fairly high. It wasn't over the top to be called a god at an internet cafe.
It didn't take long before one of the Acolytes discovered Chen Mo's base.
"Orcs, huh." Zou Zhuo didn't plan to go easy as it wasn't easy to play undead against orcs.
After watching for two minutes, the audience discovered that the game was moving at a high pace, and from the micromanagement they could tell they weren't noobs.
"Blademaster plus two huh, it seems like high ranked players always go for Blademaster first. Playing orcs isn't easy."
"But fatty must have prepared his defences, he even has Dust of Appearance ready. He's quite careful when killing neutrals too."
"What the, how did he do that? The orc player's speed is inhuman!"
"It's alright, fatty is still holding on."
There were a few small skirmishes at the start, Zou Zhuo was leveling his skills whereas Chen Mo had his Blademaster 2. Chen Mo's Blademaster would follow Zou Zhuo everywhere, stealing kills and loot whenever he got the chance.
Zou Zhuo had already prepared for this, but he was still put in a difficult situation. He wasn't like the noobs that would quit the game after being bullied by Chen Mo's Blademaster, but he was still losing small exchanges here and there.
There were a few players standing behind Chen Mo whispering amongst one another, not wanting Chen Mo and Zou Zhuo to listen in.
"My goodness, I can't follow his movements at all, what did he do?"
"Blademaster is constantly following fatty. He also has a Shadow Hunter farming on his own. He's even training units at base. This man's a pro!"
"Why do I feel that fatty is at a disadvantage?"
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Chapter 113: Chapter 112: Can't tell what's going on!
The match ended after seventeen minutes.
Zou Zhuo typed GG as he stared at his Deathknight die with disbelief.
(GG stands for good game, usually by the loser first, praising how well their opponent played. This was usually done out of respect, with no negative connotations.)
At the end-screen, Zou Zhuo scratched his head out of confusion. He didn't quite understand how he was beaten, and just felt like he lost in every single aspect.
His opponent didn't do anything special either, going with the usual Blademaster 2. However, this felt completely different to the other matches Zou Zhuo played previously. He was on his backfoot the entire match, and felt that the game was never in his favour.
Moreover, he would lose small things here and there and would never manage to gain them back.
Zou Zhuo thought that the game lasted twenty or so minutes, only to discover at the end of the game that it only lasted seventeen minutes.
The spectators were also in shock.
"What happened? Fatty lost?"
"... It only lasted seventeen minutes!"
"How did he win? I didn't notice anything out of place from the orc player. It feels like he just kept harassing and steamrolled fatty's units during the last battle."
"My goodness, I don't understand anything in this battle among titans!"
"Another round?" asked Chen Mo.
Zou Zhuo scratched his head, "I wasn't quite in the zone the last round, let's go again!"
Chen Mo nodded, "Alright."
They started playing another round.
Zou Zhuo was much more careful this time around, giving his full focus. He also managed to find out that Chen Mo was playing Night Elves this time using a scout.
"Relax, relax. There's no way he could play all the races right?"
Zou Zhuo steadily killed neutral creeps, but this time he was met with Chen Mo's Demon Hunter. Although it couldn't go invisible like the Blademaster, he had mana burn. Every Time he saw the Demon Hunter on the screen his mana would get burned then it would run away. He couldn't catch up to him using his Deathknight at all, and there wasn't much else he could do.
After a few more mana burns, the Deathknight had no mana and couldn't heal itself even if he wanted to.
Zou Zhuo was now so irritated that he couldn't train units without worrying about the Demon Hunter. It either would come out of nowhere to hit his Crypt Fiends, end up killing Acolytes in his base.
Zou Zhuo called GG after twenty minutes.
It was just as before, there weren't any special strategies with nothing out of line, but Zou Zhuo still lost for some reason.
He just couldn't beat him!
"Going for more?" asked Chen Mo.
Zou Zhuo shook his head violently, "No more! That level of skill isn't normal. What's your elo?"
Chen Mo replied, "Me? I haven't even finished my placements."
Zou Zhuo laughed, "Stop kidding, how could you be playing at this level before completing your placements? Are you playing on a smurf?"
Chen Mo realised that it wasn't too out of line to assume that.
Zou Zhuo said, "Add me as your friend, I'll consult you for strategies in the future."
Chen Mo nodded, "Sure."
After adding each other as friends, Zou Zhuo said, "By the way, do you want to join my Warcraft group? There's a few highly skilled players in there. I won't be able to beat you, but you might meet someone who would give you a challenge there."
Chen Mo declined after some thought, "Forget about it, that's too much work. Maybe next time."
Zou Zhuo didn't push any further as every single high skilled player he knew wasn't super friendly.
"Alright, I'll go back to playing ranked games, " Chen Mo bid Zou Zhuo farewell and continued to play his placements.
Chen Mo didn't plan to play too seriously anyways, but this Zou Zhuo guy wasn't a challenge at all! The others thought that Chen Mo was playing seriously, but Chen Mo played quite normally, and merely outmatched his opponent technically and by knowledge.
Strategies like mine rush[1, tower rush, cyclone spam, raider rush, lich and crypt field spam, summons rush that were commonplace in Chen Mo's previous world were nowhere to be seen!
Chen Mo felt bored bullying noobs, and considered that he should give the RTS players a little hint to spice things up.
Whatever, I'll decide after the placements.
Chen Mo entered another placement match.
—
Zou Zhuo started his replay against Chen Mo within his group.
Zzz (Zou Zhuo): "I just met a god in this internet cafe and got my butt handed to me..."
There were a few other high skill players in that group, so Zou Zhuo was only just above average, hence why the message didn't get too much attention and he has actually been made fun of.
"Wow, Z-god getting bullied at an internet cafe tournament, how sad."
"Yeah, I thought you were the self proclaimed Fates Internet Cafe killer. So did you end up meeting someone tough?"
"Hahaha, I wanna watch Z-god getting bullied."
Zou Zhuo was speechless. What's wrong with these people? Laughing at my mishaps?
You guys should come try, it's not that I'm bad, the opponent is insane!
Zou Zhuo looked around within the group and found the usually quiet Kaiser.
"@Kiaser K-god, could you take a look at these replays? I've looked at them for so long and still haven't figured out how I lost. It feels like I just lost mechanically. But I thought my mechanics were decent? Is the skill gap that big?"
No replies.
