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

Thanks to CTOnews.com net friend Sancu for the clue delivery! This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Game Research Society (ID: ysaag), author: Lushark

In June last year, SQUARE ENIX's MMORPG Fantasy Continent announced that it would be discontinued in Japan, bringing its 15-year operating history to an end.

At the time of learning this news, Japanese player "Friend Sang" was eating ramen noodles in a noodle shop. He couldn't help crying for it, and the noodles in his mouth completely changed their taste. Even if he felt the strange eyes of the people around him, his tears couldn't stop.

From then on, friend Sang never dared to go to that noodle restaurant again.

Since 2007, Friend Sang has been a loyal player of Fantasy Continent, during which he has tried other games, but always lost interest within a few minutes. Only Fantasy Continent can be called his "life."

"Fantasy Big Six" in Japan once had "the number of online MMORPG all year round first" glory, even close to the suspension, every night prime time, the game can still have nearly a thousand people online.

Like Friends Sang, many players regarded this place as their spiritual home. They even launched a petition hoping to buy out the game server and data through crowdfunding, so that the players could continue to operate it themselves…In the end, they naturally did not receive an official response.

More than 6,000 people participated in the petition campaign, most of whom were willing to pay more than 10,000 yen (about 500 yuan) to keep the game running. Everything failed to stop Fantasy Continent from moving towards the end. The game officially stopped in September last year.

For a whole month after that, his friend Sang was not in the mood to open a computer to play games. Until mid-November, he learned from a friend of a friend that Fantasy Continent had not completely disappeared from the world.

In the mainland of China, the last official servers are still operating normally.

Fantasy Mainland is operated in the mainland of China by EasyPlay, a little-known company with only two agent games: Fantasy Mainland and Magic Baby, both produced by SE.

In fact, this company has a deep relationship with SE.

In 2005, SE China (SEC) terminated its partnership with Daewoo and took back the rights to operate Magic Baby in the mainland of China. However, according to the policy, overseas companies are not allowed to sell online games directly in the mainland of China."Easy Play" is a domestic company established for this purpose, which undertakes the operation of "Magic Baby" from now on. SE's current president Matsuda Yosuke is still a director of the company.

After that, E-Play launched another SE online game, Tree World, in 2006, but only five months later, the game announced that it would stop operating in the mainland of China.

In April of the following year,"Fantasy Big Six" was publicly tested in Daliu area, this time it went to another extreme_game one public test is fifteen years, until today,"Fantasy Big Six" national service is still in "public beta" state operation.

Within a few years, SE's development strategy in the mainland of China has been adjusted, turning to more cooperation with local companies,"Final Fantasy,""Dragon Quest" and other online games, as well as "Magic Baby" derivative mobile games, have been handed over to other companies agent, so far, the existence significance of easy play almost only to maintain the existing "Magic Baby" and "Fantasy Big Six" national service.

Although the company still exists and the game server is still running, Yiwantong has long stopped promoting and publicizing to the outside world, and even the official Weibo was once used as a private account, which fell silent ten years ago.

Only the old players of Magic Baby came back from time to time to "greet" and the official website of Fantasy Continent was also grayed out.

Whether it was the news announcement on the homepage or the official comments on the player forum, they all stayed in 2011. The website is in disrepair, many pages display errors, and even the official download link of the game client has expired. It is hard to believe that this game is still operating normally.

Even routine service suspension announcements are no longer updated on the official website, where there is no sense that the game is still in operation. In the words of some national service players, it is like a "forgotten game."

However, it was this lost island that became the ideal hometown for Japanese players who couldn't bear to part with this land after the Japanese service was shut down.

After learning about the existence of "Fantasy Big Six" Chinese service, Friend Sang found this official website and spent a lot of time downloading the game in a "trial and error" way.

As mentioned earlier, most of the download links for the game have failed, and the installation mode has remained the same as it was more than ten years ago: you have to download the client of the game, you have to install the exclusive login device of easy play, and then bind the two together... If it is Chinese players, it will have to be a lot of trouble, and it is even more difficult for Japanese who do not know the language.

However, Friend Sang finally successfully installed the game, and through several connections, with the help of an unknown Chinese friend, completed the identity verification required to register the national service account.

When the game's login interface appeared in front of him again and familiar background music sounded, his friend Sang said he couldn't hold back tears again.

Although the text was different, Friend Sang knew that this was the game he was familiar with. Compared to most MMORPGs, Battlefield PVP played a large part in Fantasy Continent.

Even the game's very first beginner tutorial introduced players to the various mechanisms in the battlefield. After that, whether it was leveling or completing quests, they were mainly carried out in the battlefield. The traditional plot quests and PVE fighting monsters were only embellishments.

The 50 vs. 50 100-man national war was the most representative content of Fantasy Continent. Players in it could either fight directly with their opponents on the front line or choose to collect resources to help them control their positions. After collecting enough resources, players can also summon and control powerful summoned beasts, enough to turn the tide of the battle.

Players could transform into powerful summoned beasts such as knights and undead, and could even attack cities. In Friend Sang's opinion, these were the unique charms that were difficult to replace in Fantasy Continent. Whether it was galloping on an intense battlefield, winning a battle with fewer teammates, or strolling through the peaceful capital, passing by players he had noticed, it was exciting.

In their leisure time outside of combat, players usually gathered in the capital or neutral areas to daydream, chat, and show off their new fashions. However, this also meant that there was almost no so-called "lone wolf play" in the game. Whether as teammates or opponents, they could not avoid dealing with other players.

This also made Sang, a friend who did not know the language, feel uneasy at first.

