Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Where the server they can play is, they fly to it.

At 08:30 in the evening, Xiao Xi, who had just finished a day's work, returned home and couldn't wait to turn on the computer.

This is the time when she gets home every day, and it is also the time when she and her friends make an appointment to gang up. When the computer lights up and turns on, she takes out her cell phone and starts ordering takeout, talking and laughing while waiting for the unpunctual dinner.

What makes Xiao Xi so addicted is not the latest masterpiece with gorgeous pictures, nor the popular style that is out of fashion without playing, but a game from 12 years ago, an old online game that has been "revived"-"Valley of the Dragon".

1 "isn't this game already closed?"

This is a sentence often seen in the comment area under the relevant content of "Valley of the Dragon". Xiaoxi thought the same way for a long time before re-entering the pit.

Until last year, she happened to learn that a friend who often ganged up and played "League of Legends" while still playing another game was "Valley of Dragons". It was only then that she knew that the game that she had recalled when she was young was "unexpectedly alive again".

To be exact, "Valley of the Dragon" has never stopped serving and has been operating under the agent of Shengqu game. However, compared with the glory when it was launched in 2010, today's "Valley of the Dragon" is deserted and is close to "death" in the impression of many players.

When Dragon Valley was put on Wegame in 2019, it was only slightly brought back into the eyes of players, and the sight of a large number of players returning, though not as good as the scenery of that year, is the best part of a rare time in years. Xiao Xi's friend is one of the players who have returned during this period of time, and it has also become an opportunity for Xiao Xi and the Valley of the Dragon to meet again.

There was a lot of discussion at that time, and most of the netizens' speeches were sincere, but Xiao Xi didn't care about these backgrounds.

When Xiao Xi and I talked about this, her answer was only "Oh, oh, right" and other words, obviously not interested in these contents. When I finally finished saying this, she slowly told me that her classmates who had pulled her back into the pit had also said this to her, but it had nothing to do with her now "playing this game."

It's as if the game she controls with the mouse and keyboard is not worth talking about in the past, but a brand new game. That seems to be the case for her, too.

When asked about his experience of playing Dragon Valley in junior high school, Xiao Xi said several times, "I don't remember, I really don't remember." Her classmate gave up after playing for a month. She fumbled and played very slowly by herself, and didn't get promoted when she finally gave up the pit for further study. "the picture is good, the clothes inside are very nice"-- this is the biggest impression the game left on her at that time.

When Dragon Valley launched its Christmas fashion in 2010, she also considered playing again when Dragon Valley Mobile Tour was launched, but because there was no one together, she didn't do it until the game was suspended. Although she never took the initiative to look for it, she "always remembered that there was such a game", but had not yet waited for a reason to return.

Dragon Valley Mobile Tour, which was launched in 2017, was suspended in 2021, which made many people mistakenly think that the PC game had already been discontinued. But when a friend invited her to play the Dragon Valley game again, she agreed almost without much thought, and she thought: "it seems that there is no reason to do so."

Now when she comes home from work every day, opening the Valley of the Dragon is the first thing she needs to do, and then she orders takeout. She doesn't think there's anything wrong with it. "you can ask a friend if you don't know what to eat." Then he brushed the picture while eating, and when he was tired, he went to a scenic place in the city to stand and chat, showing the fashion he had just bought to passers-by.

Although her friends always complain about how much liver and krypton the game is now, she has no feeling as an "old-age player who is neither liver nor krypton". The basic monthly fee in the game plus the purchase of some eye-catching new fashion, the monthly investment of hundreds of yuan is completely acceptable to her, "at least much better than mobile games."

In the current "Valley of the Dragon," Tu Yuan sees that Xiaoxi usually plays mobile games, but Xiaoxi has no disdain for the "Valley of Dragons," where the picture may not be as good as that of mobile games: "I even forgot whether the game was charged in the past." of course, I can't feel whether it has changed or I have changed. "she feels that the picture is" fine "now, so she has been sticking to it." It is completely different from what it was then, but it is also good to see some shadows of the past, so let's take it as emotional support. "

2 in the environment of the gradual decline of client-side online games, for players, the feelings contained in the game seem to be more attractive than the way to play. But for the operators of resurrection online games, they need to consider more than just feelings.

Yangming is an operator involved in "reviving the old online games". He is in charge of the game called "the three Kingdoms".

This is a game developed and released by City 9 in 2010. The type and positioning of the game are very clear. It is not only a challenger to the standard "Dungeon & Fighter" (DNF), but also an imitator visible to the naked eye. Unlike the Valley of the Dragon, the famous General of the three Kingdoms did die once and was hastily suspended after only two years of operation.

"but the quality of the game is not the biggest reason," said Yang Ming, who said they had done a lot of research when they began to revive the three Kingdoms. He felt that the positioning of the game was the real killer of it.

