The growth rate of WOW's player count is phenomenal.

Prior to that, the most popular MMORPG game in North America was EQ, with an average of more than 300,000 people online.

This is already a very remarkable achievement, in fact, when the industry predicts the number of WOW players, it is only a guess that they will attract 500,000 to 600,000 players in half a year, and then maybe 1 million within a year.

But contrary to everyone's expectations in the industry, to be precise, beyond the expectations of everyone in the industry except Jester, WOW only took three weeks to reach the standard of 10,000 active players, and the number of active players reached 1 million in three months, and at the end of 05, almost one year after the official release of WOW, that number reached a staggering 3.5 million!

Moreover, the growth of the number of people has not stopped.

In addition to being surprised, the industry also made a new projection, saying that WOW is likely to break through the number of active players of more than 5 million in the second year!

This number is similar to Jester's own prediction, Jester himself combined his own memories and realistic data to speculate, it is estimated that by the end of this year, that is, the end of 06, it can reach almost 5.5 million people, before the expansion is released, this number should be a peak.

If you don't release an expansion in the future, it will probably drop the number of active players in this game by a certain amount.

However, after the expansion is released, the number of people will increase again.

Now that WOW has just announced Angela's Door Opening Mission, all players around the world are constantly working hard to become the first Door Hero to open the door.

Jester is the end of today's work, for his colleagues to hold today's regular meeting, no overtime, the current WOW development team is in a rest period, the previous tasks are basically dealt with almost done, from the next month, you can draw out at least half of the manpower. I met the follow-up development of "Burning Crusade".

The Burning Crusade is the first expansion pack for WOW.

It is also the only expansion that Jester will be responsible for.

He's already mentioned this in the internal meeting, and he'll officially retire when Burning Crusade is almost finished, and he probably won't wait until Burning Crusade is finished.

Of course, he won't be involved in the second expansion, but Jester still gives his advice.

The third expansion can be made with the follow-up to the Alsace story, the distant continent of Northrend and the end of the Lich King's story are very gimmicky combinations.

Add in a little bit of the story of the Titan Guardians and the Old Gods, and it would be great for players.

Of course, Jester's suggestion will not be adopted in the end. Jester didn't care about this, because he said that he was in charge of the first expansion, and all he could do was the first expansion.

Actually, there was really a quarrel within the WOW development team about the expansion release environment, and at the beginning, the WOW development team was discussing the expansion for the first time. It's a very much agreeable way to EQ's expansion, which is to completely retreat from the environment.

However, this plan was directly rejected by Jester.

The reason is simple.

You can't just use an expansion to turn the hard work you spent on the map into useless work. This kind of game design scheme is not what he agrees with.

Jester's vision of WOW's game world should be an orderly game world, and he shouldn't just be the kind of game that can only be experienced by full-level players. A successful game should make the game enjoyable for players of all levels, and that's the design of a successful game, if everything is at full level, it's the beginning.

That this game. What else qualifies as an RPG?

Could it be that the so-called RPG is that everyone has to be a tyrant and a cool dragon Aotian?

Apparently not.

This world needs legendary heroes who can defeat Ragnaros, the Firefiend, and Nanyfarios, the King of Blackstone, as well as other low-level players to fill it.

Only the class structure at the top of the pyramid will never be secure, because it is a castle in the sky.

Why do you say that level 60 is fun, in addition to the various settings of level 60 have the most RPG style, the most important thing is that because the game has just begun, although it is still at the full level to be able to experience most of the content, but because of the elongation of the leveling time, it takes a long time for an ordinary player to go from level zero to level 60, playing for four hours a day, uninterrupted, and it takes about thirty days to reach the full level.

Twenty-four hours of non-stop leveling, the fastest time is seven days.

Such a long training time, in fact, invisibly, has set up a pyramid structure for WOW.

The most important thing is that low-level, level 30 and above players, in the process of leveling up and fighting monsters, the materials they obtain, and even the equipment they hit, are also useful to players who are ten or even twenty levels higher than them.

The key to whether a game's level structure can be stable is whether the economy is stable enough.

And being able to obtain the materials needed at the lower level makes the economy of the lower level stable, even if many players can't reach level 60.

When you're at level forty or fifty, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Even if it's level 60, you don't have to play RAID like work, there are still a lot of things to play.

In this way, the architecture of the entire RPG game is healthy.

And since the first expansion of the original WOW, because of the relationship between the retreat environment, for the first time, this price is no longer healthy, and the ten levels of useful level span and the sixty levels of useful level span are completely different things.

That's what Jester wants to change.

If the world of an RPG game is healthy, then it is absolutely impossible to completely adopt the design idea of the environment.

It's not that you don't have to retreat from the environment, but you can't retreat from the environment entirely.

For example, there are some things that do need to be returned to the environment, such as equipment, and there is nothing to say about this return environment, and the equipment of the expansion should be better than the original. Of course, you can't make the expansion blue-green outfit better than the original Graduation Purple outfit, and that doesn't make sense.

But there are some things that can't be dealt with with with the idea of de-environment, the simplest is the material.

Not many players care about equipment they get at a lower level, but that doesn't mean they don't care about what they can get at a low level.

