It stands to reason that the sales of such a game should not be too high, because there are only a few gamers who like this style and can accept this style, and the best ACT game on the market in general is already very good if it can sell a million copies.

However, Jester's game can be measured by this theory, and the pre-sale of one of the three versions reached a staggering 400,000 copies five days before the release!

Based on this pre-sale figure, the game will sell at least 1.5 million to 2 million copies after launch.

And it's just one of three versions.

If all three versions can reach this sales figure, the game with a total sales of six million will not be considered a niche work in any case, in fact, a game that can sell six million units will not be known for a year.

In a conference room at the Mars Entertainment headquarters.

“…… Let's go back to the genre itself, an RPG - an MMORPG game is also an RPG, the most important thing, the most important thing that players want to see, what is it? ”

This is a discussion on how MMORPG games should be developed.

The backer was Jester, and the participants were the people he instructed to test the game that day.

Of course, the EQ test hasn't started yet, but they can discuss in advance what an MMORPG should be like an RPG in their minds.

That is to say. If you were to be in charge of developing an MMORPG, how would you do it?

Everyone was expressing their opinions, and Jester didn't participate in the discussion, he just listened quietly, and then silently took notes, in the imagination of these most elite developers or designers of Mars Entertainment. A game with all sorts of possibilities and impossibilities is taking shape, and in their imagination, Jester discovers that they are actually much crazier than the WOW they want to do.

Of course, this is a good thing.

"The most important thing is that we want to create a world - it's a bit abstract to say, but more concretely, the biggest difference between MMORPGs and traditional RPGs is not in what and how the game is played. Rather, in the construction of the environment, we must create a social system in which people must cooperate continuously with each other in order to be able to play games more conveniently. ”

"It's not a content-rich game that can be played by one person, and of course, I'm not saying that one person can't play it, I'm talking about it. It's a game that needs to be social, it needs to be interactive. And, that's crucial in this game. ”

When he heard this, even Jester himself nodded silently.

Then quickly wrote it down in the notebook in his hand.

In fact, this is the biggest difference between MMORGP and traditional RPGs, if you talk about traditional RPGs, what he needs to build is a world that is as realistic as possible. Let players play a role in this world, then MMORPG games want to build a society, he needs not only players to play this role in this world, but also needs different players to interact with each other as if in society.

And this is the biggest charm of MMORPGs.

After listening to everyone talk about their understanding of MMORPGs, Jester suddenly had a very specific question in mind. He was curious to know how these amazing designers would solve this problem if they were put in front of them.

Therefore, Jester did not evaluate the merits of what these people said before, whether it was in line with his own ideas.

He just stood up, clapped his palms, and asked a question.

"MMORPG has such a difficult problem to solve, that is, with the increase of players in a server, there may be many players who want to kill a certain monster, explore a certain area, or complete a certain task to get a very rare drop or reward, but the problem is, it is very likely that some people are always killing these bosses, and other players can't kill anything, which is likely to cause a vicious competition, if you are asked to design, you will think, How to design it? ”

Jester asked the question with a smile.

Then look forward to their answers.

In Jester's world, there is already a perfect solution to this matter, and that is the copy.

The appearance of the dungeon is also because of the needs of players, Blizzard mentioned the concept of dungeon when they mentioned their ideas about WOW around 01 year, and it is very likely that they did encounter such a thing that needed to be solved with a dungeon in EQ's game, and EQ also completed the first real dungeon area in the history of MMORPG in the game around 03 years.

Of course, Blizzard likes this kind of thing where I announce a concept first, and then let others explore whether the concept is feasible or not, when WAR3 was found, Blizzard's approach to RPGRTS was more aggressive, and they also announced it first, and then asked a Japanese company to make a game with a similar idea, only to find that the market response was not satisfactory, so Blizzard redesigned the WAR3 model.

So what is a copy?

In fact, the concept of copy appeared very early, as early as in the board game "Dungeons and Dragons", there was such a concept, in fact, people who have not been in contact with this thing may feel a little mysterious and lofty when they hear it, but in fact, to put it bluntly, this is a copy.

Specifically, the procedural explanation is that a map can be duplicated in a limited number of maps according to the needs of the player and assigned to each team or team, and become their exclusive domain for a certain period of time.

That is to say. Any player, squad or team, as long as they want to, then they can completely treat a certain area as an area that belongs to them and can only be explored by them, and this area is called a dungeon.