The timing of the birth of the three Kingdoms is very delicate. At that time, Nine cities had just lost the towering tree of World of Warcraft, which supported the company, and there was an urgent need to find a successor who could fill its position, so he invested a lot of money to develop a number of self-research games with the intention of winning a big prize. "three Kingdoms" is one of them.

As a result, we all know that DNF is still the absolute leader in similar games, while the "three Kingdoms" fell at 2012. In an examination that must be squeezed into Tsinghua University, it is not enough to pass or excel, so the "three Kingdoms", which can not shake the market position of DNF, are abandoned.

Now the official website of the nine cities, there are not many traces of game companies in the past, which was a pity at that time, but it is an opportunity for Yangming. His company, "Target online", used to only do self-research games, and although several games are not well-known, they have stumbled until now, in view of the fact that the company has accumulated a lot of experience in technology and operation. so set up a branch to focus on those old online games that have been suspended.

Their criteria for choosing games are simple: games do not die because of their own quality. Either the overseas games are not satisfied when they land in China, or the competitors at that time are too strong, or like the "three Kingdoms", the development of the game is not in line with the position given to it by the company. They believe that as long as the "quality and the number of users at that time are not too bad", they will have the opportunity to find fans who can support the revival of the game.

Unqualified revenue is a common reason for the outage of many old online games, but "with the age of these users, their ability to pay is also much higher than that year." And Yangming they pay more attention to the stability of these old players, rather than how high the spending power is. Rather than one or two tuhao who spend a lot of money on a whim, they are more likely to provide sustainable services to a group of veteran players who are willing to support game operators.

Reviving the old online games has become a trend, and the "New Game recommendation" page of another company, Chuangtian Mutual Entertainment, is also full of posts about players petitioning for the reopening of old games, especially in the "PC end games to make new products is not very realistic" now, Yangming feels that except for a few big companies still doing it, no one will do this kind of products that are much worse than mobile games in terms of making money. But compared with the development of new works, reviving and operating the old online games is much more cost-effective. He feels that he doesn't even use the word "performance-to-price ratio", but other cost gaps.

It is precisely because it is much lower than the operating costs of that year that they can guarantee that the game will be profitable on a much smaller scale after the game is revived. "if you let him play, they won't suddenly stop playing, and the life cycle of the game can last forever."

But just moving out the game code intact obviously does not meet the standard of "being able to play". In addition to solving the most basic technical problems such as compatibility and texture quality, even the content of the game needs to be changed on the basis of the original game.

For example, "three Kingdoms" borrowed from the "World of Warcraft" mission system, allowing players to read information from the text was just right at that time, but it is too difficult for modern players who are used to automatic pathfinding. So they kept the old system in the branch line, and the main line was changed to a simple version that could be completed little by little. As for the part that was shoddy and rushed to work at the end of the operation of that year, and the paid props that went all out on the eve of closing service, they were all deleted.

Now the "three Kingdoms" in this dialogue, Yang Ming always mentioned DNF from time to time, he admitted that his game and DNF "can not be compared, after all, there is a 10-year gap." But he can still point out tricky: "but maybe someone wants to play the DNF 10 years ago, after all, it is done according to the DNF of 10 years ago."

If you give players what they want to play, they will naturally be attracted-this is Yangming's most simple idea.

But obviously, not all the dead online games can wait for a "decent" resurrection.

Magic Sword, which was released by Ubisoft in 2003, is released by Heaven-Man interaction in China in the same year. As MMORPG, which is often compared with World of Warcraft, its national service has completed its short life in half a year. In 2004, the software copyright was bought by Han and Tang culture to re-operate, but it still did not last two years. In July 2009, its last official overseas server was shut down, and it was not revived until Changyou put it on Steam last year.

Rather than a resurrection, the experience of Magic Sword is more like a "sit-up" in a coffin board, while players who really love the game, like migratory birds, migrate back and forth with the turbulence of the server.

"Magic Sword" is not the only game with similar encounters, and the well-known "Wonderland Legend RO" national server has also had a similar situation. When it first entered the TA guild's gang-up channel (which can be understood as the domestic version of Discord), there was a hustle and bustle, "is there anyone there in the big tortoise?"I just went to make nucleic acids." the warlocks of the Pigeon Club are here. I could not fully understand it, but I immediately felt the excitement of this "Magic Sword" guild.

When Mango realized that there was no room for me to interrupt in the room, he pulled me into their "break room". Mango is the creator of the channel and a veteran member of the channel for four years. But he only said that he was an "assistant" and was not the current president of the guild, so he usually helped manage the community. The 38-year-old is not even old in the guild, which is normal for a game in his late 20s.

