Thomases himself had not expected the impact of this post. In less than a day, it had spread from the Warcraft III Chinese server forum, which had only a few thousand users, to various Warcraft III forums in the United States.
Then, all American players were deeply shocked. After the shock came a profound sense of humiliation. They, the proud beacon of freedom, the birthplace of computer games, and also the birthplace of esports, were actually less grand than the Chinese at an esports competition.
Then, many players began to leave messages and send letters on Blizzard's official website and forums, demanding that Blizzard also hold an esports competition on a scale comparable to the Chinese, so that those poor Chinese would know who the true esports kingdom was.
Under normal circumstances, game companies would only appease them with kind words but would not really pay attention to these demands, because holding an esports competition does not make money, only loses money.
But it was different for Blizzard because there was strong support from the president of Blizzard Entertainment.
Allen Adham himself was a veteran esports fan and had long been looking forward to such a large-scale esports competition being held in the United States.
However, although he was the president of Blizzard, he did not have absolute control over the company. Holding such an expensive competition required the approval of the company's board of directors. Allen Adham had mentioned it once or twice before, but it was directly rejected by all the directors. In the directors' view, such competitions could be small-scale or organized by players themselves; organizing them themselves was a complete waste of money.
This time, the players' spontaneous request became the best excuse for Allen Adham. At the same time, he presented data, saying that according to the data provided by the Chinese, the total number of Warcraft III players in China before the official launch of the competition was about 2 million.
However, after all the city championships concluded, with the huge wave of popularity generated by the city championships, Warcraft III already had over 30 million registered players in China. This number had surpassed the number of American players by more than tenfold. After all, until now, the total sales of Warcraft III in the United States were only 2 million copies.
Although these 2 million copies already represented the ceiling for sales data in the American computer game industry.
Of course, considering that the number of registered players in China did not equal the actual number of players, and that one paying user was at least equivalent to 20 free users, it was unclear which country Warcraft III actually generated greater economic benefits for. However, this did not prevent Allen Adham from using these data to convince his board members.
In Allen Adham's words, if they held a national esports competition, they could attract at least another 500,000 paying players. These 500,000 paying players could bring in 60 million US dollars in direct economic benefits, while hosting a national esports competition would only cost a few million US dollars.
Thus, Blizzard's board of directors was persuaded, and soon, under Allen Adham's organization, the American Warcraft III National Championship would also begin to be held from 2003.
Various regions around the world were also more or less influenced by this trend, and all kinds of esports competitions emerged like mushrooms after rain.
Soon, the WCG, held in December, directly announced that Warcraft III would be included as an official competition event, which further boosted the development momentum of the entire Warcraft III esports scene.
This growth rate was at least 10 times faster than in history. No, you could even say it was 100 times faster, because in his previous life, Blizzard was slow to react to esports competitions.
Until 2010, Blizzard had not proactively organized any esports events, whether it was StarCraft or Warcraft. And without official leadership, it was difficult for any game to start its esports journey, except for the anomaly of StarCraft.
In history, once Warcraft III left the WCG, its only stage, it had almost no presence. So it was no exaggeration to say that the intensity of esports for Warcraft III in this world had surpassed that of his previous life by more than 100 times, because in his previous life, Warcraft III had not even joined the WCG in 2002, and there were almost no esports competitions to speak of.
On November 15, 2002, the biggest climax of Warcraft III esports competitions in China arrived, which was the long-planned Warcraft Tournament National Finals, also held in Shanghai.
This time, the venue was set at the largest stadium in Shanghai, Hongkou Stadium.
However, this stadium's name was not commonly used. Its most frequently used name was the 80,000-seat Stadium, meaning it could accommodate up to 80,000 spectators at the same time.
Since the name was the 80,000-seat Stadium, the price was also extremely expensive. The cost of renting it for a single day was as high as 1 million yuan. The national finals needed to be held for three days, and although the price could be discounted, it still cost 2 million yuan.
Spending 2 million yuan to rent a venue for a competition was something that many large enterprises could not imagine in 2002, but Jiangnan did not hesitate to pay for it.