Zou Zhuo was a bit butthurt but it couldn't be helped as Kaiser was hard to reach and was quite quiet in the group. Moreover, it was normal that he wasn't online when he wasn't streaming.
It didn't take long before someone watched the replay between Zou Zhuo and Chen Mo.
"What? I just watched Zzz's match, were you playing at 80% hp? @Zzz"
Zou Zhuo was speechless, "No, it's 100%."
"Why does your Crypt Fiend look like it's made of paper, the Blademaster one hits all of them."
Zou Zhuo: "I don't know either!"
"Why was it Undead vs Orc in the first and Undead vs Night Elves in the second? Are they two different people?"
Zou Zhuo replied, "It's the same guy, he beat me twice playing random!"
"What the, you're joking right? Were you playing seriously? These were so one-sided."
Zou Zhuo replied, "You think I wasn't playing serious? I gave it everything I had!"
"Well, I don't know then."
A few other players looked at Zou Zhuo's replays, but none of them could tell how he lost either. As both parties were using normal tactics and were basically mirroring each other's movements, Zou Zhuo always lost horribly.
It just wasn't the same watching replays compared to watching in person, it was even harder to tell in replays how fast the players were moving from replays. There were many players that were worse than Zou Zhuo, so what could they tell from the replay?
All they could tell was that Zou Zhou has a huge army! Zou Zhuo is attacking! Zou Zhuo has the upper hand! Zou Zhuo GG'd!
There wasn't much Zou Zhuo could do as most of the better players were always quiet, and the frequent users weren't usually that good.
Alright, I'll probably have to wait for K-god's reply.
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Chapter 114: Chapter 113: No Conversation To Be Had
Zou Zhuo also decided to watch Chen Mo play two rounds, and despite having a better knowledge of the game, he couldn't understand what was happening either!
As Chen Mo knew what he was going to do before he executed them, he could manage just fine despite all the quick changes in the screen.
Zou Zhuo on the other hand, having no idea what Chen Mo was going to do, was really confused as Chen Mo would sometimes mine in the middle of an intense battle.
Moreover, Chen Mo was cruising through the games. What was a bit crazy was that the enemies called GG and Chen Mo would move onto the next game without looking at the end screen.
Zou Zhuo would usually spend twenty-five minutes per round, and forty-five when it was close. However, Chen Mo would usually finish under twenty minutes!
It'd be amazing if you could learn anything from this!
Although Zou Zhuo understood the situation better after watching two games, he stopped because of how much he struggled to keep up.
He just felt that the speed of his hands was too fast to be human!
Zou Zhuo conceded.
—
Within the group.
Xue Kai wanted to stream his ranked games when he got home at night, only to discover that someone @ him in the group.
He was the friendly type, otherwise he wouldn't have released so many educational videos and sent feedback to the developers.
Kaiser: "@Zzz what's up?"
Zou Zhuo replied in two minutes, "K-god, I met a god in the internet cafe and was completely destroyed. Take a look at the replays I sent to the group and give me some guidance!"
Xue Kai was surprised. He knew that Zzz's elo was around twenty eight hundred from the information from the group chat. How was he bullied when he wasn't that bad?
His opponent must be insanely good then?
With some suspicion, Xue Kai opened the replays and started watching the matches.
It only took about half an hour as the games weren't long.
Xue Kai was shocked to see that he was actually crushed in the game!
Moreover, this Silent guy played random in both games, how confident was he?
Xue Kai watched the first game once again.
He was an Orc main himself. Although he liked the story of the Undead more, he felt most comfortable with Orcs after playing through all the races.
The first match of Orcs vs Undead was good enough to be textbook examples!
No matter early game harassment, killing neutral creeps, or mid game skirmishes, the tempo that the Orc player was playing was impeccable. Every single mistake the Undead player made would be capitalised on and taken advantage of.
The Orc player started to gain advantage after gathering all these small advantages, and defeated the Undead in one final push.
Xue Kai knew that this Orc player wasn't an ordinary Joe.
Although others couldn't tell, Xue Kai knew that his hand speed, micro-management, and the ability to manage the tempo of the game was the best of the best, with no noticeable weaknesses.
Xue Kai could feel that perhaps this person was better than him?
Kaiser: "This Orc player is playing at a top level, it's normal that you can't beat him."
Zzz: "Huh? Top level??"
As Xue Kai replied, a bunch of lurkers showed themselves.
Some of them didn't watch the replay, and some didn't notice how good Zou Zhuo's opponent was, so none of them truly knew how serious of a matter it was.
And following Xue Kai's reply, they took this matter seriously.
Xue Kai was one of the early adopters of Warcraft from Legion Conquest, and currently had thirty-seven hundred points. He was easily top five in the game. Players that he'd approve of must be really good!
"Really, K-god? Is that guy that good?"
"Honestly, I couldn't tell how good he was. But if K-god said so, could there be anything else?"
"K-god, did you notice that he randomed both rounds?"
"Oh my, could it be a smurf of some high ranked player? @Zzz, why didn't you invite them to this group?"
Zou Zhuo replied, "I did, but they didn't want to join."
The others weren't taking it, "Man, fatty you sure are a piece of garbage. Why didn't you get on your knees and begged for him to join? Grab onto his leg and don't let go until he joins. Go now!"
Zou Zhuo was speechless, "Shut up! Anyways, he left ages ago."
Kaiser asked, "Left?"
Zou Zhuo replied, "Yeah, he left around 7PM."
Again, the group was disappointed at that response, "Wow, how could you give up an opportunity of inviting another pro into the group. You should commit seppuku as an apology!"
Zou Zhuo replied, "What! I sent the replay ages ago, but nobody said anything back then. But you blame it on me now?"
"Don't care! You have to camp at the internet cafe from now on, until he shows himself!"
Xue Kai looked up Silent on Warcraft. The account was indeed created today, and looking at the match history, he won all ten of his placement matches in a row, placing at twenty-four hundred.
Although it wasn't bad, it was still quite far away from Xue Kia's thirty-seven hundred. At fifteen points a match at 90% win rate, he would still need to win over one hundred matches, and shouldn't be reaching the top of the leaderboards anytime soon.
Xue Kai was saddened, "That's too bad, I looked forward to playing against him."
—
The next day, Chen Mo discussed shipping Warcraft overseas with the representative form Meteorite Technology.
No matter overseas or in China, there were plenty of these companies. They didn't make their own games, but would scout out popular games to work with, no matter if it was porting overseas games into China, or Chinese games overseas.
