Chapter 1134: "Oasis 1.0" (Third Update)
Watching the endless stream of happiness points and resentment points, Chen Mo felt no inner turmoil, and almost let out a laugh.
Although he couldn't see the players' faces, he could still empathize with their struggles and pain.
"To soothe everyone's wounded hearts, it's almost Double Eleven, so it's about time to launch another wave of half-price events. Plan in motion." Chen Mo smiled. "Don't thank me. Just call me a **."
It had to be said, World of Warcraft was exceptionally effective at collecting resentment points.
The previous three major titles only collected from one person at a time, which was too inefficient. Moreover, for hardcore games like Dark Souls, many players just bought them, added them to their library, and left them untouched, never actually playing. Even among those who did clear the game, the further they progressed, the higher their pain threshold became, and gradually, they stopped generating resentment points.
But with the release of World of Warcraft, it was incredibly powerful.
It could instantly collect resentment points from forty players at once. And as long as someone played this game for an extended period, there was no way they could avoid participating in group activities or raiding, right? If they raided, resentment points were guaranteed.
Even if some players truly avoided raiding, they still had to do battlegrounds, right? And if they didn't do battlegrounds, they'd inevitably encounter enemy factions while questing in the open world, right?
Not only that, but characters like "Three Rice Harvest" were constantly emerging in World of Warcraft, slaughtering low-level characters without mercy, making outstanding contributions to Chen Mo's resentment point collection efforts.
However, Chen Mo didn't intend to stretch World of Warcraft's timeline too long.
If he dragged it out, the Vanilla version could last a year, The Burning Crusade another year, and by the time players reached the Lich King, it would be over two years later.
That time span was far too long.
It had to be said, some boss fights in the original World of Warcraft were quite difficult. Many bosses, like Ouro, C'Thun, and M'uru, were practically unbeatable when first designed. Some guilds simply skipped them. It wasn't until Blizzard nerfed many bosses later that players managed to clear them.
If they couldn't be beaten without nerfs, it showed that the difficulty design for some bosses was too high.
For Chen Mo, releasing expansions one by one wasn't about stretching players' game time. It was mainly to give players a consistent gaming experience, allowing them to fully appreciate the highlights of World of Warcraft as much as possible. Otherwise, once Wrath of the Lich King was out, who would still bother with the Ahn'Qiraj gate-opening quest?
But that didn't mean the longer an expansion lasted, the better.
The World of Warcraft player base in this world was enormous from the very start. With the help of sleep mode, their playtime was guaranteed. Combined with more reasonable raid difficulty, they could thoroughly clear the current mainstream raids within a few months.
Although the original World of Warcraft was a classic, as a time-based subscription game, it still had some content that deliberately burned time. Many gameplay mechanics were grind-heavy, and those weren't exactly pleasant gaming experiences.
Many grindy mechanics, like reputation farming, were essentially no different from the stupid, repetitive quest chains in low-quality domestic browser games—just repetitive labor. In this regard, Chen Mo also planned to "lighten the load" for players, letting them experience the most highlights of the game as much as possible, making every minute of their subscription worth it.
Of course, most players were now using monthly subscriptions.
Besides that, there was another very important matter.
That was Double Eleven.
Oh, I misspoke. It wasn't actually Double Eleven, but a new event to be launched during the Double Eleven period.
Aside from the usual half-price promotions and other events, there was a milestone event for Chen Mo: the Oasis 1.0 version was officially going live.
Last November, the "Oasis Project" officially began. Over 200 independent game designers joined the Oasis Project, contributing to this groundbreaking game.
They gained access to numerous resources within Thunderbolt Interactive, including the art resource library, the physics system built on the Pangu Engine, the latest AI systems, and more. They also obtained usage rights for countless IPs within Thunderbolt Interactive, all to create a vast, complex, and tightly interconnected parallel universe, working day and night to unleash their imagination and creativity.
Over the past year, each designer had to develop an independent game unit for the Oasis Project. By launch, players would be able to freely enter over 200 game units and experience different games.
A year later, the results were impressive. The total number of game units reached 319. Of course, many of these units were very small in scope, with playtime lasting only a few hours. Not all game units could provide players with over twenty hours of gameplay like a new game.
But regardless, the initial game content was ready, and the Oasis 1.0 version could go live for preliminary testing.
Although Oasis had existed for a while, strictly speaking, that wasn't the real Oasis—it was just a prototype. So only now could this version be considered the official release.
If measured against Chen Mu's ultimate goal, the current Oasis 1.0 was still very immature. But for players, it should be a fairly novel gaming experience.
The Oasis 1.0 version defaulted to eight modes: Single-Player Adventure Mode, Multi-Player Adventure Mode, Single-Player Survival Mode, Multi-Player Survival Mode, Competitive Battlefield Mode, Unfair Competitive Mode, Free Exploration Mode, and Entertainment Mode. Each mode had between 20 and 40 different game units.
Among them, Adventure Mode was equivalent to traditional single-player games; Survival Mode was about escaping, trying to avoid pursuit as much as possible; Unfair Competitive Mode had different factions with varying combat power, requiring the weaker faction to cooperate closely; Entertainment Mode consisted of some wildly imaginative game units.
Of course, these game units were different from single-player games.
Single-player games generally needed to ensure players had over 20 hours of playtime, allowing them to play intermittently. These game units were mostly controlled to be around 2 to 6 hours long. For longer game units, if it was single-player mode, it could be saved; for multiplayer mode, players had to confirm in advance whether the game time was suitable.
Additionally, to avoid repetitive game units and prevent players from quickly figuring out the completion tricks, all game units were dynamically processed.
Under the influence of the advanced AI, each time players entered these game units, the scenario would differ. For example, starting positions, NPC intelligence and personalities, item locations and functions, etc., would all have significant differences. Even if players cleared a certain game scenario multiple times, they would still need to think when entering again, making it easy to capsize in a ditch.