As ten o'clock passed, the Warcraft III icon in the game interface of the oo game platform, which had been gray and unclickable, finally turned into a clickable state.
Liu Chuanye had already finished downloading the game after waking up in the morning. His first reaction was to immediately search for the Warcraft III client on his computer and try to launch it himself.
After all, all the games on the oo game platform were currently installed locally. The platform merely served as an intermediate channel for opening them. Even without the platform, the games could be launched independently, as they were all single-player games.
However, Liu Chuanye soon discovered a new problem: he couldn't find the Warcraft III game folder on his computer at all.
Of course, Liu Chuanye was not a novice. He quickly checked his disk capacity and found that nearly 800MB of space had disappeared from his E drive, clearly indicating that Warcraft III was installed on his E drive.
Then, by checking the capacity of each folder one by one, he finally locked onto a folder named "jnyx." Indeed, the game itself was installed inside.
Unfortunately, Liu Chuanye's exploration of Warcraft III ended there. When he double-clicked the launch icon, he soon heard a "dong" sound, which was the prompt for a program runtime failure, followed by a series of error icons.
With his rudimentary English skills, Liu Chuanye realized that the error messages indicated that the server was not found and network connection was not possible.
This meant that the downloaded Warcraft III had to be launched via network connection, and likely through the oo game platform. This made Liu Chuanye abandon his clever ideas and forced him to obediently wait for the appointed time.
"But isn't this disgusting? If the computer has no internet, or if one is unwilling to use its game platform, then one can't play Warcraft III at all!" Liu Chuanye muttered, feeling very displeased.
Because not every household had internet back then, nearly half of the computers nationwide were not connected to the internet and only operated as single-player machines. Wouldn't these computers be unable to play Warcraft III?
To play a game, one needed an internet connection?
If this were an online game, it would be understandable, but this was clearly a single-player game!
Liu Chuanye grumbled inwardly, but when he wanted to criticize oo for being shameless, he remembered that the game was free, given away by oo. He felt it was somewhat impolite to criticize them like this.
"Never mind, there will surely be cracked versions in the future that can be launched without connection!" Liu Chuanye mused.
In fact, after the game client was downloaded, many players discovered the same problem, which also made them very unhappy. However, due to oo's completely free principle, they found it difficult to engage in overly insulting criticism, and could only hope for future cracked single-player versions.
But who could have imagined that in the next four to five years, no single-player cracked version would appear.
It wasn't that China's piracy workers or cracking teams weren't working hard. On the contrary, these teams and piracy workers immediately discovered the business opportunity between online games and single-player games. They were eager to crack the single-player version so they could sell it to users who couldn't connect to the internet, which would be a huge profit!
However, after dismantling the game, these teams found it to be a very difficult task. This was because the client had its local storage function stripped away. All data had to be transmitted to the server and then transmitted back in real-time through network data; otherwise, the game could not run or store data.
Of course, some technically strong teams could achieve single-player operation by transferring to a virtual server, but this would greatly damage the game's stability, leading to various bugs, and also make saving impossible.
Take the critically acclaimed story campaigns for example. All these story campaigns could not be saved. Players of the single-player version could only play the first chapter of the campaign forever, which was a tremendous torture.
At the same time, installing a virtual server was also very troublesome. It couldn't be solved with just an installation package. Even for professionals, various complex operations were required to complete the virtual server installation on a computer, which was a fatal installation process for those who were not tech-savvy.
Of course, if a team was willing to spend the energy and money to re-engineer a large part of the client, it would be possible. But no team was willing to spend that professional money.
Finally, until a certain big shot had an idea and realized that instead of cracking the domestic version, it would be better to buy the European and American versions. These versions were originally single-player and did not require a network. Therefore, with the addition of a Chinese localization patch, they could be run as single-player. This finally solved the problem of a large number of offline players being unable to play Warcraft III.
In this regard, Jiangnan Group's attitude was basically to pretend not to see it. After all, users without home internet were not Huang He's user base for the time being, so it was fine to let them play the single-player version. This would also cultivate their interest in Warcraft III.