Obviously as Warcraft was doing so well, being so popular in China as well as being set in a Western Fantasy world, it would naturally do well if shipped overseas.
Chen Mo had thought of this already, and asserted the three points he was after during the meeting.
First, any changes made to the game would be managed by him, and they had no rights over making any changes to the game.
Second, Chen Mo would have the final call of translations and overseas operations.
Third, the cut was negotiable, but it must be higher than any other Chinese game on the market.
With the three points on the table, there was barely anything left to discuss.
In truth, it wasn't an easy task to ship the game overseas. It wasn't as simple as translating all the Chinese text into English.
The most important part was the promotional strategy. It wasn't like the game was going to be profitable once it was present on the market. Other than the usual texts and images that needed to be translated, social media pages needed to be built, the news needed to be shared, as well as localization operation strategies.
The distributors would be more familiar with overseas markets during the promotional period, and more often than not there needed to be some changes to make it more localised. For example, Vietnamese users usually like winged characters, and Japanese players trusted loot box mechanisms more.
The distributors required rights to change these points and had to work together with the developer to make suitable changes.
However, Chen Mo asserted himself that Meteorite Technology would only be responsible for distribution and was unable to make any changes to the game, which was the lowest of privileges. Not only that, Chen Mo wanted the highest authorities even on things like translations, and wanted every single thing to be approved by him first.
There's no conversation to be had!
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Chapter 115: Chapter 114: Ultimate Tentacle Monster!
The representative let out a few awkward coughs and said, "Uhh, Mr Chen Mo, perhaps you don't quite understand how this works. Here's how it works..."
Chen Mo waved his hand, "You don't need to, I fully understand what you do. I also know that Meteorite Technology is the top three overseas porting companies, especially in the western market. And you guys also have deep knowledge in the western market.
The representative from Meteorite Technology was shocked, Chen Mo obviously wasn't someone to talk without doing her research.
Chen Mo continued, "And it's also because of that reason that I would believe that you would accept my offer.
The Meteorite Technology representative was stunned.
Chen Mo continued, "You should understand the potential of a game like Warcraft because you understand the western market as well as the behaviour of western players.
"Let's put it this way, Warcraft could be even more popular in western countries than in China. The objective of the game was to replace Legion Conquest and become the most popular RTS game in the world.
"I believe that you also understand this, so I'm not going to delve any deeper. If you aren't willing to accept these terms, I'll just move onto the next company.
"Even if Chinese companies aren't going to take this deal, there are overseas companies that would for consideration as well. The decision is yours if you want to reject the opportunity to make big bucks."
The representative was silent.
Chen Mo's intentions were clear as day. He was obviously incredibly confident in Warcraft, and there was no point baiting him or trying to haggle.
Chen Mo's attitude towards this was also incredibly stern, take it or leave it, there were many other companies in line.
After a few moments, the representative said, "Alright, I understand your intentions Mr Chen Mo. But I can't make this decision now, I'll have to consult and discuss with my colleagues."
Chen Mo nodded, "Alright, I'll give you two days. I want to emphasise that there will be no changing of terms, I hope you let the others know too.
—
After sending the representative away, Chen Mo continued playing ranked games.
There were various different types of new posts everyday on the Warcraft forums, including strategies, victories, number analysis, and feedback.
Chen Mo had Su Jinyu monitor the forums to gather the feedback from the players. She was also ordered to gather the popular strategies and produce a short report every few days.
Qian Kun on the other hand was responsible for balancing. Of course, as the foundations were already laid down, the only balancing changes required were small changes in the decimal places, the players might not even be able to feel the difference.
However, Chen Mo still allowed Qian Kun to periodically make changes to the stats of units, and would be ordered to release after they were confirmed as a patch.
Zheng Hongxi on the other hand was responsible for writing posts of the World of Azeroth. He was provided a few simple entries by Chen Mo to fill in and polish.
After giving out work to everyone, Chen Mo became the person who had the most free time, playing ranked games everyday.
The people playing ranked also suffered the torture handed out by Chen Mo.
If Chen Mo wanted it to end, nobody was able to last over twenty minutes. Barely anyone would last over thirty minutes even if Chen Mo was messing around trying some other strategies.
Eventually Chen Mo couldn't be bothered and even considered setting his elo to four thousand. But he declined to do so upon considering the fact that high ranked players would always have an eye on the leaderboard, and if some unknown player with a suspicious game history came out of nowhere, wouldn't he just expose himself?
Luckily, Chen Mo made it so more points would be awarded for consecutive wins. According to his calculations, it should only take another day to reach over thirty-five hundred and would finally be able to play with the pros.
—
Chen Mo felt that it was boring bullying noobs, but the noobs were incredibly unlucky.
There were many players minding their own business having fun in ranked, but would meet this freak who'd play random out of nowhere.
At the start they would think that it was free points, but it wouldn't take more than five minutes to realise their mistake.
Destroyed by Blademaster 2.
Stepped on by three Undead Heroes.
Bullied by Humans building towers in their base.
One time there was a human player who had their peasants charmed by Dark Ranger which was used against them by building an ALtar of Kings, then summoning a Blood Mage and Archmage to box them in their base...
Who knows how many addicted teenagers were cured of their addiction during this time.
The worst thing was that a bunch of players complained on the forum, only to realise they weren't the only ones to suffer the fate. There were players that experienced it from one thousand all the way to three thousand points!
And it was the same person, someone with the ID Silent playing random race!
The player was also known to be incredibly quiet and would never say anything other than a GG at the end of the game. They would never talk trash or respond to any questions, some even theorised that it might be some artificial intelligence developed by some large company.
It didn't take long before posts regarding 'Random God Silent' started appearing, and guessing who Silent was became a common occurrence.
"I met that Silent guy today, I didn't believe before that someone above three thousand couldn't last more than twenty-five minutes, but I've experienced it first hand today!"
"I was destroyed by his Undead."
"Previous poster, I was destroyed by his Humans."
"How can he be able to play every single race? Are all of them at a level of three thousand points? What kind of monster is this guy?"
"Previous OP, it's not that they are played at a skill level of three thousand points, but they destroy three thousand point players with every race. It's a completely different ball game..."
"Do you think the ID is actually managed by four different people? Four different pros who play different races pranking us?"
"Wow, do you think the pros are that bored? Four people pretending to be one? I'm amazed you managed to come up with that."
The discussion went nowhere.
Moreover, many replays against Silent were sent to the forum, gaining the attention of many.
