Chapter 956 [Major Surgery on Blizzard Entertainment]

Fang Hong continued to order: "The other one is Blizzard Battle.net. This thing can end its life and be swept into the garbage heap of history. There will no longer be Blizzard Battle.net in the future. It will connect Battle.net users with game boxes, and national server battles will be launched." Users of the online server will be transferred to the domestic game box, and users of the foreign server Battle.net will be transferred to the servers in the Americas and Europe corresponding to the game box."

"Complete the data translation. It turns out that Blizzard Battle.net players do not need to register an account on the game box. They can directly log in to their original Battle.net account to enter the game box. There will be no changes to the player's original game data on Battle.net. Activision The same goes for the entertainment side. If there are bugs during the period, resources in the account are lost, World of Warcraft mounts are lost, etc., we should fix them as much as possible if we can, and if we can't, we should compensate the players in full."

Fang Hong wants to build Game Box, a brand new game subscription platform. Of course, he cannot tolerate the continued existence of Blizzard Battle.net, but users of Blizzard Battle.net must not just throw it away. Are you kidding? This is the most valuable thing, including Activision. The same goes for the user data accumulated over there.

The combined global monthly active users of Activision and Blizzard have reached a huge scale of 350 million. Once the account data translation project is completed, in a sense, the global monthly active users of Game Box will directly reach a huge scale of 350 million.

When Tian Jiayi heard Fang Hong's arrangement, he couldn't help but said: "With such a big change in Blizzard Entertainment, I'm afraid the original Blizzard executives, especially the founders, will be dissatisfied. Many Blizzard executives and creative staff may leave."

Fang Hong smiled and said calmly: "It doesn't matter, Blizzard has sold itself so many times, and it still has the ability to withstand pressure. I can accept a group of people leaving, but they can't all leave, right? Besides, the stars are not a maintenance company. Wangdi, if I perform such a major surgery on Activision Blizzard, I will definitely need corresponding comfort."

Speaking of this, Fang Hong recalled for a moment, and then added: "Let's talk about Blizzard Entertainment's current CEO and one of its three co-founders, Mike Mohan. He is particularly fond of the RST game "StarCraft" series. , but the decline of RTS games is irreversible. The last expansion pack of "StarCraft 2" is completed, and it is impossible to provide funding for the development of "StarCraft 3" in the future. "

"Vivendi will definitely not do this, but now that I have bought Blizzard, I can let Mike Mohan create it. I agreed to give him enough funds to make "StarCraft 3". If the cost can be recovered, it will be a great success. , I can accept it if you get in, as long as you can stick to the original intention of Blizzard, don’t seek death, make good games, make high-quality games, and be well-received without being popular, I can also accept it.”

One thing Fang Hong is sure of is that if the "StarCraft 3" project is approved, this project will definitely lose money. The high threshold of real-time strategy RTS games is destined to become only a niche game at the moment. Now it is "League of Legends", The world of MOBA games like "Dota".

But it doesn’t matter even if you lose money. Fang Hong’s vision is not limited to this. “StarCraft” is very entertaining and e-sports. It is also the originator of e-sports and has a high historical status in the history of e-sports. , it is also valuable to make it active on the WCG e-sports stage. Although it cannot bring direct benefits, it also has great intangible value.

Besides, what if Mike Mohan can recoup the development costs of "StarCraft 3"? However, Fang Hong's best hope is only to recover costs. As for making money, he has no extravagant expectations.

Quan must be spending money to support this big IP. If there is a possibility of film and television adaptation in the future, if a breakthrough can be found in this area, the profit earned will not be less than that of a successful game.

At this time, Tian Jiayi had already memorized a lot of content. Fang Hong glanced at it and said immediately: "By the way, I remember that Blizzard is working on another MOBA project, right? It's targeting "League of Legends" and "Dota". what do you say that is?"

For a while, Fang Hong didn't think about it.

Tian Jiayi didn't know either, but she brought enough information. She opened the materials she brought back and found them after searching for two or three minutes. She immediately replied: "There is such a project under development. It was previously called "Blizzard Dota" ", later renamed "Blizzard All-Stars", and now changed again to "Heroes of the Storm", which brings together Blizzard's major classic IP characters and is the same type of game as "League of Legends" and "Dota". The plan is to launch it in May Open beta on the 20th and officially launched in June.”

Fang Hong suddenly snapped his fingers and said, "Yes, this is the project."

Tian Jiayi looked at him curiously: "What happened to this project?"

Hearing this, Fang Hong said slowly: "I don't want to interfere in Blizzard's other game projects and I don't have time to intervene, but I want to intervene in the "Heroes of the Storm" project. After I read it, the experience sharing macro mechanism in this game is true." It’s stupid and needs to be changed.”

Fang Hong attaches great importance to the "Heroes of the Storm" project. On the one hand, "League of Legends" is now too popular and it is making a lot of money. Goose Factory has this trump card in hand, and Valve also has "Dota", which can be played in games. There is no box that can be used in MOBA type games.

"Heroes of the Storm" is the most potential competitor to compete with "League of Legends" and "Dota". The hero units in "Heroes of the Storm" are all Blizzard's top IP game characters, such as Queen of Blades, Lich King, Yili Characters in the game such as Dan are extremely popular.

"Heroes of the Storm", which is currently in public beta, has attracted much attention from players in the gaming industry, and its popularity is already very hot because of its reputation as "a Blizzard product that must be a high-quality product" and the blessing of those classic game characters with their own high popularity. , making "Heroes of the Storm" already extremely popular even before it was officially launched. There are even some blind Blizzard fans who believe that "Heroes of the Storm" will definitely beat "League of Legends" to achieve the throne of the new king.

Both Goose Factory and Riot Games' "League of Legends" operation teams are now panicking and regard it as a very strong competitor. After all, "Heroes of the Storm" can be said to be a "famous master" with its own super aura, and the newly rising Riot Games The company is still in awe of Blizzard.

But Fang Hong, who has the memory of his previous life, knows that "Heroes of the Storm" staged a "dead-to-death" plot. In the early days of its launch, it attracted much attention. The Goose Factory was so frightened that it once spent money to increase the popularity, blocked topic discussions, and other means. At that time, everyone I thought it was a nuclear bomb, but I didn't expect it to be a firecracker soaked in water and misfired.

Soon after, it declined, so much so that it was reduced to the point where players ridiculed "Heroes of the Storm" for being good at everything but not fun. Even "The Storm is Going to Fire" became a joke among players.

A fatal flaw of "Heroes of the Storm" is experience sharing, which causes the team's shortcomings and barrel effect to be infinitely magnified. As long as one of the five teammates is a trap, the four gods cannot bring them together. The macro mechanism of experience sharing makes it impossible for top players to Relying on his own technical level to widen the gap and lead the Cary team throughout the game, the advantage he had finally accumulated was ruined by a wave of traps against his teammates, and the game experience was extremely bad.

And because there is too much emphasis on teamwork, no matter how good the top players are, they can't do 1V5, so they can't pretend to compete. This is another blow. The boss scolds his teammates for cheating. If he cheats his teammates, he will retaliate by saying, "Why can't you lead such a good writer?" Everyone wins? The boss wilted on the spot.

This series of problems caused "Heroes of the Storm" to finally pull its hips, and staged a rare high start and low start in the history of the game.

In this life, Fang Hong must take action to reverse this situation. As for MOBA games, the game box of Galaxy must have a game that can compete with Goose Factory's "League of Legends" and V Agency's "Tower" fights against each other.

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