Wherever the server that can continue playing is, they will fly there.
At 8:30 p.m., Xiaoxi, who had just finished a day’s work, returned home and couldn’t wait to turn on the computer.
This is the time she gets home every day, and it is also the time when she and her friends make an appointment to open the dark. When the computer turned on, she took out her mobile phone and started ordering takeout. While chatting and laughing, she waited for this untimely dinner.
What makes Xiaoxi so addicted is not the latest masterpiece with gorgeous pictures, nor the popular hits that are outdated if you don’t play it, but a game from 12 years ago, an old online game that was “revived” – “Dragon Nest” “.
1
“Isn’t this game closed early?”
This is a sentence that is often seen in the comment area under the content related to “Dragon Nest” today. For a long time before re-entering the pit, Xiaoxi also thought so.
Until last year, she accidentally learned that a friend who often played “League of Legends”, and another game that she was still playing at the same time was “Dragon Nest”. Only then did she know that this game, which was once her childhood memory, “has come back to life”.
To be precise, “Dragon Nest” has never stopped serving, and has been operating under the agency of Shengqu Games until now. It’s just that compared to the glory when it was launched in 2010, “Dragon Nest” is now deserted, and it is close to “death” in the impression of many players.
In 2019, “Dragon Nest” was brought to Wegame, and it was brought back to the players’ field of vision. Although the scene of players returning in large numbers could not keep up with the scenery of the past, it was a rare climax over the years. Xiaoxi’s friend was one of the players who returned during this time, and it also became an opportunity for Xiaoxi and “Dragon Valley” to meet again.
It also caused a lot of discussion at that time, and most of the netizens’ speeches were sincere and sincere.
But Xiaoxi doesn’t care about these backgrounds.
When I chatted with Xiaoxi about this, her answer was only “Oh, oh, yes yes”, obviously not interested in these contents. When I finally finished talking, she slowly told me that the classmates who pulled her back into the pit also told her about this, but it had nothing to do with her “playing this game” now.
It was as if the game she controlled with the mouse and keyboard had nothing to say about the past, but a brand new game. To her, that seemed to be the case.
When asked about the experience of playing “Dragon Nest” in the first place, Xiaoxi said several times, “I don’t remember, I really don’t remember”. The classmates who played with her gave up after a month of playing. She groped and played very slowly, and she didn’t reach the full level when she finally gave up because of further studies. “The picture is very good, and the clothes inside are very beautiful” – this is the biggest impression the game left on her at the time.
“Dragon Nest” Christmas fashion launched in 2010
Later, when “Dragon Nest Mobile Games” was launched, she also considered going to play again, but since no one was with her, she did not take action until the game was announced to be suspended. Although she never took the initiative to look for it, she “always remembered that there was such a game”, but she hadn’t waited for a reason to return.
The “Dragon Nest Mobile Game”, which was launched in 2017, was announced to be discontinued in 2021, which also made many people mistakenly believe that the end game has already been discontinued.
But when a friend invited her to play the end-game version of “Dragon Nest” again, she agreed without much thought, and she thought: “It doesn’t seem like there is any reason.”
Now when she comes home from get off work every day, opening “Dragon Nest” is the first thing she has to do, and then she orders takeout. She doesn’t think there is anything wrong. “If you don’t know what to eat, you can ask friends.” Then, while eating, I scanned the pictures, and when I was tired of fighting monsters, I went to the city to find a place with a good view to stand and chat, and show passersby the fashion I just bought.
Although her friends always complained to her about how livery and kryptonite the game is now, she doesn’t feel anything about it as a “senior player with no liver and no kryptonite” in her own words. The basic monthly fee in the game plus the purchase of some new clothes that look right to her eyes, the investment of hundreds of yuan per month is completely acceptable to her, “at least it is much better than mobile games”.
The current “Dragon Valley”, see the watermark for the source of the picture
Xiaoxi usually also plays mobile games, but for “Dragon Nest”, which may not be as good as mobile games, Xiaoxi doesn’t dislike it at all: “I even forgot whether the game was charged or not before, and of course I don’t feel that it has changed. I have changed now.” She felt that the picture was “alright” when she played now, so she insisted on it. “It’s completely different from the past, but it’s good to see some shadows of the past, so let’s support it with feelings.”
2
In the environment where client-side online games are declining day by day, for players, the feelings contained in the game seem to be more attractive than the gameplay. But for the operators of resurrecting online games, what they have to consider is not just the word feelings.
Yang Ming is an operator who participated in the “Resurrection of Old Online Games”. The game he is in charge of is called “Famous Generals Three Kingdoms”.
This is a game developed and published by The Ninth City in 2010. The type and positioning of the game are very clear. It is not only a challenger born to completely match the “Dungeon and Warriors” (DNF), but also an imitator that can be discerned by the naked eye. Unlike “Dragon Nest”, “Three Kingdoms” did die once, and was in a hurry after only 2 years of operation.
