Pei Le's powerful suppression finally calmed these newly triumphant youngsters, who then settled down to training. Of course, there were still some idiots among them, as esports always has its share of idiots, but it didn't matter. Boss Huang would show them the power of capital.
Subsequently, the fame of these esports players grew louder and more widespread.
However, according to the wisdom of the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, things always reach an extreme and then reverse. When the popularity of these esports players reached its peak, it would begin to decline, then slowly fade into obscurity until the next major news arrived.
What Boss Huang needed to do was find this turning point and then hold a press conference.
On January 1, 2001, during the New Year's Day holiday, Mr. Liu Xiangjiang, the global vice president and representative of Jiangnan Group, accompanied by the focal point of public opinion, players who had won three gold medals at the WCG, and twelve out of the sixteen professional players who participated in the WCG, jointly held a press conference to announce the establishment of the Jiangnan Esports Club.
This club would be managed by Pei Le, who would be responsible for the club's overall operations. All the players would join the club to participate in various esports competitions across the country and even the world, striving to achieve more and higher honors.
The appearance of this news caused the esports news, which was already on a downward trend, to surge once again. This was because the news signified the establishment of the first professional esports club in the country, and one that was invested in by a large corporation. The significance of this was enormous.
Many predicted that in the future, there might be national esports top leagues similar to China League One or the Chinese Super League, and that the sport of esports would develop even more vigorously.
In short, the heat went up again.
Three days later, the popularity began to decline again, and then the second wave of major news arrived. Ms. Leng Zhimeng, the CEO of oo, along with the players of the Jiangnan Esports Club, appeared before the cameras to announce to all the media attending the press conference that oo had invested 3 million RMB to hire the Jiangnan Esports Club as the spokesperson for oo's new product, the oo Game Center, to promote and endorse oo Game Center, and simultaneously organize the first oo Games National Invitational Tournament and the first oo National Online Chess and Card Invitational Tournament.
Of course, it was also announced that oo would launch a brand-new oo Game Lobby, which would be fully open for testing on January 5th, the next day. According to information disclosed by Leng Zhimeng at the scene, this oo Game Lobby would be a standalone software, but it would be bound to oo. A new oo button would be added to oo's UI, and clicking it would directly lead to the oo Game Lobby.
At the same time, Leng Zhimeng also revealed that the oo Game Lobby would feature nine games on its first batch, including three mainstream single-player games and six games developed by oo.
Furthermore, the daily training of these professional players would be arranged in the oo Game Lobby. Players who use the oo Game Lobby to play games would have a chance to encounter the legendary WCG champion players!
As soon as this news was released, coupled with the immense traffic support from the WCG champion players, it immediately garnered significant attention.
The next day, just like with oo Voice, Huang He and Leng Zhimeng were both in the company's control center. However, this time oo was better prepared. The server room was expanded, and the cooling system was redesigned. Even with three times the number of servers, there would be no issue.
The power grid was also improved to accommodate higher loads, which made both Huang He and Leng Zhimeng feel that everything was foolproof.
However, things almost went wrong because of the extremely high instantaneous access volume, the company's server network traffic exploded. Huang He could do nothing about this; it was a matter for Wenzhou Telecom. If Wenzhou Telecom did not upgrade their network services, Huang He could only watch helplessly as the server traffic data exploded.
But fortunately, Wenzhou Telecom did not directly cut off Jiangnan's power. So, although the download speed was so slow in the first few hours that countless people cursed, they managed to get through it. A steady stream of people successfully downloaded and began to experience the oo Game Center.
First, when players opened the oo Game Lobby, the game lobby would pop up a message saying that it detected that you have already opened oo, and asking if you want to log in directly using your oo account.
Players could choose to log in directly with their oo account, but if they preferred not to, they could also choose to register an account.
Then, it would lead to the oo registration webpage, and then register an oo account on the webpage.
After completing the account login, players could enter the main interface of the oo Game Lobby.
The color scheme was predominantly blue, consistent with oo's style, possessing minimalist aesthetic beauty.
After a brief trial, many exclaimed, "Isn't this Ya Lian, or the Ag game battle platform?"
Ya Lian was the earliest game platform in China, established in 2000. It is currently the largest battle game platform in China. So, after the first batch of users experienced the oo Game Center, they found that it was essentially the same thing as Ya Lian.