If it's because the expansion is released, and then the original stuff is treated as a retreat, it's to make these players, in their first sixty levels of leveling career, almost everything they get is garbage. There is simply no way to generate income through normal transactions, what? You say that someone who practices business skills will charge low-level materials?

How many people are there to practice business skills in this way?

Can the normal circulation of goods be formed?

Keep low-grade materials in a stable economic state?

This is of course impossible.

Jester's most annoying thing is that the so-called full level is the beginning, since the full level is the beginning, why not let people play at the full level at the beginning?

Since you're going to do all the retreats, why don't you start by letting players start playing the expansion at level 60?

Because this is an RPG.

RPGs can't do this way that they give you sixty levels at the beginning.

Of course, with the later level being too high, this method of retreating from the environment has been used one expansion pack at a time, even though Blizzard doesn't want to, it still uses a direct expansion for you to play, and also gives you a set of equipment with a certain amount of money and various skills.

As for why this is so?

Very simple.

That's the low-level map, the version. Let Blizzard completely turn this pure development idea of retreating from the environment into a useless thing.

It's like garbage, discarded like a shoe.

Jester didn't want that.

He felt that as long as the low-level material was also used in the commercial skills of the expansion, there existed. Then the low-level map will not become a non-profitable existence, as long as the economic system is healthy, then there will naturally be players to play this level of content.

Jester convinced the development team, and this was the biggest difference between Burning Crusade and the original Burning Crusade.

As time progresses. The WOW version has been opened to the Shadow of Naxxramas, in which players can collect the Orange Staff shards, and it is said that the Orange Staff quest will be completed in the next version.

This is also the third orange outfit to appear in WOW.

On top of the original history. In Blizzard's vision, the Orange Staff, or Raven Staff, actually needs to go to Karazhan to complete it.

However, when designing the version, the effect of attribute inflation was not taken into account.

After the Shadow of Naxxramas was opened, it was found that the attributes had swelled to the extent that there was no way to continue to open Karazan, so this team copy that I knew at a glance that it must be level 60 was moved to the level 70 expansion pack, which has to be said to be a kind of helplessness.

In fact, you can know from the acquisition of orange weapons, such as Safras, the orange two-handed hammer of the Fire Demon Ragnaros, which is the starting item dropped in the Molten Heart, but it can only be crafted by the forging materials in the Blackwing Lair, which can only be made across two large team dungeons.

The Raven Staff is also obtained in this way.

However, it was ruined by the Blizzard team, which was a little jerky when it was still designing RPG games at the beginning.

In desperation, he changed the method of obtaining the crow staff and moved Karazhan to the burning expedition.

And this is not the case in this world.

While the problem of stat bloat is an inevitable problem in RPGs, it wasn't too serious under Jester's prescient control, at least not to the point where there was no way to open Karazan after Naxxramas.

In fact, Blizzard's designers at that time were still a little shameful, knowing that the bad impact on the experience of the game after the expansion of attributes would be very serious, so they did not launch Karazhan at level 60 at that time, although the designers of Blizzard at that time were still relatively young in design, but from their treatment of the game.

They really want the best game.

If it's a Blizzard designer years later, what else does it matter.

Isn't it just attribute expansion, what's the big deal?

In a WOW server in North America.

It's Dark's one called Kelly. Dark's Night Elf Huntress is on the server.

Duck said in the guild that he might not be able to continue to follow the guild during this time, and many people asked curiously.

Because Duck is a person who loves to participate in events.

And Dark's answer made them sad.

"My condition has worsened, and the doctor said that I can't be in front of the computer for so long, and I still have to go for treatment, and there may not be enough time."

Under Duck's explanation, the people in the guild knew that Duck, who had been with them for so long, turned out to be a seriously ill player, and the disease he suffered from was still incurable leukemia.

And from Duck's mouth, I know that he is now very seriously ill.

Duck is a very famous player in the server, and his fame is not because of how good his PK skills are, not because he has not tasted defeat in how many times he planted the flag at the gate of Ironforge Castle, nor is it the MT of a certain first-kill guild, who carries a wind sword every day to attract attention in the iron bridge in exchange for popularity, but by liking to make friends, like to help people, and like to help others in exchange for popularity.

Whenever someone inside the server mentions Kelly. When Duck, the Night Elf huntress, someone would say, "He, I know, he's a nice man, he's done it for me......

Answers like that.

So, when Duck told the guild about his illness, the news quickly spread through the server.

Many people sent letters to Duck encouraging him to be strong.

There was even an offer to raise money for Dark.

But Duck refused.

He said no, he looked at so many emails in his inbox, all of them were words of comfort and care for him, and he suddenly felt very warm in his heart, he was not lonely, not lonely, there were still so many people who cared about him.

In the days that followed, the time for Darker to go online became less and less.

There are also more and more intervals.

In the beginning, I would go to the school once every three to five days to say hello to my friends, and slowly, sometimes I couldn't go once a week.

And now it's been more than a month since his last launch, almost two months.

The friends in the guild are all worried about Dark, isn't something wrong, just when everyone was worried about it, a line of prompts appeared in the guild.

Kelly. Darker goes live. (To be continued.) )