The conclusion was that it was inhuman!
Chen Mo's Warcraft didn't come with an APM functionality, but some fans and technological geeks made an APM plugin.
APM stands for Actions Per Minute (including mouse and keyboard. A higher APM meant that the player's hand was moving faster, meaning that they would have an advantage in RTS games.
Normally someone with an effective APM around one hundred and forty was more than enough to play a game like Warcraft at a relatively high level. This meant that they would have to click their meaningfully (no repetitive, useless clicks)mouse one hundred and forty times a minute.
Professionals players would have an effective APM from one hundred and eight to two hundred and seven. A player like sky who had an APM of three hundred was pretty good.
In this world, even a god like Kaiser had an APM of two hundred, which was already considered peak performance.
But what was Silent's APM?
Four hundred and sixty-six at the highest!
Usually in Warcraft, an APM of above five hundred must include a lot of useless actions, three hundred would usually be more than enough.
But Silent's APM was four hundred and sixty-six, with very few useless actions!
This meant that he was reaching the limits of the human hand.
When the APM stats were released, there were even more who believed that Silent was an artificial intelligence, and even gave it a new nickname: Ultimate Tentacle Monster!
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Chapter 116: Chapter 115: Finally Met a Pro
The forum was filled with news that Silent wasn't online today.
Many players were happy that they were spared, but a few observers were sad that Silent didn't show up.
As Silent gained popularity, there were quite a few observer streams on the larger streaming platform, there was one observer who managed to gather hundreds of thousands of views at their peak.
It wasn't surprising as although players like Kaiser were entertaining to watch, they were usually evenly matched with the opponents. Although the gameplay was high level, it wasn't what the players were looking for.
On the other hand, Silent would win every single game while playing random. Although he wasn't playing at a particularly high level, he had made his way to a three thousand level player, which was incredibly entertaining.
A majority of viewers preferred to watch him bully noobs too, as it felt like a drama.
Maybe that wasn't quite right. Many viewers liked watching noobs getting bullied, but not noobs that were super low ranked. They knew that it wasn't that entirely possible to bully players above thirty five hundred, so bullying players around the three-thousand level mark would be the most entertaining.
Three-thousand level players were considered quite good as they were decent mechanically as well as in terms of game knowledge, and it was most entertaining bullying players like those.
It was just another long boring day for viewers that were sitting in front of their computers waiting to watch Silent play some games.
—Night time—
After a day of discussion, the representative from Meteorite Technology decided to accept all of Chen Mo's requests and recieved the distribution rights of Warcraft.
There weren't many tricks they could try to do as Chen Mo asserted that he had choices.
In the end, the representative of Meteorite Technology could do nothing but give in.
It couldn't be helped as the quality of Warcraft was so high had Chen Mo had the leverage in the negotiation.
The contract was signed.
Any changes made to Warcraft's mechanics have to go through Chen Mo. Chen Mo has the right to put his hand into the translations; and revenue (excluding costs) will be split 3:7, with Chen Mo taking seventy percent.
It might be the worst, most humiliating day for Meteorite Technology, borderline bringing shame to the country.
The distributor usually takes the bigger cut in deals like these, and the game would be considered quite good if it got a fifty-fifty split. But only thirty percent from Warcraft?
The representative from Meteorite Technology was very conflicted, as this might be the highlight of his career, of the absolute lowest moment.
After signing the contract, the representative went back to prepare the matters about shipping it overseas.
On the other hand, Chen Mo went back to his computer to play more ranked matches.
He estimated that he should be playing against thirty-eight hundred point players if he were to win a few more games.
—
"Hmm? The Ultimate Tentacle Monster is online!"
"Is that Silent who queues with random race? Hurry up, he's about to queue!"
The observing streamers quickly quit the games they were spectating to spectate Silent upon realising.
First match.
Second match.
Third match.
It was just as usual, a random race, and dismantling his opponents. Their opponents would feel disgusted at ten minutes, feel like quitting at twenty minutes, and would type GG in thirty minutes.
The observers were all supporting Silent because of how much the viewers liked it. The more they praised Silent, the more the viewers like it, the more views they get.
All these praises resented Silent as the one true god of Silent. And Silent's APM and other rumours were repeated again and again like a broken record.
Of course, many pointed out that Silent was just a bully, just one that makes it look cool, and one that managed to set the bar higher. It didn't prove that his abilities were good enough to beat another pro.
The arguments were going wild in the chat. Some said that Silent was just good at bullying noobs because of how fast their hand was, and didn't have any good strategies. The others said that his hand speed was inhumane, and would beat the pros just the same.
It didn't take long before the audience was split into S-God and S-Dog.
"Hurry up, they started another match!"
"Wow, this ID looks really Chinese. LateWind? Isn't that Nightwind-god's alternate account?"
"It actually is, but this account was around thirty-four hundred yesterday, how did they meet?"
"Oh my, Silent is now at three thousand four hundred and ninety-two points! All win! He's on a rocket to the top of the leaderboards!"
"This will be good!"
The interest of the observers and their viewers were at their highest. Finally, it wasn't some random, but an actual high skilled player!
Nightwind, a Chinese RTS god. His real account was at three thousand seven hundred and four points and was top ten in the leaderboards. Mained Orcs, and also happened to be a highly technical player.
At high ranked games, there were mainly Orc and Human players, followed by Night Elves, and Undead at the bottom.
As Nightwind's main account was ranked so high, it was difficult for him to find other players. And even when he did, it would be the usual few, and at that point he may as well do private games.
Which was why he would occasionally play on his alternate account, but he somehow managed to reach thirty-four hundred on this account too, and met Silent on the way.
"Hmm, isn't this that tentacle guy that was really popular recently?"
"Great, I'm not holding back. I'm gonna teach you a lesson."
"You'll learn that the thirty five hundred bracket isn't easy."
Nightwind knew about Silent and clearly didn't believe they were as good as people said, which was why he wanted to teach him a lesson.
Of course, Nightwind wasn't all talk, he had the skills to back it up.
It was a four person map, with both players taking the top left and bottom right respectively. Silent picked random as always, and got Humans.
The chat was going wild.
"Randomed Humans, not bad, he has a chance."
"Yeah, luckily he didn't get Undead or Night Elves."
"Let's see what Silent does, I think Humans aren't the best."
A majority of players were still trying to figure out the game, many felt that Orcs were the strongest, followed by Humans, and the Undead were the weakest.