When their families eventually installed internet, the pirated American single-player games would not be able to compare with the game experience of the Chinese server's online version. At that time, they would naturally transition to the oo game platform. These users, cultivated by piracy, were all potential users for Huang He!
It is worth mentioning that later, as the pirated American version entered China, Huang He even took these pirated copies to tease Allen Adhan. He questioned Allen Adhan for worrying that the Chinese legitimate version would encroach on their American market. But this time, American piracy was encroaching on Huang He's Chinese market. Did Allen Adhan need to be responsible for something? This made Allen Adhan afraid to use oo to chat with Huang He for a while.
Ahem, back to the topic. As time arrived, Liu Chuanye finally entered the game smoothly. However, before he could even start playing, Liu Chuanye was stunned.
Because Liu Chuanye was greeted by a CG animation.
As is well known, Blizzard's main job is making CG animations, and making games is their part-time job. They also have the nickname of "CG factory," claiming to make games with their feet and CG with their hearts.
Later, there was a company called Riot Games, whose nickname was making games with their feet and music with their hearts.
Blizzard has made many CG animations, and almost all of their games are accompanied by a large amount of CG animation for promotion. Later, someone evaluated all of Blizzard's CG animations and unanimously agreed that the CG for Warcraft III ranked among the top three CGs for all of Blizzard's games.
In fact, for that era, the CG effect of Warcraft III could be described as a groundbreaking CG. Every frame hit the nerves of gamers at that time, such as the opening CG of the game.
This was a scene of orcs fighting humans. Although the battle was fierce at the beginning, it was still normal. Both sides displayed their skilled combat techniques. The fight was full of power, like a Hollywood blockbuster, making Liu Chuanye unconsciously engrossed, wondering who between the orcs and humans would win.
"Perhaps both sides will suffer heavy losses, and neither can defeat the other!" Liu Chuanye predicted halfway through. Then, a dark green fireball fell from the sky, causing a huge explosion. Afterwards, a giant stone giant, engulfed in flames, roared across the screen.
Finally, the camera shifted to the pond where the battle had taken place, but the orcs and humans were no longer there. Instead, their mangled corpses were.
This scene deeply shocked Liu Chuanye. The two warriors who had been fighting fiercely, living up to the name of brave warriors, turned out to be as fragile as toys, dying in the hands of their enemies. And this green flaming giant also instilled a sense of fear in Liu Chuanye's bones.
"Just for this CG, this game is amazing!" Liu Chuanye licked his lips and eagerly entered the game's story campaign. It seemed he wouldn't consider the multiplayer mode until he had cleared the story campaign.
At 6 AM the next morning, Liu Chuanye, still sitting in front of the computer, was startled awake by his mother's frantic knocking. He hurriedly shut down the computer, put on his backpack, and went to class with dark circles under his eyes.
"Liu Chuanye, you didn't stay up all night playing computer, did you!" His mother keenly sensed something was wrong with her son. He didn't look like he had a good night's sleep.
"No, I just stayed up late reviewing last night, Mom. I can't talk now, I'll be late for morning reading. I'm going to class!" After saying that, Liu Chuanye fled home like lightning and rushed to school.
"Liu Chuanye, why didn't you reply to my oo!"
"Yeah, you didn't reply to mine either. Did you start an online relationship with someone else again?" his classmates teased him.
"No, I was playing Warcraft III. I got so engrossed that I didn't even reply to my own oo!" Liu Chuanye explained.
"Holy crap, you actually downloaded it!"
"No way, I've been queuing until next month, and you're already playing!" They all expressed their envy and then eagerly asked Liu Chuanye about his experience with the game.
"How should I put it?" Liu Chuanye hesitated for a moment, then glanced at He Anrong, and then loudly declared, "This game is much more fun than a girlfriend!"
Well, Liu Chuanye was telling the truth, and it wasn't just him. All the men who had played this game thought the same.