Irvine, Orange County, California, USA. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

This is where Blizzard is headquartered.

Irvine is a small, up-and-coming city of 170,000 people that began as a farm for the private company Irvine & Company, and later expanded into a city as the UC campus community was established and developed here.

Irvine is not only blessed with the sunshine that California is famous for, but it is also known as the "California Tech Coast", attracting many high-tech companies to join.

The pleasant climate, excellent school districts, ideal and safe living environment, state-of-the-art transportation system, healthy competitive business atmosphere, formal and perfect educational institutions and a harmonious lifestyle have also made it a destination for many Chinese settlers, according to statistics, 30% of Irvine's population is Asian.

Because it is very close to Los Angeles, although Irvine has an airport, there are only domestic routes, and the most convenient is to drive directly from Los Angeles to Irvine, which is only more than 1 hour away.

Lin Feng and other popular people were sitting in four luxury Lincoln cars at this time.

The convoy sped along Highway 5 toward Irvine.

This time when he came to the United States, Lin Feng brought Ye Weiyu and went on vacation after the negotiation. The entourage of the two also included assistant Sun Lin, bodyguards Li Zhao and Zhao Jing.

In addition, there is the formal negotiation team, including Yao Xiaoguang, Zhang Jing, general manager of the strategic planning department (a big cow poached from Microsoft China), members of the "World of Warcraft" project team (Liu Jun, head of the technical team, Huang Lin, head of the Chinese team, Zhang Shuo, head of the operation team), Xu Qian, director of public relations, etc.

This team of more than 10 people came to the United States to participate in the negotiations, which shows Lin Feng's heart for "World of Warcraft".

At this time, Lin Feng was sitting in the back seat of the second car in the middle, pondering the recent situation of Blizzard's entertainment.

Blizzard Entertainment just experienced the exodus of the four founders of Northern Blizzard last year, the "Dark Four", and life was a little not easy, but it was good to rely on the parent company Vivendi Games, and the upcoming "World of Warcraft" is a shot in the arm, and the expectations of global players and the positive attitude of agents around the world have greatly encouraged Blizzard.

Despite this, at this time, Blizzard Entertainment was still a small company with just over 100 employees, although it had already made a name for itself in the world for developing the Diablo Patronus series, StarCraft, and Warcraft series of games.

Moreover, because "World of Warcraft" is in closed beta testing in North America and Europe at this time, I believe that the entire Blizzard technical R&D team and testing team are at their busiest time.

Lin Feng is also the owner of a game company, and he can imagine the mentality of Blizzard's management at this time.

They are full of anticipation and longing for the release of "World of Warcraft", but they also have apprehension and worry about the upcoming open beta.

After all, this is also the first time that Blizzard has launched an online game.

This is a huge resource investment risk proposition, especially considering that even Endless Quest (EQ), the most popular massively multiplayer game of the time, never exceeded 500,000 users. Blizzard was accustomed to selling more than a million dollars, and while monthly subscriptions to games would change the metrics for success, many companies at the time expressed skepticism and concern that World of Warcraft would be as popular as Blizzard's previous games - to put it bluntly, almost no one was optimistic about World of Warcraft.

Even Blizzard itself did not dare to have too high expectations.

Blizzard's vice president, Kirsri Mason, later said in an interview with reporters: "I remember we were expecting in the first year, you know, to dare to dream: 'Imagine if we had 1 million gamers playing this game in the first year.'" How crazy it would be. ”

They expect that in the first year after the release of World of Warcraft, it will be a great thing to have 1 million users worldwide.

As for the Chinese market, I believe that Blizzard at this time did not have much hope.

Earlier, there have been too many excellent games in Europe and the United States, which have sunk in the magical land of the East.

Blizzard's high-level estimates are naturally biased towards the conditions of China's agency. The high copyright fee is obviously a good idea to save a sum of money.

Lin Feng came this time to change their minds.

But at the same time, it can't increase the share ratio because of this, so other chips are needed to force Blizzard to back down.

To understand the psychology of Blizzard's top management, what do they want, where are the weaknesses, and threats and inducements need to be used.

I hope it will be won!

Lin Feng looked out the window.

The convoy had already exited the highway and entered the city of Irvine, where wide, unobstructed roads with beautiful signage, along the side of the trees of different species, some thirty or forty meters high, may be the old trees of the remaining Irvine farms. Most of the houses in the roadside communities are two- or three-story conjoined or detached villas.

What a beautiful city.

…………

The convoy arrives at the entrance of Blizzard's headquarters.

Blizzard was much smaller than Lin Feng imagined, and the entire company was a total of three small buildings. But the environment is very beautiful, with large lawns, birds singing and flowers, and green trees.

Standing outside the building, Lin Feng and his party were greeted by Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, as well as Frank Pearce, executive vice president and co-founder of product development, who is also the executive producer of "World of Warcraft," and Rick, vice president of Blizzard North's game development after Bill Roper left Christopher Vincent Metzen, Vice President.

These four men, along with another Blizzard co-founder, have now stepped back into the background, and Allen Adham, who is chairman of Blizzard's board of directors, is now the core management of Blizzard Entertainment.

When Lin Feng got out of the car, shook hands with them one by one, and heard their names, he knew that Blizzard's top management attached great importance to China's agency.

Otherwise, none of these heavyweights would have come forward – especially Pierce, vice president of R&D.

In normal business negotiations, the top leaders of R&D will not attend.

And Seth's appearance proves that Blizzard really understood one of Lin Feng's intentions in coming to the United States this time, about the ...... of Battle.net and Haofang.

It's good, all the stakeholders are present, and this play is easy to sing!

After accompanying Lin Feng and his party to visit Blizzard for a brief time, everyone came to the conference room and sat down.

Blizzard's conference room, like everywhere in the building, is filled with statues and models of classic characters from Blizzard games, such as the Barbarians in the Dark, the Treasure Thief Goblin, the Spider Queen, and so on...... , and it may be because "World of Warcraft" is being vigorously promoted recently, and there are actually two flags hanging on the wall, which are the flags of the tribes and alliances that Lin Feng is familiar with!

These two flags are the core targets of the battlefield in the game, and when Lin Feng played the thief, he didn't know how many times he stole the flag ...... in the battlefield.

It pulled him into an intimate atmosphere.