“However, the quality of the game is not the biggest reason.” Yang Ming said that they had done a lot of research when they set out to revive “Famous Three Kingdoms”. He felt that the positioning of the game back then was the real murderer.
The time when “Famous Three Kingdoms” was born is very delicate. At that time, The Ninetowns had just lost “World of Warcraft”, the towering tree that supported the company. It was in urgent need of finding a successor that could fill its place, so it invested a lot of money to develop a number of self-developed games, intending to win a grand prize. ” Three Kingdoms is one of them.
As a result, we all know that DNF is still the absolute leader in the same type of games, and “Famous Three Kingdoms” fell in 2012. In an exam that must be squeezed into Tsinghua, it is not enough to pass or be excellent, so “Famous Three Kingdoms”, which could not shake the DNF market position, was abandoned like this.
Now the official website of The Ninetowns, there are not many traces of the old game company left.
This was a pity back then, but it was an opportunity for Yang Ming. His company “Target Online” used to only develop self-developed terminal games. Although several games are not well-known, they have survived until now. In view of the company’s accumulated experience in technology and operation, a branch company was established. Focus on those old online games that have been out of service.
Their criteria for picking games is simple, that games don’t die because of their quality. Either the overseas game was not acclimatized when it landed in the country, or it was born out of time and the competitors were too strong at that time, or the development of the game did not match the positioning given by the company, such as “Famous Three Kingdoms”. They believe that as long as “the quality and the number of users at the time are not too bad”, they will have the opportunity to discover players and fans who can support the resurrection of the game.
Unqualified revenue is a common reason for the shutdown of many old online games, but “as the age of these users increases, their ability to pay has far exceeded that of the past.” Moreover, Yang Ming and the others value the stability of these old players more than their spending power. Compared with one or two local tyrants who spend a lot of money on a whim, they are more inclined to provide sustainable services for a group of old players who are willing to support game operations.
The resurrection of old online games has become a trend, and the “New Game Recommendations” section of another company, Chuangtian Interactive Entertainment, is also full of posts of players petitioning for the re-opening of old games.
Especially now that it is “unrealistic to make new products in mobile games”, Yang Ming feels that apart from a few major manufacturers still doing it, no one will make such products that are much less profitable than mobile games. But compared with developing new games, it is much more cost-effective to revive and operate old online games. He feels that the word “cost-effectiveness” is not even used, but the cost gap is vastly different.
It is precisely because it is far lower than the operating cost of the year that they can ensure that the game can still be profitable at a scale that is far less than before. “You let him play, they won’t suddenly stop playing, and the life cycle of the game will continue forever.”
But just moving out the original set of game codes back then obviously doesn’t meet the standard of “making people playable”. 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 of Famous Generals” borrowed from the mission system of “World of Warcraft”, and the gameplay of allowing players to read information from the text by themselves was just right in those days, 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 changed the main line to a simplified version that can be completed with a little bit. As for the shoddy production at the end of the year’s operation, and the paid props that exhausted the pond on the eve of closing the service, they were all deleted.
The current “Three Kingdoms”
In this conversation, Yang Ming always mentioned DNF from time to time, and he admitted that “there is no comparison at all between his game and DNF, after all, there is a 10-year gap”. But he can still point out in a tricky way: “But maybe someone wants to play DNF from 10 years ago. After all, this is based on DNF from 10 years ago.”
Give players what they want to play, and they will naturally be attracted – this is Yang Ming’s simplest idea.
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But obviously, not all dead online games can wait for a “decent” resurrection.
“Magic Sword”, a game released globally by Ubisoft in 2003, was released in China by Tianren Interactive in the same year. As an MMORPG that is often compared with “World of Warcraft”, its national service has completed its short life in half a year. In 2004, Han and Tang Culture bought the software copyright and re-operated it, but it still did not last for two years. In July 2009, its last official server overseas was also announced to be shut down, and it was not resurrected until Changyou moved it to Steam last year.
Rather than a resurrection, the experience of “Magic Sword” is more like a “sit-up” in a coffin board, and players who truly love this game are like migratory birds, migrating back and forth with the server’s turmoil.
The game with similar encounters is not only “Magic Sword”, but the well-known “Ragnarok RO” national service also had a similar situation.
As soon as I entered the Kaihei (can be understood as the domestic version of Discord) channel of the TA guild, there were bustling voices, “Is there anyone in the big turtle?” “I just went to do nucleic acid” “The warlock of the Pigeon Society The team is here.” I couldn’t fully understand it, but I immediately felt the excitement of this “Magic Sword” guild.
When Mango realized there was no room for me to interject in this room, he pulled me into their “lounge.” Mango is the creator of this channel and a 4-year-old member. But he only said that he was an “assistant”, not the current president of the guild, and usually helped to manage the community. At 38 years old, he is not even an elder in the guild, which is actually quite normal for a game that is almost 20 years old.
