Author | Wu Xiaoyu
"World of Warcraft Accelerator" finally came out as early as "World of Warcraft".
On June 12, the MMORPG mobile game Taris World, which was developed by Ledong Excellence and released by Tencent Mutual Entertainment, was officially launched. Three days before its launch, Taris World ranked first in the national and regional App Store free list, which is another new product of Tencent with outstanding achievements this year.
At the same time, World of Warcraft warmed up the return of the national service for a long time, but only the pressure test of the nostalgic service Wrath of the Lich King was the first to return. Whether the new expansion film "Geocentric War" can really be globally synchronized as stated in the announcement has not yet been confirmed.
Since the publication of Taris World, there has been only one label around it, that is, "World of Warcraft like". Whether it is the professional role, race and core system of the game, or the main voice cast, Tarris World can make people see the shadow of World of Warcraft. In addition, it is still unknown whether Blizzard will return to the country when the game is open. The outside world naturally links the two games together.
Taris World (source: official microblog of Taris World)
Tencent, as the most mature issuer in China, naturally sees this connection. In the later stage of promotion, attracting old World of Warcraft players dispersed due to Blizzard's withdrawal from China has become the focus of Taris World. "World of Warcraft" is a bit windy, and the first line of surfing is often "World of Tarris".
The publicity of Taris World is hard 。 However, judging from the wind comments of World of Warcraft players, they still ignored World of Tarris. Azeroth National Geographic (hereinafter referred to as NGA), the largest World of Warcraft forum in China, has opened a special area for Tarris World, but there are few discussants. More players are still scolding NetEase for not bringing the official service up earlier.
Why can't World of Tarris grab new players from World of Warcraft? According to the entertainment capital theory, as a MMORPG who entered China earlier, its operation and accumulation in the past two decades have enabled World of Warcraft to have an extremely loyal fan group. Even though all sorts of unpleasant things happened when Blizzard exited the Chinese market, these fans still remained attached to key games such as World of Warcraft until the game officially returned.
Keep an eye on WOW's return, Taresla won't reach Old Warcraft Players
Taris World's special marketing action for World of Warcraft began at the moment when the game was released.
In January 2023, Taris World released its first live video. Some players found that the voice actors who played in Taris World were almost the original members of World of Warcraft, including Huang Ying, Yuan Guoqing and Liu Beichen. Later, Tarris World also released many geographical documentaries to introduce the scene and world view of the game. These video materials are very reminiscent of World of Warcraft.
In a twinkling of an eye, on December 25, Tarris World finally got its edition number. On the same day, the news of the re cooperation between Blizzard and NetEase appeared on the Internet. The official account of Taris World Station B immediately left a message in the comment area of the relevant news, saying: "Why is all this... is it because I took the version number in the morning?" When netizens saw such a reply, they also played with it. All kinds of "who are you?" and "who asked you" came in a stream.
Since then, Most of the marketing actions of Taris World are aimed at World of Warcraft.
For example, on April 10 this year, NetEase and Blizzard announced that they would update the game agreement and bring the games that players like back to China. Tarris World immediately followed up and released a small animation on Weibo, indicating that the production team had not yet sent out the 10 million yuan prize that they had worked hard to win for the players. "Big brother remarries and I give gifts. The clown is myself!"
On the day of cooperation between NetEase and Blizzard official announcement, Taris World released a microblog (source: intercepted from Taris World official blog)
In terms of the public beta time, Tarris World is also in line with Blizzard. Before the launch of SPARK2024 Tencent, Tarris World had officially announced that the game would be released on June 19. However, with the news of the public test of World of Warcraft gradually flowing out, Tarris World finally lost its cool. On June 6, Taris World reversed its ticket jump, and the launch of the national service was advanced to June 12, just one day after the deletion test of the Wrath of the Lich King.
After the promotion of Taris World, several microblog topic entries such as "The Warcraft Accelerator is Coming" and "Urge the Correct Opening Method of Warcraft" have hit the microblog search. Judging from the release of a large number of marketing accounts, Tarris World hopes to further link itself with World of Warcraft.
On the day when the test suit of Wrath of the Lich King was launched, Tarris World tweeted "bless" for World of Warcraft and wished that the test suit of Wrath of the Lich King would not be "bombed". As a result, the "Wrath of the Lich King" test suit was still offline. Tarris World follows the trend and draws the so-called fried chicken "risk" (Meituan Fried Chicken Exchange Certificate) for its fans, which has won another wave of goodwill.