Many were worried that wouldn't it suck if Silent got Undead or Night Elves and lost?
Both players started as usual, Orc goes for Blademaster, Humans going for Archmage.
It didn't take long before Silent scout the location of the Orcs. He then built a Farm in front of his base, running away when the Blademaster went after the peasant.
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Chapter 117: Chapter 116: So Many Towers!
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
The Blademaster chased after the running Archmage, both of them had boots, so they couldn't catch one another.
The chat was also starting to get excited.
"Wow, isn't this Silent guy the tentacle monster? Why isn't he microing?"
"Are you stupid? What can you do as an Archmage being chased by a Blademaster?"
"Humans can't beat orcs, nothing to see here."
"What the, the Archmage is about to die!"
"Oh man, he lived with a sliver of health. Not bad, now he can buy potions and replenish his army and go again!"
"Blademaster wants to locate Archmage! They found the Human base!"
"The second hero for the Humans is here, the Mountain King!"
"The Blademaster is stunned, and is now surrounded! Blademaster has to retreat!"
The streamer was trying their best to commentate the game, and the viewers were getting incredibly excited.
It was clear that there was a battle to be had from the start, and the viewers were quite naturally quite excited. There were even viewers going to other channels to get them to watch the match, and because of that, the viewer count kept increasing!
"The Humans started mining! But why are they still training Footmen and Peasants, the Raiders from the Orcs are already here!
"Building towers? Do they plan to drag it onto late game?
"It's over, the Orcs discovered the mine!
"The Humans are at a disadvantage!
"What? The Guard Tower is finished? The Blademaster has chased the Archmage for too long, and his Wind Walk is running out!
"It's over, Blademaster is surrounded! Could you believe that the Blademaster got surrounded!"
"The Blademaster is dead!
"This Mountain King threatens Blademaster too much!
"The Orcs haven't given up, the Shadow Hunter has a huge army behind him, trying to kill that pesky Mountain King!
"They can't kill him, the Mountain King deeps running around the tower! This movement is incredible!
"Oh no, the orcs are retreating, and the Mountain King only spared one Raider, that's not worth it!
"Oh my goodness, even a god like him can't stop Silent?
"Don't worry, this is not over yet, the Humans only have a bunch of low tier units. Didn't they take over the mines using Guard Towers? The Orcs are mining too! The game is still too close to tell who might win!"
The game entered a stalemate.
Nightwind wasn't dumb and wasn't going to send more of his troops to try and take over the mine when it didn't work the first time. He decided to focus on killing neutrals, gaining levels, as well as training high tier units. He wanted to defeat the Humans by using his superior research before the Humans could convert all their resources into manpower.
"Another tower? My goodness, this mine already has seven Guard Towers!
"There's another mine on the top of the map! Three towers right away! What's this ridiculous strategy!
"They're still building, he's not done yet!
"Look, the Humans skipped right over the mid tier units and went straight for Gryphons!
"Double Gryphon Aviaries training Gryphons! The humans are so rich!
"Orcs are training Troll Riders.
"I think something is about to hit Nightwind god!"
The Orcs were in a rush, but there wasn't much they could do. The main force of Orcs were as usual, Blademaster, Shadow Hunter, Grunts, Raiders, Spirit Walkers and Troll Riders. Although this army was quite strong, the humans didn't want to battle outside their base at all!
The humans on the other hand had Archmage and Mountain as well as some garbage Footmen, but they relied on Guard Towers. The Orcs had no chance of breaking their defence. Humans also had multiple mines and had plenty of gold, and could afford anything they liked such as Scroll of Town Portal, various healing potions, and Invulnerability Potions. And with the help of the Guard Towers, no matter where the Orcs decided to attack, the Heroes on the Human side could teleport anywhere, putting the Orcs in a difficult situation.
The Orcs were favourable at the start, but when the double Gryphon Aviaries came alone, the tides of battle turned immediately.
"The Orcs are starting to mine too!"
"But the Gryphons from the Humans are approaching. But the Burrow stands no chance, they are gone in two hits!
"They're hitting the base!
"The Blademaster is back at base, but the Gryphons are all gone!
"My goodness, it looks hopeless!
"Why aren't Nightwind-god building towers?
"What's the point, are the Orc towers the same as human towers? Moreover, the Gryphons are showing themselves."
Nightwind started panicking. His opponent was like a prickly porcupine, his Orcs had sharp teeth, but there wasn't anywhere they could attack!
Humans now had three different mines, and each of them had at least a dozen Guard Towers, and their main army was composed of Gryphons and Dragonhawks
If they went head to head, the Orcs might still have a chance, as long as he used the Troll Riders well, there was still a chance to win. But the humans weren't planning to battle at all. Gryphons were attacking Orc's mines all over the place, and the Burrows and Watch Towers stood no chance against magic damage, wasting resources everytime he tried to build it.
Rushing into the Human mines? That was a worse idea. There were many Guard Towers, including Dragonhawks and Gryphons, how could you rush into that?
If it were anyone else, they'd probably would've broken down and quit the game. But Nightwind was an elite player afterall, and was still in a good mental state.
The Orc army was sent out to force a mine!
There was no other choice as their current mine was at its limits, if they didn't make a move, they would've lost the war of attrition.
But before they could establish the mine, the humans came.
The chat was going wild. Anybody could tell that this was the final battle. If the Orcs fail to secure the mine, their game would be over, but if the Orcs manage to hang on, they still have a chance.
But the humans didn't start battling, but instead started building towers right in front of the mine.
Once the tower was dropped, many Peasants were behind it hammering away.
The observer who was commentating was stunned.
"My goodness! Silent is trying to build a tower right in the face of Nightwind! Are they crazy! The Orcs have an entire army, will the tower even be built?
"Huh? But Nightwind isn't responding, he didn't see it! My goodness, he only has a portion of his army guarding the mine, and has his attention on the Blademaster!
"The tower is outside of vision range, and he can't see it! My goodness! There are now eight towers built, and upgrading!
"He's discovered it! It looks like it's too late! Destroy! Rush! My goodness, he can't win!
"The Orcs are retreating, but the humans aren't chasing at all! They're building more towers! That's too evil!"
The chat was also shocked, spamming: "never seen someone so shameless"!
The Humans were now completely in advantage, but Silent still chose to not chase. Instead he chose to build more and more towers towards the mine!