However, upon closer inspection, they found that it didn't seem to be.
First, the Ag game platform was merely a platform used for online play when playing single-player games; it was essentially background auxiliary software.
When players opened the software page, they found that on the uppermost UI of the oo Game Platform, there were already icons for six games: oo Dou Dizhu, oo Ludo, oo Chess, oo Poker, oo Go, and oo Plane.
In addition, the icons for three games were grayed out: StarCraft, Warcraft II, and Half-Life: Counter-Strike.
Curious players immediately began physical testing and soon discovered that the six games starting with "oo" above were already installed, and could be played by clicking them. Unlike the aforementioned Ya Lian games, which required first opening the Ya Lian platform, entering different game rooms, finding opponents of similar skill, and then using the platform to find routes, opening the game path stored on the computer, and then performing some complex settings in the LAN page to play the game online.
oo Games was completely different. Clicking a game would directly lead into the game, and the game itself had built-in matchmaking functions. Players could select a room within the game, then play, and the user experience was countless times more convenient than Ya Lian.
This discovery made players exclaim again, "Isn't this Lian Zhong Games?"
However, this oo platform was indeed not Lian Zhong Games, because the Lian Zhong Games platform only had chess and card games, while oo Games also had three mainstream AAA single-player titles.
Although the icons for these three games were gray, clicking them would prompt that if the user had already downloaded the game, it could directly guide the game's launch icon, which would then light up the game icon.
If the computer did not have the game, the oo Game Lobby also provided a thoughtful download service. Players could directly download games through the oo Game Lobby. After the download was successful, the oo Game Platform would be directly installed, which was also very convenient and saved many people the trouble of installing games.
The subsequent game experience was the same as the six oo games mentioned above. There was no need for complex setup; players only needed to enter the game through the oo Game Lobby to conveniently access different rooms.
Most importantly, the oo Game Center also provided one-click matchmaking, which could directly bypass the complex and time-consuming operations of entering rooms and waiting for teammates to be ready. Players could directly match with opponents who were ready with a single click and then start the game. This process took less than 10 seconds.
The gaming experience was much more powerful than Ya Lian Games.
It was at this time that players finally realized that oo Games was a "Frankenstein" created by merging Lian Zhong Games and the Ya Lian battle platform. However, the players expressed that they really liked this kind of "Frankenstein" that the oo Game Center represented.
Therefore, on the first day, the download and installation volume of the oo Game Center reached 300,000. Subsequently, it maintained almost the same download and installation numbers every day. In just one week, the user base of the oo Game Center exceeded 1.8 million, and the oo Game Center excitedly announced this astonishing news on its official website.
This news greatly excited everyone at oo, but it caused considerable distress to three companies, two of which were naturally Ya Lian and Lian Zhong.
As the two dominant forces in the battle platform sector, Ya Lian and Lian Zhong, although their days were not entirely peaceful, at least they did not have the trouble of competition. This was because the two had no competitors, and their respective areas of focus were different, so they coexisted peacefully, and their days were quite tranquil.
It wasn't until the sudden appearance of the oo Game Center that both companies were completely caught off guard.
Needless to say, Ya Lian's battle platform had been operating at a loss. At their peak, they had a record of over 200,000 concurrent online players, which placed immense demands on their servers. However, Ya Lian was not wealthy and could not afford to buy too many servers, so players' gaming experience was consistently poor, with frequent disconnections.
Under normal circumstances, with no competitors, it didn't matter how often they disconnected, and players could only accept their fate. Ya Lian had even announced a month prior that they would be introducing a prepaid card charging model. If one played the game for a day, it would cost about 1 yuan in prepaid card fees, or about 30 yuan a month.
Well, Ya Lian had no choice. After all, their servers and broadband had monthly expenses of millions. Without a huge patron like Huang He, charging became their only means of profitability.
As a result, as soon as they started charging, the oo Game Center arrived. In just one day, the number of players on the Ya Lian platform dropped by more than half, which nearly made their company's president vomit blood in the office.
[Ahem, I have to visit my mother-in-law tomorrow, so I won't be able to write. Therefore, tomorrow there will only be two basic updates, and I will continue to add more the day after tomorrow.]