After the official servers were shut down, they all went to the SBEmu server. "this was done by an American player who asked the outsourcing team to do it," so they called it "American server". This situation continued for a long time, until Changyou agent's "Magic Sword" landed on Steam-- in 2021, although it did not appear as the upgraded version of "Magic Sword World" that Changyou had promised.

Although it was run by a Chinese company, Mango said foreign players were actually more excited than domestic players at the time, after all, it was at least an official suit run by a regular company. At the same time, I do not know whether it is due to copyright reasons, or because of Mango's "American service boss wants to see what Changyou is doing", anyway, the SBEmu server is shut down, so the TA guild has to move to Steam service.

But here, they do not feel the convenience of the game being run by a big company. They are not interested in the newly added mall features in the game, not because they do not want to spend, but because most of the resources officially sold are easily available in the game and are not needed by players. In his view, the official "simply do not understand the way the game is played", the direction of operation naturally can not meet the needs of players.

But they felt that it didn't matter, and the last straw that really made them decide to leave was the official inaction to cheat more.

The mall "Magic Sword", which is disliked by players, is a game with great emphasis on PVP. Free large-scale fighting is its core game. once the design of all the items in the backpack is exposed, it is destined to be an exciting but cruel game. The names of many well-known guilds in the online gaming world, such as KOK and the Temple of Kalan, have gained fame in this game. On this basis, the number of people is an important factor affecting the success or failure of a national war, and the attitude among players towards opening more plug-in programs is close to zero tolerance.

However, even the plug-in problem, which is mainly attacked in the private service in the past, has not been paid attention to in the official service of Changyou operation.

TA guild left the game several times before is passive, "all is the server shuts down, if the server in we certainly will continue to play." This time they chose to leave voluntarily and came to a private server opened by another foreign programmer a few months ago, which players called "Magic Sword recasting version".

The new map of "Magic Sword recasting", a programmer called GM by the TA guild, in addition to keeping the current server running, a small team is optimizing the game on a large scale. They plan to overhaul Magic Sword to make it more modern based on the opinions of the player community. It even plans to buy the rights and rebuild the map with the Unreal 5 engine.

A month ago, the private service team contacted Changyou officials via Mango, but so far there has been no reply. Fortunately, the Russian GM has not stopped the pace of transformation, and after the completion of the ongoing "3 tests", he will officially start the operation of this private service. It looks like the TA guild won't have to move for a while.

4 A few days ago, when I first contacted one of their members, he immediately conveyed the news to their "publicity department". In his words, "this is the department where their guild specializes in negotiating with people." this is the first time I have met someone I have to talk to in the game.

They asked me to go home and gang up with good clients and ask 30 people questions while playing games, which led to the scene at the beginning of the previous part.

The TA guild is lively 24 hours a day. In addition to domestic players, there are Chinese players from all over the world, and there are even several foreign friends who can't speak Chinese at all.

Although Mango joined TA only four years ago, he began his playing career when the game was first released in 2003. At that time, he was still a high school student, except for a brief leave during the college entrance examination, has been playing with the "magic sword" on and off. Before joining TA, Mongo actually belonged to the hostile forces of TA.

Although the TA guild has become the largest "magic sword" community in China with 200 people, its composition is so complicated that its name has been changed many times. Most of the current members of TA are frustrated players who have been beaten but persevered by various guilds in the past, so they will also make fun of it as a "loser league".

The players who can gather here, no matter their physical age or the age of the game, are not young, but their enthusiasm for the game is still not extinguished. Mango says this is because "fighting with people is never out of date, and the history of magic swords is written by players."

"but I've been playing less lately," Mango said in a twist, saying that he has opened fewer games recently, but he will still chat with everyone on the channel and be busy with community operation. His explanation for this is that now the server's "opponent is not strong, playing is boring."

Group photo of some members of TA under "Guild Tree": "now we have the largest number of people on the server. We will run as soon as we hit them." Like the fierce battle I witnessed before, it took place in a trumpet training activity organized by them, which he called "fishing law enforcement", showing that the enemy's weakness attracted the active attack of hostile forces.

After the game's "three tests" are over in a few months, many players will return to the server's European, American, Japanese and Korean guilds, as well as domestic established guilds such as KOK and Imgod. "it will be interesting then," Mango said in a tone of obvious excitement, saying he wouldn't miss it.

As for how much longer they will play in this "recasting version", when I asked about the missing thing, he didn't give me a direct answer, but just said, "wait until the game is boring." then he went on and on about the joy of "fighting with people".

"as long as the server that is suitable for playing is still there," I asked when he said the sentence closest to the answer, "can you keep playing?"

As if he didn't hear it, he continued to say, "the pleasure of free fighting is very hard, very direct, and different every time."... " I just realized that this should be the final answer given to me by this old online game player.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: sleep with algae

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