The Orc army was now stuck, the mine was behind them, and they had Guard Towers in front of them as well as their huge army. But the humans didn't plan to fight, instead kept pushing the Guard Towers forward.
"Nightwind-god's not waiting anymore, he's forcing the fight! Blademaster used Bladestorm! Spin, spin, spin! Oh, he can't win! And Blademaster is back to base.
"The mine was gone before it even started!
"The Peasants from Silent have now made it their base, turning the Orc mine into his!
"Wow, this mine is the scariest I've seen, there are twenty-four Guard Towers!"
The viewers could feel the hopelessness of the Orc player through the commentary.
But Nightwind hadn't typed GG, his Blademaster was now level six, and didn't want to lose this way.
"The Humans are on the move, is this the end?
"No, the Humans aren't moving towards the base of the Orc! ...huh? He's gathering the Peasants to the middle of the map?
"Uhh... he's building towers again!
"Oh my, there are so many towers already! Looks like there are twenty two Guard Towers!
"What is this about? There aren't any resources in the middle of the map, what's the point of building so many towers? To black passage?"
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Chapter 118: Chapter 117: The Players' Strong Opinion!
Towers were built and upgraded. The Human army didn't leave either, guarding the tower until it was finished.
The observer and the audience were really confused by this move.
Why wasn't he finishing the match, what was he waiting for? With the advantage that he had, he just had to attack and win the game!
It didn't take long before the Guard Towers were finished.
The Gryphons that were blocking the Guard Towers were now gone, and it was only then that the audience and observer realised what the Guard Towers spelt out.
The observer went silent.
The chat went wild.
"What? What am I watching!"
"My goodness, this is so humiliating!"
"He's really that good!"
"Wow, I feel like Nightwind-god is about to break down."
The Guard Towers in the middle of the map spelt out two letters: NB![1]
It even came with the exclamation mark!
With more than three hundred thousand viewers, the chat was filled with laughter.
Nightwind also saw the message using his Blademaster, and was so angry that the Blademaster charged right into the towers and used Bladestorm!
Most of the Guard Towers were destroyed, but Blademaster also died in the process.
Nightwind typed out GG and quit the game.
That was infuriating!
Shameless!
—
Following the chat, Nightwind's inbox also exploded
The chat was filled with discussion of the game, and many were PMing Nightwind.
"Nightwind-god, were you playing seriously?"
"Nightwind-god that wasn't like how you usually play!"
"Say something!"
Nightwind was speechless as that match was too humiliating. Weren't these people adding salt on the wound before he could even calm down after that loss?
He couldn't deny it as many knew that it was his alt account. He couldn't say he wasn't playing seriously either, who's fault would it be that he got destroyed because he wasn't playing seriously?
I'll just ignore it!
There was a second wave of this incident in the forums once the replay was released, talking trash about those who didn't believe that Silent couldn't beat high skilled players.
"Silent can't beat pros? What is this? Nightwind-god got bullied the same way the others did!"
"Destroying Nightwind while playing random, are you guys convinced?"
"Those who said that it was an AI, have you seen an AI that would arrange towers to spell out NB with an exclamation mark?
It didn't take long before the S-Dog gang retaliated.
"You're proud of that ugly win? The number of towers are ridiculous!"
"Yeah, Nightwind was trapped, play head on if you dare!"
"That's just playing against the spirit of the game!"
"But I feel that Humans are crazy, I didn't know you could play it like that. I never realised Towers were too strong, I'll go try it out now."
Somewhere still trying to argue while others were investigating the mass tower strategy and trying it out in ranked.
There were many high skilled players who found out that this strategy was actually really good!
Basically, on larger maps, train Archmage first to secure as many mines as possible, then invest that gold into building towers around every mine. Afterwards, skip over mid tier units and go right to Gryphons and Dragonhawks, defeating the opponent by winning the war of attrition.
This strategy didn't just work against Orcs, but Night Elves and Undead as well with minimal changes.
The Human players were excited to see the rise of the Human race!
—
After beating Nightwind's alt account, Chen Mo continued queueing. The opponents afterwards were all much worse than Nightwind, steamrolling them without any special strategies.
He played until he reached thirty-seven hundred points and couldn't find any more matches.
Chen Mo decided to call it as he was tired.
Although Silent was now offline, the reign of terror never stopped in ranked.
There was a new wave of tower building strategies that night. Every Human one would come across would most certainly be using that strategy, and even non-Human mains were also practicing the same strategy.
The worst thing was that this strategy was used by low and high ranked players alike!
The lower ranked players weren't mechanically gifted enough, and couldn't beat Blademaster and Death Knight. What should they do? Build towers!
Higher ranked players were good mechanically, meaning that building towers had more of an advantage. Build towers!
Who knew how many Blademasters and Demon Hunters were shot down by Guard Towers that night.
The other three races were groaning with hatred.
—
Early the next day.
Su Jinyu was frantically telling Chen Mo, "Manager, it's not good. There are many players saying in the forums that Humans' tower building strategy is too strong, and needs to be nerfed."
Qian Kun agreed, "Yeah, manager. It seems a bit strong. Should I reduce some of the HP of Guard Towers? Or maybe build time? Or both?"
Chen Mo shook his head, "There's no need to nerf."
"But manager, there are many players who play other races that are complaining, wouldn't that affect our sales?" asked Qian Kun
Chen Mo was speechless, "You're just worried about the sales?! Don't worry, it's fine. I guarantee you that they'll shut up after three days."
Su Jinyu didn't buy it, "Really? Are you sure, manager?"
Chen Mo nodded, "Absolutely I'm sure, just ignore them. Oh, actually, they're feeding me afterall, I'll give them some attention through Weibo."
Chen Mo opened Weibo to discover there were hundreds of tags last night wanting the Human Guard Towers to be nerfed.
Chen Mo sent out a Weibo: "The stats for Guard Towers are fine, there will be no nerfs. All the other races have solutions to that strategy, please complete the assignment individually."
It didn't take long before the comments rolled in.
"Chen Mo! I guarantee you I won't kill you if you show yourself! Are you balancing the game with your feet? How could you say it's fine when it's so overpowered!"
"If you can't nerf its health, could you at least remove the mini-towers?"
"Yeah, it's like a porcupine once it's built up! It's not fair!"
"Can you buff the Undead??"
"Take a look at Silent's match yesterday. They destroyed Nightwind-god just using Towers! How is that fun to watch!"
"AAAAAAAA, I can't take it anymore! I'm going to the experience store to pummel Chen Mo! Anyone with me?"