After the official server was closed, they all went to the SBEmu server, “This is an American player who paid for the outsourcing team to get it”, so they called it “US server”. This situation continued for a long time until Changyou’s agent “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 operated by a Chinese company, Mango said that foreign players were actually more excited than domestic players at that time, after all, this was at least an official uniform operated by a formal company. At the same time, I don’t know if it was due to copyright reasons, or because Mango said “the boss of the US server wants to see what Changyou does”. In short, the SBEmu server was shut down like this, so the TA guild had to move to the Steam server.
But here, they did not feel the convenience of handing over the game to a big company. They are not at all interested in the newly added mall function in the game, not because they don’t want to consume, but because most of the resources officially sold are easy to obtain in the game and not needed by players. In his opinion, the official “doesn’t understand the gameplay of this game at all”, and the operation direction naturally cannot meet the needs of players.
But they all felt that it was irrelevant. The last straw that really made them decide to leave was the official inaction against cheating.
A mall that is hated by players
“Magic Sword” is a game that puts great emphasis on PVP. Free large-scale battles are its core gameplay. Once all the items in the death backpack are exposed, it is destined to be an exciting but cruel game. Many well-known guild names in the online game world, such as World Destruction Dance (KOK) and Jialan Temple, have made their name in this game. On this basis, the number of people is an important factor affecting the success or failure of a national war, and players have almost zero tolerance for opening more plug-ins.
However, even the plug-in problem, which was the focus of combat in private servers in the past, has never been paid attention to in the official servers operated by Changyou.
The TA guild left the game passively several times before. “The servers are all turned off. If the server is in, we will definitely continue to play.” But this time they chose to leave the game actively and came to another foreign program a few months ago. It is a private server opened by members, and players call it the “Magic Sword Recast Edition”.
A new map for “Magic Sword Reforged”
This programmer, called GM by the TA guild, has a small team that is optimizing the game on a large scale in addition to maintaining the current server operation. They plan to significantly overhaul Magic Sword, making it more modern based on input from the player community. Even planning to buy the copyright and rebuild the map with the Unreal 5 engine.
A month ago, the private server team had contacted Changyou by email through Mango, but has not yet received a reply. Fortunately, the Russian GM did not stop the transformation because of this. After the ongoing “3 test” is over, he will officially start the operation of this private server. It seems that for a while, the TA guild will no longer need to move.
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And a few days ago, when I just contacted one of their members, he immediately conveyed the news to their “foreign propaganda department”. In his words, “this is the department of their guild that specializes in negotiating with people.” , this is the first time I’ve met an interviewee that I have to chat with in the game.
They asked me to go home and download a good client to hack with them, and while playing the game, I asked 30 people questions at the same time through voice, which is the scene at the beginning of the previous part.
The TA guild is lively for 24 hours. In addition to domestic players, there are also Chinese players from all over the world, and even a few foreign friends who do not speak Chinese at all.
Although Mango only joined TA 4 years ago, he started his career as a player when the game first came out in 2003. At that time, he was still a high school student, except for a brief absence during the college entrance examination, he had been playing “Magic Sword” intermittently. Before joining TA, Mongo actually belonged to TA’s hostile forces.
Although the TA guild has now become the largest “Magic Sword” community in China with a scale of 200 people, its composition is very complicated, and even its name has been changed many times. Most of the current members of TA are frustrated players who “have been beaten but persevered” in various guilds in the past, so they will also make fun of this as a “losers alliance”.
The players who can gather here are not too young in terms of biological age or game age, but their enthusiasm for the game is still not extinguished. Mango said this is because “fighting people will never go out of style, and the history of the magic sword is written by players”.
“But I’ve been playing less recently,” Mango said again, saying that he hasn’t opened the game less recently, but he still chats with everyone in the channel and is busy with community operations. His explanation for this is that now the “opponents in the server are not strong, and it is boring to fight.”
Group photo of some TA members under the “guild tree”
“We have the largest number of people on the server now, and we run away as soon as we hit them.” And the fierce battle I witnessed before happened in a trumpet leveling event organized by them. He called it “fishing law enforcement.” “, showing that the enemy’s weakness attracts the active attack of the hostile forces.
After the game’s “3 test” is over in a few months, the European, American, Japanese and Korean guilds on the server, as well as the domestic KOK and Imgod and other old guilds will usher in the return of many players. “It will be interesting then.” Mango was obviously excited when he talked about this, saying that he would definitely not miss it.
As for how long they will play in this “recast”, when I asked about this unfinished business, he didn’t answer me directly, he just said “wait until the game is boring”, and then he continued to talk. The joy of “fighting with people” is endless.
“As long as there are servers that are suitable for playing,” I asked when he said the words closest to the answer, “Can I keep playing?”
As if he hadn’t heard it, he continued to say, “The thrill of this free fight is very hard-core, very direct, and different every time…” I realized that this should be this old online game player, give it to me the final answer.
This article is reprinted from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/9398
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