Chapter 276: First Experience (Requesting Subscriptions, Monthly Passes)

Chapter 276: First Experience (Requesting Subscriptions, Monthly Passes)

Sitting in front of the computer, Zhang Yi eagerly awaited the unlock of the Warcraft trial version.

"Ah, why did Nebula Games decide to make an RTS this time?" Wang Han, sitting beside Zhang Yi, was scrolling through her phone, chatting with Joey.

Wang Han and Joey weren’t particularly fond of RTS games.

They’d played a bit, but couldn’t really get into them.

The operations felt too complicated.

At most, they’d play against Easy AI.

"I think Warcraft might be different," Zhang Yi said.

He occasionally played RTS games himself, though he wasn’t particularly skilled—just an average player.

The type who would blindly produce units, then select them all with the mouse and A-move straight toward the enemy base.

All-in Push to decide the outcome: if all his units died, you won.

If his units survived, then sorry—your base was gone.

"Right. I can’t say much about the multiplayer versus, but the single-player mode feels like it could be pretty solid," Song Ren and Wang Yifan chimed in through the voice channel.

"What kind of story can an RTS even have? The single-player story in that Human Wars game almost put me to sleep," Wang Han said.

She’d tried a few RTS games before—since she couldn’t handle multiplayer, and got tired of Easy AI—so she thought she’d give the story campaign a shot.

But the result was truly underwhelming. To describe it in one sentence:

"The enemy attacks, and we must do this and that."

"We defeat the enemy and win, but then a new enemy appears."

It nearly bored her to sleep.

"You can’t compare other developers to Chen Xu. I still have faith in him, even if he always pulls some stunts," Zhang Yi said confidently about Warcraft.

Especially after seeing that CG animation—it had stunned him.

He’d never seen a game company invest so much into an RTS before.

And that brief one-minute CG video released by Chen Xu earlier had left a deep impression.

Because he sensed this Warcraft would be different from typical RTS titles—where so-called single-player stories were just rebranded new player tutorial levels.

He felt that Warcraft might actually have a complete single-player story.

Combined with Chen Xu’s earlier mention of "revolutionizing the RTS genre" and "700 million development costs," Zhang Yi had a bold theory: maybe Warcraft would truly go all-in on its story.

Like most players, he thought that Chen Xu, stepping into RTS for the first time, might struggle with balance in multiplayer modes.

But a single-player story? That was a different matter.

It tested Level Design—and Chen Xu’s Level Design? Just think of Dark Souls and It Takes Two. Was there any reason to doubt?

So he believed it was highly likely Chen Xu was focusing his efforts on the single-player story.

He had great confidence in any game released by Nebula Games.

He’d even secretly used his Private Stash of Money to buy a Collector's Edition of Warcraft!

Of course, he couldn’t let her find out—otherwise, he’d probably be doing laundry for life.

The key wasn’t buying the Collector’s Edition; the real issue was that he had secret savings.

"Alright, fine. You go ahead and play. If it’s good, I’ll try it myself later. It’s not like the game’s going anywhere," Wang Han said to Zhang Yi.

"It’s time! Old Zhang, I’m muting my mic!" Song Ren’s excited voice came through the voice channel.

"O.J.B.K!" Zhang Yi replied, quickly clicking the Warcraft icon.

After the Nebula Games Logo flashed by,

a CG animation played immediately.

It was the same promotional CG animation Chen Xu had released on the official Weibo account.

Zhang Yi had watched it multiple times, but this time, he didn’t skip it.

The CG content was easy to understand:

Humans and orcs weren’t friends—they were opposing factions. But suddenly, an evil enemy descended from the sky, forcing orcs and humans to join forces.

Soon, the CG animation ended, and a game UI interface appeared.

The background showed a scene resembling an iceberg—likely one of the game’s actual environments.

Besides the Exit Game and Settings options,

Zhang Yi noticed three main choices in the game:

Story Campaign, Local LAN Versus, and Online Versus.

However, both Online Versus and LAN were grayed out—clearly not supported in the demo version.

But this only made Zhang Yi more excited. This demo clearly emphasized the single-player story—just as he’d predicted!

"Let’s see just how good this single-player story really is!" Full of anticipation, Zhang Yi eagerly clicked the Story Campaign button.

Like other games, the Story Campaign allowed difficulty selection before starting.

Easy, Regular, and Hardened.

Zhang Yi thought carefully and picked the easiest difficulty.

"That’s so embarrassing," Wang Han muttered, speechless.

Picking Easy is one thing, but hovering your mouse between Hardened and Regular for three or four seconds, then not selecting either? What was that?

"Ahem… This is Mr. Chen’s game, after all. Remember Dark Souls and Monster Hunter: World? I’m just being cautious," Zhang Yi explained awkwardly, clearing his throat.

After selecting the difficulty, a screen appeared showing "Chapter One." Clearly, the single-player story was a linear game, meant to be played chapter by chapter.

When Zhang Yi clicked Chapter One, he was stunned.

Because there were way too many levels in this chapter!

He quickly counted—twelve sub-chapters in total!

Only the first one was lit up, displaying the level name: "Thrall’s Vision—Finding the Far Seer" (a merge of the original Prologue and Chapter One).

The rest remained grayed out, their names unreadable.

"I wonder how long each level will actually take," Zhang Yi thought, growing even more excited.

Without delay, he clicked the first Prologue level.

The screen slowly faded to black as Narration began.

"The sands of time have run out, son of Durotan."

"The war drums echo on the wind. The remnants of the past poison the land. Once again, the world burns in flames."

"Mortals charge blindly into their doom, staining the battlefield with blood, unaware that the Burning Shadow is about to consume all."

"You must unite the Horde and lead them to their destiny!"

On the battlefield, human and orc armies clashed. Then, just like in the opening cutscene, countless fireballs engulfed in green flames rained down from the sky.

The scene shifted to a high ridge, where an orc named Thrall—just awakened from a nightmare—sat in his tent, dazed and disoriented.

This CG segment completed the earlier promotional footage, yet raised many questions in Zhang Yi’s mind.

What was that fiery figure falling from the sky during the human-orc battle?

What exactly was the Burning Shadow?

And who was that mysterious wizard at the end?

Controlling Thrall, the orc who just woke from his nightmare, Zhang Yi was filled with curiosity.

But curiosity aside, he quickly focused back on the gameplay.

Under the Far Seer’s guidance, the character Thrall moved forward.

This was a basic gameplay tutorial.

But what amazed him most was the game’s overall quality.

Zooming in, he could clearly see the exquisite modeling of the characters.

Even the water on the ground and the grass textures were stunningly detailed.

This was really an RTS game?

The quality was just too high!

He hadn’t even played the game yet.

But just the modeling and graphics of Warcraft, combined with the earlier CG, had already left Zhang Yi stunned.

The game’s presentation far exceeded his expectations.

Sure, there was a noticeable gap compared to the CG animation.

But compared to other RTS games? Forget content—just the visuals alone were leagues ahead!

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