"Previous poster, I'm in!"
The players were angry, but Chen Mo wasn't going to budge.
However, he was worried that the players would come and gank him. He decided it would be better to hide out in the internet cafe for now.
Geez, these players are too soft. You can't even defend against a few Guard Towers?
Are you guys still playing once the demolition strategy gets discovered?
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Chapter 119: Chapter 118: Pandaren Brewmaster
There weren't many people in the internet cafe, but as Chen Mo sat down, someone shouted, "Wow, it's the god gamer. You're finally here!!"
Chen Mo was shocked to see Zou Zhuo coming out of nowhere, fearing that Chen Mo might escape or something.
Chen Mo stood down and turned on the computer.
Zou Zhuo sat next to him and said, "God gamer, there are a few other God gamers who want you to join the group I'm in. Kaiser is also in there. Kaiser actually wants to play a few games with you."
Chen Mo replied, "Oh, but I really can't be bothered."
Zou Zhuo was shocked to be declined even after bringing up K-god! All God-gamers indeed stoic!
Chen Mo launched Warcraft to search from another ranked match.
Zou Zhuo was stuck in a hard place, he couldn't get on the floor and begged like the group suggested he do.
Zou Zhuo took out his phone and set a message to the group, "I finally met SIlent again! But he's not joining the group, what should I do? It's very urgent!"
The messages came in pretty quickly.
"Real Silent??"
"Pics or it didn't happen! Quick, show us a video!"
"What is there to do other than ask him to accept you as his student!"
"AAHHHHH, what's the address? I wanna go there!"
The group had been discussing the past two days.
After Silent gained popularity, the group noticed that the player who played again Zou Zhuo was Silent!
That means Zou Zhuo has seen Silent himself, that's incredible!
There were many in the group who said on the forums that Silent is a real person, and looked quite young too, and that someone had seen them with their own eyes. But of course nobody on the forum believed them thinking they were lies.
But the moment to prove themselves right finally arrived!
Under peer pressure, Zou Zhuo stood behind Chen Mo and took a short video. The video didn't contain much, just Chen Mo's incredible hand speed on the mouse and keyboard, as well as some shots of the screen.
"My goodness, this hand speed. It's worthy of the title Ultimate Tentacle Monster!"
"You gotta be spraining your hand like that..."
"I feel like I have one less finger than he does..."
"That screen, my goodness is that played back at eight times speed? I can't understand anything at all!"
"That hand speed is probably real!"
"But what should we do if the god doesn't join the group? Do we need K-god to do it himself? @Kaiser"
Kaiser: "Forget about it, don't force them to join if they don't want to. @Zzz keep your eyes on him and learn from that."
Everyone expressed their disappointment in chat, "Oh, that's too bad!"
This time Chen Mo was playing against Night Elves, although they were fighting for a long time against Chen Mo's Blademaster, they eventually lost.
Chen Mo's rating was now at 3794.
It didn't feel like anything special, so Chen Mo searched for another match.
-Inside the group-
"He's searching again! Go queue, K-god! Try and queue together with Silent!"
Kaiser: "I'm in class..."
Everyone was speechless.
It took some time to search for a match as his rating was so high, it took nearly five minutes for him to get a match.
It was still morning, but there were almost four-hundred thousand total viewers across all platforms watching Silent play ranked matches. Although this was all streamers across all platforms, it was still an incredible number!
Especially last night when Silent beat Nightwind using mass towers, and then spelling out 'NB!' using towers on the map increased his popularity by a lot.
The audience were incredibly happy upon seeing his opponent.
"Digwa!!! Gourd god! Hahaha, Silent queued into Gourd god this time!"
"Gourd-god, please beat him with that disgusting tower strategy to make him suffer from his own invention!"
"Yeah, I agree! Gourd-god must use Silent's strategy against himself! Avenge us!"
This Gourd-god guy's ID was Digwa, although nobody knew its true meaning, people would just pronounce it as spelt[1].
He wanted to change his name, but as the viewers used it more, he accepted the nickname. He even changed his nickname on many platforms to Gourd.
Digwa was the top three human players in China, at three thousand seven hundred and twenty-two points, basically the same rank as Kaiser.
After loading in, Gourd was also shocked to meet Silent.
My goodness, I actually met him!
Of course Digwa saw the match yesterday of Silent vs Nightwind, and got plenty of inspiration from it. He was a Human player anyways, and had a better understanding of these strategies than anyone else, and realised that it was an amazing strategy.
He also played a few matches with other high-skilled players to confirm how good the strategy actually was.
Silent had been winning straight matches gaining a lot of points in the process. Gourd felt that he would meet Silent eventually, but didn't expect it to be so soon.
Digwa entered in chat, "S-god, pleased to meet you."
Silent replied, "GLHF".
Gourd was speechless, this guy really doesn't like chatting, he's even too lazy to reply in Chinese!
This time Silent randomed Night Elves.
The chat was incredibly exciting.
"Gourd-god, built towers! Destroy him! Make him feel the terror of Guard Towers!"
"Hahaha, what comes around goes around. It's finally Silent's turn to play Night Elves against Humans!"
Although they knew Digwa couldn't see, the passion from the fans never stopped.
Digwa was probably thinking about how Silent would react if he used his strategy against him. If he beat it, that means that the strategy isn't fool proof. If he doesn't beat it... that means it's a design flaw?
The Peasants were working hard to mine gold and build buildings.
The fans were plenty excited: "Hahaha, Gourd-god is doing so well! Beat him at his own game!"
The commentator was a bit nervous as they saw how strong the tower strategy was from the humans. Silent wouldn't lose to his own strategy right?
"Alright, it seems like Gourd-god does plan to beat Silent using the towers strategy. Let's take a look at Silent...Hmm? What's wrong with that Altar?
From The perspective of the spectator, it was obvious that the Altar of Elders was built late, as Demon Hunter was trained much later than Archmage.
At this point, the scouting Peasants managed to find the glowing altar, and turned away immediately.
As the humans leave, the Night Elves cancel the training of the Demon Hunter. A wisp was already waiting at the Tavern in the middle of the map, and as the time came, it summoned a neutral Hero: Pandaren Brewmaster!
The viewers were shocked, there was indeed a plan in place!
"My goodness! Pandaren Brewmaster! Feel like Silent has things in store! He must've known that his opponent was going to use his strategy against him!
