Chapter 844: 618 Event Planning
Shortly after the release of *Assassin’s Creed: Origins*, a series of follow-up activities quickly followed.
First up were the game pod themes for *Assassin’s Creed: Origins*.
Just like *Uncharted*, how could a sightseeing-style game like this not have its own themes? Ten themes were offered, each corresponding to a distinct setting, such as deserts, oases, the pyramids, Alexandria, the Nile scenery, and so on. Essentially, all the iconic locations of ancient Egypt were turned into themes for players to choose from.
As for the price, it was still 10 credits per theme. For 10 credits, you couldn’t lose out; for 10 credits, you couldn’t be cheated; for 10 credits, you’d bring home a massive advertisement that daily urged you to buy *Assassin’s Creed: Origins*. Yeah, paying for an ad—totally okay.
Second, the second city of the Azeroth world, Orgrimmar, was nearing completion. It would soon be released as additional content for *Seaside Mansion* for players to experience.
With the launch of Orgrimmar, not only would the city itself be introduced to players, but more racial models would also become available for selection.
In the Stormwind version, players defaulted to humans, though they could see NPCs like dwarves, gnomes, and night elves in the city. Similarly, in the Orgrimmar version, players defaulted to blood elves, and within Orgrimmar, they could encounter various orcs, undead, tauren, and so on.
As for why the default race was blood elves instead of orcs… Do you really need to ask?
Defaulting to orcs would probably scare off over 90% of female players. It wouldn’t make sense to cripple the Azeroth world before it even launched, would it?
Orgrimmar, like Stormwind, was primarily focused on tourism and sightseeing. Although the city had its own dungeon, that was just for players’ entertainment. The main purpose of this city was to balance out players’ faction preferences. Otherwise, if everyone just wandered around Stormwind all day and subconsciously chose humans, faction balance would be impossible to maintain.
Now, with the stunningly attractive blood elves, the Horde could also attract a bunch of female players, so Horde players wouldn’t be stuck in an all-bro vibe all the time.
Of course, since Chen Mo’s VR version of the Azeroth world used the latest physics engine and art standards, and incorporated many Eastern aesthetic elements, the humans and night elves looked much better than their original *World of Warcraft* counterparts. In particular, human males were no longer short, stout, and chubby—their appearance had significantly improved.
As for when to launch…
Chen Mo did some quick calculations and decided on June 18th!
Double 11 was still half a year away—too far off. Players couldn’t wait that long, right? No problem. The e-commerce folks from Chen Mo’s previous life had already figured it out: June 18th was a great date, very auspicious, and exactly half a year apart from Double 11. Time-wise, it was perfect.
As for the June 18th event, Chen Mo planned to differentiate it from the Double 11 event.
In essence, the Double 11 event boiled down to one thing: everything half off. But if June 18th also had everything half off, the two festivals would conflict in terms of positioning. Plus, having discounts twice a year would mean players saving too much, and Serent wouldn’t be able to handle the losses.
So, Chen Mo gave June 18th a unique focus: boosting player activity.
Game companies care about two main metrics: revenue and player activity. In a way, player activity is even more important than revenue, because high activity means lots of people are playing and new blood is joining. Even if revenue is low temporarily, it will gradually pick up over time.
Since Double 11 was already focused on revenue, June 18th would emphasize player activity, encouraging players to spend more time immersed in the VR world.
Additionally, other versions of *Assassin’s Creed* were being developed steadily.
In Chen Mo’s previous life, the main *Assassin’s Creed* titles before *Origins* were released roughly one per year, leading some fans to call it an “annual franchise.” In reality, one year was too short for such AAA games, which is why *Assassin’s Creed* had so many bugs, jokingly referred to by players as “buy bugs, get a free game” or “you might be a victim of legitimate software.”
In the parallel world, technology levels and development methods were different. With a vast art resource library and no need for Chen Mo to spend excessive time rethinking gameplay, development time was greatly shortened. Still, it wasn’t possible to churn out all the *Assassin’s Creed* titles from his previous life at once—it had to be done gradually.
The team that developed *Assassin’s Creed: Origins* would continue working on other *Assassin’s Creed* titles and release them in sequence.
Beyond that, Chen Mo also planned to develop a new game simultaneously.
The main goal of this game was to harvest players’ resentment points.
Since *Dark Souls*, Chen Mo hadn’t really developed any games specifically designed to mess with players. Although the *Dark Souls* series had been a steady source of resentment points, with new players constantly jumping in, the rate had slowed down.
For many players who hadn’t tried *Dark Souls*, it was hailed as a masterpiece by veteran fans, with its combat system and level design praised to the skies. But its difficulty also scared many off.
Nearly two years had passed since *Dark Souls* launched. Those who bought it, whether they finished it or gave up, had mostly experienced it. Except for a few ultra-hardcore players, most wouldn’t replay it over and over.
Moreover, even those hardcore players who had beaten it multiple times had their suffering thresholds raised higher and higher, so their resentment generation had long since diminished.
So, Chen Mo planned to create a game that could effectively harvest players’ resentment points.
This game didn’t need to be huge—something short and punchy like *Outlast* would do. The key was to deliver sustained oppression and torment. Ideally, it could be developed quickly, and if it could coincide with the June 18th event, even better.
If it had rich levels and combat systems like *Dark Souls*, development time would inevitably be longer, making it hard to meet the deadline.
Thus, a horror game was the most suitable choice. After all, since *Outlast*, players had gradually forgotten the fear of being dominated by Serent, the asylum director.
However, given Serent’s current reputation, the game still needed to have substantial depth. It had to be not just scary and punishing but also give players a bit of spiritual cleansing after finishing it. Otherwise, a game purely focused on generating negativity with no artistic value would easily hurt its reception among players and game media.
So, it would be a relatively small-scale horror game with rich depth. And it had to carry some spiritual significance.