However, Jiangnan did not seem to lose anything, because the three-day national finals had a total of 240,000 tickets, all of which were sold out. Even at the cheapest price of 100 yuan per ticket, it could sell 24 million yuan in box office revenue.
But in reality, Jiangnan lost money again, because all 240,000 tickets were given away. The national finals of the Warcraft Tournament had already begun promotional warm-ups in May, informing everyone that these tickets would all be given away.
Then, in July, the rules for distributing the tickets were announced.
First, all players with a rank of Tianxian could receive a VIP area ticket for free.
All players with the rank of Dixian could receive a regular area ticket for free. This would give away 600 tickets, with the final settlement period being October 30th. It is worth mentioning that these 600 tickets were passes, meaning they could be used to enter the venue for all three days of the finals, making them the most valuable tickets.
As a result, before the end of October, Warcraft III players were going all out. To achieve a Dixian or higher rank, the top players were almost tearing their hair out.
However, players of Tianxian rank soon realized that this was meaningless, because if they could consistently maintain their position as one of the top 100 Tianxian players in the country, they could directly participate in professional competitions. Wouldn't it be more appealing to play on stage?
After that, came the way for ordinary players to obtain tickets, which was very simple: a lottery.
According to the rules, Jiangnan would give away a total of 60,000 tickets. Over a period of 100 days, 600 tickets would be offered for lottery each day.
Each player only needed to play 5 matches a day, whether it was a ranked match or a matchmaking game, or even a PvE match, to get a lottery qualification. They could obtain a numerical code in order.
Then, at 12 o'clock noon on the second day, the Shanghai Notary Office would conduct a lottery to draw 600 lucky players.
The above accounts for the distribution of 61,800 tickets. So how were the remaining approximately 180,000 tickets obtained?
Simple, they were given away with blind boxes.
After the Warcraft III blind boxes resumed sales, each blind box would randomly include a ticket. According to the official announced probability, this probability was about 1%.
This means that in a total of 18 million blind boxes, nearly 180,000 tickets to the competition were placed.
Huang He thought that these 18 million blind boxes would sell for about three months at least. But in less than 30 days, all 18 million blind boxes were snapped up. This means that 180 million yuan in sales were achieved in just 10 days, once again shocking all business people.
Tsk tsk, tickets that were seemingly given away for free actually sold for 180 million yuan. This is definitely an epic classic case.
As a result, a certain "wolf culture" economist declared that the most profitable industry in China was not real estate, but blind boxes.
However, many of these tickets eventually fell into the hands of scalpers. As a result, a regular area ticket, which was given away for free, was hyped up by scalpers to around 300 yuan per ticket.
VIP area tickets were even hyped up to over 2,000 yuan.
This was 2,000 yuan in 2002! Mind you, the VIP area for Jay Chou's concert at the time was only 680 yuan.
One had to admit, scalpers are always gods.
Therefore, when the Warcraft III National Finals were held at the 80,000-seat stadium on November 15th, the entire stadium was packed to the brim. 80,000 players filled the stadium, with a large number of players coming from all over the country by various means of transportation.
Thomases, who had been making a fortune by selling redemption codes in the past few days, stood excitedly in the VIP seats. He had spent 2,000 US dollars to purchase tickets for three consecutive days of the competition, but this was a small amount of money for him now.
This time, Thomases took out his camera and shot a video of the scene, which he uploaded to the forum.
Of course, a regular forum in 2002 could not handle the video data, but Thomases made it into an animated GIF, which could be uploaded at the time.
Then, the American players were once again triggered. This animated GIF became the direct reason for many players to petition the officials and became important evidence for Allen Adham to request the board of directors to hold the competition.
"Look, China can gather 80,000 people to watch the competition, why can't the United States?"
[PS: After finishing this chapter, I realized the data was a bit too exaggerated. In 2002, 80,000 esports tickets probably wouldn't sell out, as this isn't the S7 World Finals. The actual data would be around 20,000 people, but I won't change it. It's a novel, so let's make it exciting. I don't think anyone will mind!]