"Is the Pandaren Brewmaster good? I've used him before, and he felt quite squishy. Can this beat Guard Towers?
"The Brewmaster's Breath of Fire is really strong! It can hurt buildings too! It seems like Silent came prepared!
"It looks like Gourd-god never noticed??
"Does he think that his opponent is going to be the Demon Hunter as usual?
Indeed, Digwa didn't expect Silent to train a neutral Hero. Moreover, he saw that the Altar was glowing from his own scout!
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Chapter 120: Chapter 119: Ganging Up?
Digwa played as usual, leveling up quickly using its water elemental, taking over mines in the process.
Silents Night Elves on the other hand had a different strategy, building an Ancient of War that produces Archers close to a neutral camp, clearing the camp using the Ancient of War and Archers once the Brewmaster was done training.
the viewers weren't surprised as he used this strategy every time he played Night Elves. Everyone had their focus on the Pandaren Brewmaster as it was the only thing that wasn't as usual.
"Wow, Silent's Wisps had discovered the human's were rotating, they know that the humans are going to another mine, but the Pandaren is still grinding for levels. Is this for mining?
"Nope! Silent has no plans to go for mines. He's spamming low-tier units, trying to do some early fighting!
"It's coming, the level three Pandaren Brewmaster with archers and mercenaries behind him are rushing towards the Human mine! The army is here!
Gourd was shocked as he thought Silent was going Demon Hunter as usual, but by the time he realised, the Pandaren was almost level three!
The level three Panda with archers behind him charged straight towards the mine, which at this point only had three Guard Towers.
As there wasn't a need for many towers in the early game, three Guard Towers were plenty.
Pandaren Brewmaster went first, breathing fire on all three Guard Towers and a few more Peasants!
"Whoosh!"
Combined with the focus fire from the Archers, the Guard Tower had half its health left!
Silent hadn't researched nor mined, instead focused on training archers and buying cheap mercenaries from the Mercenary Camp. The Humans on the other hand focused on building instead, meaning that the two players had completely different armies.
Gourd started to panic, knowing that it couldn't be a good thing to see the Pandaren, immediately spamming Arcane towers. However it was already too late, the Pandaren spent all its mana breathing fire, and would hit multiple towers and Peasants every time. All the towers were gone after a few more breaths!
Gourd tried to build towers and upgrade them, but with only an Archmage and Footmen, the difference in strength was clear. The Pandaren came back immediately after going back to base to regain mana after the first attack!
And after the second attack, Gourd was forced to give up that mine.
The worst thing was that the Night Elves only just the Panda, meaning that it gained significant levels after killing all the Peasants. And the resulting high level Breath of Fire was even more difficult to deal with.
It didn't take long after losing the mines for Gourd to condeed.
There wasn't anything else he could do after losing all the mines and giving away so much XP. The Pandaren was stomping all over him, and there was nothing stopping it.
The chat was shocked too, how could Gourd's towers be destroyed so easily?
How could a strategy that had beaten so many players last night be dismantled so easily? Just from one Pandaren Brewmaster?
"What is this? I just realised how squishy the towers are? They lose half their health from one Breath of Fire!"
"The worst is when your Peasants are caught in it, you can't fix your buildings at all!"
"Do you think Gourd-god would've been better off with a few more Arcane Towers?
"Most likely, but Gourd-god didn't know he was going to face Pandaren!"
"So what if he knew. You saw how quickly the towers melted from the Breath of Fire."
"My goodness, Silent is a beast. He used his strategy to destroy Nightwind-god yesterday, and dismantled that same strategy today? Crazy."
"Get out of the way, I'm on team S-god now!"
—
It couldn't be helped that he didn't expect that strategy. Especially training the Panda first, and combined with Moon Wells to provide Mana and HP, it was incredibly strong in the early game. The Panda's Breath of Fire was a nightmare for Footmen, Peasants, and Guard Towers alike.
It was at this point that Gourd also received a message from Nightwind.
"Did you get destroyed by him too?"
Gourd replied, "Yeah, there wasn't much I could do either. Feels like I just got outsmarted."
"Kaiser and the others were spectating, and it seems like not only is Silent mechanically strong, he also has good strategies."
Gourd replied, "At least we gained something from it. We proved that the Tower strategy can be beaten."
"I've already asked a bunch of other pros that are above thirty-seven hundred. We'll queue together tomorrow afternoon. I refuse to believe that we can't beat him with all our powers combined," replied Nightwind.
Gourd was shocked, "Huh? Why are we doing this together?"
"Whoever meets him plays against him, the others will watch and learn from it! It'll be the same as sharing our experiences. I checked this ID yesterday, this guy doesn't exist in the Legion Conquest circle. This means that his RTS knowledge isn't even at our level, it's just unbelievable that we lost to him!"
"But we can't beat him!" replied Gourd.
"We can't say that, his strategies are really good, like us two who lost to his strategies without actual fights. I got destroyed by Guard Towers, and you got destroyed by the Panda. How many more of these strategies does he have up his sleeve? We can get all the strategies out of him and once we have enough preparations, we should be able to beat him right?" asserted Nightwind.
"Yeah... makes sense."
"Moreover, he hasn't dropped a gain yet. He's now at three thousand seven hundred and eighty points after beating you, he's about to reach the top! How can he reach the top from straight wins! He's just stepping on us at that point, are you okay with that?" added Nightwind.
"What? Straight wins? That's not alright!"
"So we can't back out!"
"Yeah, can't back out!"
As there were only a dozen or so people at the peak of RTS, they knew each other well. They soon reached an agreement to show Silent what's up!
If he really did reach the top with straight wins, how could these players face society! That would be too shameful!
—
After having lunch, Chen Mo continued to play ranked games.
Chen Mo noticed that his queues were much faster, not knowing that the others were cooperating to beat him.
"Huh? A few seconds? Doesn't it usually take five minutes to find an opponent?" Chen Mo didn't think much of it, and picked random as usual.
There were quite a few players around thirty seven hundred points, of course the queue was going to be fast.
The chat was shocked. Are the gods about to brawl? How come the gods that aren't usually active are now online, and all of them were spectating?
"Is the battle of gods? The ten strongest gods are battling against this new god?!"
"Wow, is this going to end up like Ragnarok?"
"Yeah, it's crazy how many gods are trying to battle against Silent. If I were Silent, I'd be talking about this my whole life!"
"I decided to skip class this afternoon to watch this battle among the gods!"
"It's starting! This time Silent got the Undead!
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