A new running game? Veteran Warcraft players choose to "curse" NetEase
The strategy of "keeping an eye on" World of Warcraft, such as Taris World, has played a certain role. The best example is that it has occupied the first place in the free list of App Store for three consecutive days.
However, according to the detailed analysis of the comment area of Tarris World by Entertainment Capital, the real fans who are willing to interact with the official blog are either new players who have little contact with similar products or so-called "Lezi people". Few real Warcraft players appear in the comment area.
Entertainment Capital also asked the nearby Warcraft players, who all said they were not interested in the World of Tarris. Xiaochen, a warcraft player, told Entertainment Capital: "There are many MMORPGs on the market, but there is only one World of Warcraft, and it is no use learning from it. If I were not a real warcraft fan, I would have gone to play Final Fantasy 14 in the past two years."
AI mapping by entertainment capital
The fawn has a similar view. After the test suit of Wrath of the Lich King was opened, he participated in the test for the first time. Deer said that the sense of shock in World of Warcraft was very comfortable in his eyes, which was one of the reasons why he continued to play World of Warcraft. The fawn once saw the promotional video of "Taris World", which was more retro than "World of Warcraft".
On various forums, the focus of Warcraft players is still the World of Warcraft itself. Xiao Chen thinks that the most important thing for players of World of Warcraft is to urge NetEase to add servers, improve the testing progress, and let the official servers return as soon as possible. Running to play Taris World is far from achieving their goals.
According to Xiao Chen, two major versions of World of Warcraft were missed during the suspension of the national service. The new design, new system, new story and new team of the official service are all expected by players. Now NetEase can only bring out the old version of "Wrath of the Lich King". The propaganda materials of the Dragon Age and the Geocentric War have disappeared, which is unacceptable to them. "It's better to scold NetEase more than to find a new game to play," Xiao Chen said.
World of Warcraft nostalgia service test on June 11 (intercepted from the official microblog of World of Warcraft)
In the main version of World of Warcraft Azeroth conference hall of NGA, there are still some players who speak well for the Taris World.
They think The Taris World was intensively publicized on multiple ends and platforms, and paid for the recruitment of professional team leaders, not to mention the various benefits. These points alone have exploded Netease's operation.
However, there is no market for such arguments in NGA. Some veteran players of World of Warcraft directly retaliated, saying that most of the game content of Tarris World is based on World of Warcraft, so it is natural to spend great efforts to please the players. There are no highlights in the game itself, and it is useless to promote the operation.
20 years of operation, obtaining loyal players
The main reason why Warcraft players have chosen to ignore Taris World is very simple 。 After nearly two decades of deep cultivation in the Chinese market, Blizzard has established a deeper emotional connection with Chinese players. World of Warcraft's fan ecology is also very different from other games, and the loyalty of players to the game and manufacturers is far from being matched by other competitors.
On the same day that NetEase official announced the test of "Wrath of the Lich King", NetEase god launched an h5 page called "Blizzard Footprint Report". After logging into their Battle. net accounts, players can review their historical records related to Blizzard games such as World of Warcraft, Hearthstone Legend, and Watch Pioneer in the report. These historical records include the pit entry order, game duration, user ranking, etc. of all Blizzard games experienced by players.
Entertainment Capital found that many friends who had never discussed Blizzard games before shared their "Blizzard memories". World of Warcraft is an important part of their game memory. There are countless players who play World of Warcraft for more than 1000 hours. Some players even played for more than 10000 hours.
World of Warcraft has hardly left the national market since its inception 。 It is difficult for an overseas online game to operate in China for 20 years. In 2009, the operator was transferred from Jiucheng to NetEase, and the cooperation between NetEase and Blizzard was interrupted this time, which made the players in the national area temporarily leave World of Warcraft for a period of time. Fortunately, the interval between the two is not long. It is no longer a joke to put such a name on the fans of World of Warcraft.
At the same time, Blizzard is of great significance to Chinese players. Once upon a time, the words "Blizzard products must belong to high-quality products" were deeply engraved in every player's mind. A series of works such as StarCraft, Warcraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft can all rank among the first echelon of similar games at that time.
World of Warcraft expansion geocentric battle (source: official World of Warcraft X)
Warcraft feelings and Blizzard feelings converge to form such loyalty of World of Warcraft players. It is not as simple as imagined that Taris World wants to compete for these players.
In the past decade, Blizzard has brought more disappointment to players. In fact, players are a group that can easily be satisfied. Everything depends on the sincerity of the game company. Fortunately, the trailer of the new expansion of World of Warcraft, "Geocentric War", has received good feedback from the player community, and it is not far away from Chinese players returning to Azeroth.
