Chapter 629: Waiting Before Launch (Requesting Subscriptions, Monthly Passes)

The promotional warm-up for World of Warcraft was still ongoing.

All sorts of information was slowly being released bit by bit. On the official website, the various sub-categories under World of Warcraft were also gradually increasing.

Although Nebula Games hadn't officially admitted anything, players all had a feeling. That the day World of Warcraft officially launched and opened its servers was not far off.

Inside Nebula Games. Currently, Chen Xu and Qin Yi, among others, were also performing some detailed finishing touches on World of Warcraft. As a large-scale MMORPG, it was impossible to test every single aspect. There were bound to be some oversights, that much was certain. However, Chen Xu wasn't worried about this, because the entire early-stage operation of the game would run on three shifts. There would be dedicated staff monitoring it 24 hours a day, accumulating simple bugs to be fixed via online hotfixes. Only issues with significant impact would require server downtime for updates.

Additionally, there were the level-up planning routes guided by the system after character creation for each race. These were crucial for an MMORPG.

As for the balance of dungeons and various classes, Chen Xu believed that perfect balance didn't exist; he could only try his best to adjust. Moreover, balance wasn't just a designer's problem; it was also a player's problem. For instance, a class might be designed with gameplay and tactics that were a 50-50 match against other classes. But players obviously wouldn't know this immediately, requiring a long period of understanding. However, this development cycle (of player understanding) wasn't something designers could dictate, nor could designers teach players how to play with every update, even though Blizzard often did this in his previous life. So sometimes, some characters might seem overpowered, simply because players at the time didn't understand them, but their stats had to be buffed; otherwise, they'd become completely underpowered, and players would complain about them not being strong enough. This was caused by players' gradual accumulation of game understanding. Therefore, balancing the game's numerical values could only be done little by little, according to players' actual progress, and as long as the game was still running, true perfect balance would never be achieved.

“Mr. Chen, by the time players can experience these contents, quite some time will have passed, I imagine!” Qin Yi chatted with Chen Xu in the project testing room. Countless players online were eagerly awaiting Nebula Games to release the launch date for World of Warcraft. In various community forums, these players were already fantasizing about leading the Alliance and Horde to defeat the Lich King and drop Frostmourne. However, Qin Yi, as a development team member, was well aware of the current promotional CG. Although the animated CG showed the Lich King Arthas awakening, the Lich King's story would only appear many patches later.

“World of Warcraft is a long-term operational project for us in the future, and as the big BOSS in The Frozen Throne, the Lich King certainly can't be revealed to players so early,” Chen Xu said with a smile.

“But Mr. Chen, classic characters like Arthas and Illidan have all become dungeon BOSSes. Can players psychologically accept this?” Qin Yi asked Chen Xu. Such concerns were not unfounded, as these were characters players once considered protagonists. Although Warcraft never had a fixed protagonist, and these characters had done quite a few bad things, that didn't stop players from immersing themselves.

“That’s why these characters are all the big BOSSes of their respective versions, and they drop all the good stuff.” “Warglaives of Azzinoth, Invincible, even if players like these characters, they’ll still grind them hundreds of times with tears in their eyes,” Chen Xu said with a faint smile. Favorite characters becoming raid bosses, is that a problem? Aren’t Warglaives of Azzinoth and Invincible appealing?

………………

In Nebula World. Song Ren, Zhang Yi, Wang Han, Wang Yifan, and Joey were strolling through Stormwind City. During this period, they had been looking forward with eager expectation, almost refreshing Chen Xu's official Weibo account every so often to see if any new content had been released.

“Mr. Chen, he’s truly an old master of grand promises!” Song Ren exclaimed. “It’s not the first time, but this time it really has been a while!” Zhang Yi nodded in agreement. “I wonder when it will officially launch!” Wang Han was also full of resentment. ‘It should be soon, World of Warcraft’s official website hasn’t updated any information these past few days.’ ‘Indeed, so I feel it should be launching soon.’

Wang Yifan and Joey, who were nearby, also chimed in. It wasn't just them; many players felt the same way. From initial excitement to resentment over only seeing CG output and no actual game content. Nebula Games' official Weibo account was filled with countless resentful players. Players had watched the World of Warcraft promotional videos released by Nebula Games countless times.

“Oh, right, it seems we can choose between the Horde and the Alliance in the game, both are opposing factions. Which one should we pick?” Song Ren asked. Although the game hadn't been released, some related information had already been announced on the Nebula Games official website. Such as faction selection.

“Definitely the Alliance! Kill the Orcs!” Zhang Yi declared decisively. “Whatever,” Wang Han shrugged, indicating she would go with the flow. “Doesn't matter,” Wang Yifan and Joey also said they didn't care. “Then we'll go with Old Zhang; we're going Alliance when the time comes.” Seeing that his companions had no objections, Song Ren made the decision.

“Hurry, hurry, check the official Weibo! Mr. Chen finally laid an egg! World of Warcraft's server launch time has been announced, and it's already available for pre-download!” At this moment, Zhang Yi discovered something and quickly spoke up. “Let me see!” “What’s the situation?”

Upon hearing this, everyone quickly opened the built-in browser, and saw that the official website had already announced the latest launch time. Two weeks later, Saturday at 12 PM, global simultaneous server launch. For the first ten hours, the game would not require time cards; time card billing would begin after ten hours. Furthermore, this time, it wouldn't be based on regions, but on a unified time zone. Therefore, there would be no late time-zone regions using spacetime magic to enter the game early.

“Oh my god! It’s so big! I’ll have to uninstall several games from my hard drive,” Zhang Yi exclaimed in surprise, looking at World of Warcraft’s size. Because the capacity was simply too large, bigger than any previous Nebula Games title, even more than double the size.

“Y-y-yes… t-t-too… t-t-too…” Following Zhang Yi's words, Song Ren also nodded in response. But his voice was stuttering, and his head also dipped down before sharply jerking back up. Under the bewildered gazes of Zhang Yi and the other four, including Wang Han. Song Ren's character in the game froze, repeatedly performing a glitchy nodding motion. Then, after two or three seconds, his body vanished into an afterimage, and a disconnection notification appeared in Nebula World.

“Damn it! Old Song, that bastard, is already downloading it!” Zhang Yi immediately understood upon seeing Song Ren’s disconnection notification. He had used all his internet speed to download game resources, causing himself to lag out and disconnect!

(End of Chapter) <>