The impoverished Brother Ma could only watch as Jiangnan prosperously operated the card of Warcraft 3, and soon it was time for pre-download.
As a result, a large number of imposing players opened the oo game center at the appointed time, preparing to pre-download the game, but the vast majority of players heard a ding and saw the following prompt.
[We are very sorry, due to the excessive number of players currently downloading, in order to ensure the user download experience, the download number is currently limited to 20,000 players.
However, we provide a queuing service for you. Your current queue number is 58741. You can choose to keep your computer in its current state and wait for the download to complete.
At the same time, you can also choose to make a reservation through the link below to reserve your download time, and you can download it quickly without queuing at that time.
Good heavens, you even need to queue to download a game!
Seeing the system's prompt, the players clicked their tongues in amazement. In fact, getting number 50,000 in the queue was considered early. An hour later, the queue numbers had already reached over 700,000.
This was later written into the Guinness World Records as the record for the most people queuing to download online in history, and it remained for three years before oo itself broke it.
All the competitors who saw this were disheartened. With over 700,000 people queuing at the same time, and it was unknown how many of them were reservations, wouldn't Warcraft 3 bring in millions of traffic in a single day?
Wouldn't this capture all Chinese game users?
This was simply too terrifying, especially for Brother Ma. When he saw this number, he could only console himself that Jiangnan was bragging and that there couldn't possibly be so many people waiting to download the game.
Of course, such a wait also led to online criticism of oo. However, netizens of that era had not yet reached the point where the internet was a mixed bag of people, and even pigs and dogs could get online. The netizens that year had higher quality, and they could understand the queuing matter, after all, it was over 500.
Almost all of them would go to the place that required queuing, otherwise, where would so many popular online shops come from in later generations.
Of course, if the queuing continued like this, the players' enthusiasm would be extinguished. But fortunately, this was queuing for downloading the game, not for logging into the game.
Huang He actually gave most of the server resources to the game operations, so Huang He was confident that there would be no need to queue when actually playing the game.
Therefore, the queuing would not make players leave; on the contrary, it would stimulate more enthusiasm.
Soon, another day passed, and it was time for Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos to be officially launched. At this time, Huang He was not in Wenzhou but in the internet center in Cao County.
The Wenzhou internet center had been validated by time and its stability was not a problem. The key was the stability and reliability of Cao County.
Soon, after 10 PM, a large number of players flooded into the Warcraft 3 section newly opened by the oo game center.
"100,000 people!"
"200,000 people!"
"300,000 people!"
"500,000 people, reaching the current limit!" The staff in Cao County kept shouting, and finally, the number of concurrent online users stabilized at around 500,000.
Well, the reason for 500,000 people was not because it could only accommodate 500,000 people, but because only 500,000 people had completed the download so far. According to statistics, there were at least 3 million people still queuing to download.
And according to the design, the maximum capacity of the current server was 10 million people, so these 500,000 people were just a drop in the bucket for the entire server. Moreover, with the activation of the two internet centers in Cao County and Wenzhou, which were located in the north and south respectively, all entering players had a new network experience.
"Little Huang, old man, there's something I don't understand. Since you can release 500,000 downloads a day, and there are about 3 million people queuing to download, then theoretically, the queuing only needs to take 6 days, meaning it will be at most the 21st. Why are the reservation numbers for queuing full until the 25th?" Ni Guangnan, who was also in the control room with Huang He, asked curiously.
"I did it on purpose!" Huang He said with a smile.
"On purpose?" Ni Guangnan's eyes widened.
"That's right. In fact, if the download were fully released, there might be around 600,000 people at this time. If they were queuing at the same time, those who were originally scheduled for June 4th could be moved up to May 24th," Huang He said with a smile.
"You've suppressed almost half of the traffic. Why?" Ni Guangnan was even more confused. He couldn't understand why Huang He would do this.
"First of all, for those who are queuing, whether they are scheduled for June 4th or May 24th doesn't make much difference; they still have to wait for a long time."
"Then, I need to ensure the experience of the players who are currently downloading!" Huang He said. "It's not that I don't have the full bandwidth available, or that I haven't opened up the maximum number of users. The current average download speed for players is around 40kB per second, and it takes about 4 hours to complete the download, which is already very long."
"But if I open up all the numbers, the download speed might drop to about 25kB per second, and there's also the risk of disconnection at any time. Players will need more than 6 hours to download, which is too long and very prone to network problems, such as the download being interrupted halfway and requiring manual resumption of the download or something similar."
"Therefore, for our platform, the priority is not to ensure the number of downloading players, but to ensure that those who download can complete the download smoothly without waiting for an unacceptable amount of time."
"Finally, it's to lower players' expectations!" Huang He said with a smile.
"I don't understand..." The old man Ni Guangnan shook his head. He really didn't understand.
"Let me give you an example. Suppose you have two grandsons. One is better at studying and usually scores 90 points, while the other is worse and usually scores only around fifty or sixty points. If both grandsons simultaneously score 70 points, who will you blame?" Huang He asked.
"Of course, it's the one whose grades have regressed..." Ni Guangnan replied instinctively.
"That's right. Although both children's grades are the same, you show favoritism. While blaming one, you praise the other, and this is because your expectations for them are different," Huang He said with a smile.
"This is the same for queuing. If I were to open up all the bandwidth now and tell users that they have to wait until May 24th, but there will always be uncontrollable changes in this world that will cause the queuing speed to increase, and then I tell them, 'We are very sorry, you have been delayed until May 28th to start downloading.' How will they perceive me?"
"Conversely, if I first tell them that they have to wait until June 4th, and then I tell them that because of our hard work, your waiting time has been moved up to May 28th, what will their feelings be?"
"...A cunning businessman..." Ni Guangnan was stunned for a long time before coldly snorting a criticism. Huang He chuckled and said nothing more.
After all, the older generation was impartial and just, and they truly could not accept this concept.
"However, perhaps only people like you can lead a successful company and survive!" But Ni Guangnan sighed in this way in the end.
---
"I'm in, I'm in!" With a cool sound effect, Liu Chuanye entered the game.
He was now a loyal user of the oo and oo game platforms and was also extremely excited about Warcraft 3. Therefore, even though he was about to face the college entrance examination, he had been keeping track of the time and became one of the first batch of players in the country to enter the download channel, with a very early queue number, 14710.
After waiting for about two hours, he successfully entered the download channel, and then spent an entire night completing the game download.
Then, he kept watching the time, waiting for the game to be fully launched.
What, you ask about Liu Chuanye and his goddess?
It's over, because Liu Chuanye felt that he was chatting well with He Anrong online, and coupled with the approaching end of high school, he bravely confessed and revealed his identity, only to be given a "friend zone" card, with a near "I've always considered you as my brother" remark.
However, Liu Chuanye did not, as depicted in some youth movies, fall into despair, give up his studies, become a hooligan, go out to work, fall out with his family, or get someone pregnant... Oh, Liu Chuanye is a man... so let's change that to "didn't fall in love with a man."
In short, Liu Chuanye was only dejected for three days before he put everything aside and started playing games, such as this Warcraft 3.