In the past, there were also a certain number of Chinese players active in the Japanese server. Although there was no direct communication, his friend Sang's impression of them was mostly serious and skilled, and he admired their enthusiasm for the game from afar.

There are also many Chinese players who witnessed the curtain call of Japanese clothing. Sang obviously did not expect that he would become the same "stranger" one day, let alone how these Chinese players would treat the Japanese who suddenly appeared. At one point he was quite pessimistic about it. Whenever someone accosted him in the game, strange words always made him nervous.

In the national server, where there were only a hundred active players, most of the old players were acquaintances. Once a newcomer became active, it was easy to notice him. Sang, who was online almost every day, was no exception. Soon, someone took the initiative to invite him to form a team.

Communication is inevitable. Friends Sang began to use translation software to try to confess their identity from Japan to the players around him. What surprised him was that most of the responses from Chinese players were "Welcome to you.""This game is only operated in China now. Let's play slowly together." Such warm words made him feel that he really returned to the familiar fantasy continent.

Later, there were also sporadic Japanese players who came to the national server like Friend Sang, but Friend Sang had already become friends with Chinese players and preferred to move with Chinese players instead of interacting with local players.

Friends Sang also left a friendly and interesting impression on the surrounding Chinese players. In the square where players gathered, it was easy to meet friends Sang greeting and chatting with friends.

When I first entered the game, I happened to meet my friend Sang Youmin, who was chatting with friends, in the square. Sang had been using the online name "Friend san" since 15 years ago, and when he was active in the game server in a foreign country as "Japanese friend," it seemed that there was no more suitable ID than this.

Three four months of game experience completely changed his friend Sang's view of the Chinese people, he used to even think that the Chinese people are terrible, but now he deeply loves these Chinese companions who get along day and night, because they are there, he can recover the precious time he once lost and play games happily every day.

Friend Sang said that even if the national service of Fantasy Continent is stopped in the future, he still wants to play other games with these Chinese friends. In the future, when he looks at sports events, he will definitely cheer for the Chinese team just like he supports the Japanese team.

In order to express this mood to Chinese friends, Friends Sang tried to edit a video of the battlefield in the game and uploaded it to Station B. He also used the machine to flip the title of the video_Fantasy Continent! Friendship between China and Japan! Thank you for your kindness all the time!"

At first, this video was the same as the other Fantasy Continent related content on Bilibili. Almost no one paid attention to it. It was all friends of Friends Sang who came to support it. It had the amount of views that an old online game deserved.

But half a month later, the video finally triggered some kind of push mechanism, and the number of plays soared by tens of thousands overnight. More passers-by came to the comment area to leave a message, some people ridiculed friend Sang's machine to turn Chinese "should start," there are also old players lament that the game is still in operation, even survived the Japanese service home, more people are said to be able to feel friend Sang's love for the game through the video, but also recall some of their similar experiences.

Sang, the hot comment friend in the front row of this video, will praise almost every message, communicate with people through the machine, and spare no effort to recommend the game.

He also took advantage of the situation to make a video dedicated to promoting the game, which also received more than 60,000 views.

Adding up to less than 150,000 broadcasts on station B is not a hit, but for the current "Fantasy Six," friends Sang's initial unintentional move caused a lot of waves.

Today's Fantasy Continent has no substantive content updates, except for fixed holiday activities and mall promotions, in-game activities rely on players to organize themselves, some loyal players will even pay for activity rewards, just to let everyone online every day have something to do.

"Cherry Town" is a game community formed by players themselves, which not only collates and summarizes game information, but also often organizes internal activities. There are several small groups like this, but even these enthusiastic players have long been indifferent to external promotion. After all, even if some newcomers join, only a few can persist. Everyone focuses on self-entertainment and maintains the activity of existing groups.

The birthday party organized by the players could mobilize most of the players in the group to participate in the video of their friends Sang. This allowed more players in the country to know that Fantasy Continent was still in operation. For a time, many people returned to the game with nostalgia. Even if only a small number of them survived, they could still be considered valuable fresh blood.

On the other hand, Friends Sang also tried to recommend Chinese clothing to Japanese players, but most of them had already played new games or had concerns about the overseas environment, and things went nowhere, Friends Sang also gave up such ideas.

However, recently, groups of Japanese players began to appear in the server. Their technical cooperation was quite mature. They even said that they wanted to participate in the arena activities for expert players in the game. Most of them were attracted by the videos of their friends Sang.

After all, thousands of words about how friendly the Chinese players were could not be compared to his personal experience.

In the "fantasy mainland" day service just stopped, Chinese players for the prospect of the national service is also pessimistic, feel dead lips and teeth cold, this game play a day is a day, we can do is to buy more shopping malls fashion accessories, to bring some revenue to the game; But recently everyone's mentality is obviously positive, even if the game may still come to an end soon, but at least now, there are still new people joining, new stories are happening.

The players ended the day with laughter and agreed to meet again tomorrow.

Conclusion The Japanese Fantasy Continent players came to the national server one after another during this period of time, but also coincided with the development and popularity of ChatGPT, its translation ability compared to the previous machine translation improved a lot, with its assistance, even if the language barrier between Chinese and Japanese players, but also can carry out basic communication.

It is also due to the evolution of translation software, friends Sang Cai in the national server to obtain a more pleasant gaming environment, but also help his video to attract people's attention.

But in fact, whether it was the original Chinese players or the Japanese players who came to the national server, some of them were learning each other's mother tongue because they had made foreign friends.

Japanese player who also came to the national server shared his Chinese study notes on Twitter

The cross-nationality resonance that Friend Sang evokes stems from his sincere love for the game itself.

Technology can help humans break down language barriers, but the real Tower of Babylon will eventually have to be built in people's hearts.

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