To illustrate this by example, Team 1 enters Dungeon XX. They entered a copy A of dungeon XX. Team 2 also enters Dungeon XX. They will not go to copy A, but to copy B. A and B do not interfere with each other. At this time, both A and B are called "copies" of Dungeon XX. More teams can come at any time and enter their own copy of the dungeon (e.g. D, E, F) without any negative impact on other teams. This way everyone can explore the dungeon and benefit from it without having to queue up to kill the same monster.

Because he already knew what the best answer was, Jester had a very special feeling when he listened to his subordinates talk about how to end up with the question he had just asked.

Of course. The concept of a copy is not a particularly difficult concept to come up with.

Especially if basically anyone present is a veteran fan of DND table games.

They quickly came up with the DND premise and started discussing whether they could transfer the concept of a dungeon to the game.

Jester was very pleased, he had actually thought of it before, these people would definitely think of the concept of a copy after some thought, but what he didn't expect was. They'll think about it so quickly -- of course, it's one thing. How far to do it is another matter.

The concept of a copy is not difficult, but it is not an easy thing to do well in a copy, as Jester knows, at the same time as WOW. A certain domestic company's game world 2 also added the concept of a copy to the game, but their copy did not do very well, and later according to Jester, their chief designer was even more worshipful of Blizzard when talking about the copy of WOW.

"The kind of AI in the WOW copy, no one in China can write it at all."

Such an evaluation. It's not too high.

It was also thirty or forty minutes, and the designers present unified their ideas, and the copy was indeed the best solution.

"So how should we go about designing replicas? The number of people he needs, his size, the amount of time he needs, the amount of time they drop and the rewards ......" Jester asked more questions, in fact, the essence of MMORPG lies in the dungeon, which is also the core of the PVE content, basically, everything in the entire MMORPG is set around the dungeon.

Jester's question this time was much more complicated than if it had been a copy alone.

Even with the best designers in the world in front of him, it's hard for them to answer so many questions in such a short period of time, and of course, Jester doesn't expect them to answer right now.

"You can go back and discuss, we're basically a week or two now, just discussing how an MMORPG game should be made, of course, everything discussed here is strictly confidential, and you've signed a confidentiality agreement before," Jester once again emphasized the issue ......of confidentiality at the end of the meeting.

In fact, all aspects of the production of an MMORPG are problems that need to be solved immediately.

For example, what is the art style? Realistic or cartoonish?

If you don't know this problem, then there is no way for the artist to work.

Of course, this is not a problem for Jester, he must choose the cartoon style, because the success of WOW has proved this, the cartoon style is more timeless than the realistic style, that is, after many years, not to talk about the picture quality, just the style of the picture, the cartoon style may still be accepted by players.

Jester re-played a very famous WOW level 60 private server in a year or five, the French Nostalrius server, which is also known as the French N server, and played for a period of time.

He found that even if he had been exposed to this kind of game like "Order 1886" in the past year or five, he still wouldn't be bored with the original WOW graphics that appeared in 04 years, which were far outdated, but felt that such a picture was easy to accept.

In fact, Jester once watched a video from Blizzard reviewing the history of WOW, in that video, Blizzard talked about the graphics and music in WOW, especially the graphics, at the beginning of their development, they needed artists to complete some characters, and when the original painting was set, they were also faced with such a problem.

That is, whether the picture should be realistic or cartoonish.

In the end, Blizzard chose cartoons because cartoon-style graphics are more acceptable to players, and once accepted, this style of graphics is not easy to become outdated.

The reality is exactly what they say.

As the days passed, the release of the first version of Monster Hunter did not appear to be revealed, and the result of 1.8 million units a week is not very dazzling among Jester's games, but when you think of this as an ACT game, this is already a very remarkable achievement, and even the total sales of this game are likely to reach 2.5 million units.

This is an extremely staggering number.

Moreover, this is only the first version, and after the first version is released, a second version will be released immediately.

The most important thing is that the first version is very well received by the player community, and this game has been wildly sought after by almost all ACT players, and many ACT game lovers even call this game a flawless work, and where an ACT game can do, it has been done flawlessly.

Needless to say, in terms of action, the work of the world's top action game team, the hand ~ feeling is extremely smooth, and it can be called a textbook of percussion.

The most worth mentioning is the collection system of "Monster Hunter", Jester has perfectly embodied the experience gained from the dark series in this ACT game, and it does not seem obtrusive at all, hunting powerful monsters, obtaining materials, and then making powerful armor or weapons, such a process, can make all players happy to hunt the same monster again and again.

And, best of all, players aren't bored at all.

It's just incredible. (To be continued.) )