According to these players, the Chinese server wasn't this popular initially. However, after the release of fifteen new special maps half a month ago, everyone found these maps incredibly fun.
Some might wonder if these fifteen special maps were only obtainable through blind boxes, and how everyone got to play them.
This was because, to promote these fifteen maps, the official announcement stated that for the first five days after the third phase of blind box sales, these fifteen maps would be freely accessible to all players.
After five days, these maps would enter an inactive state and require player activation to be used. Thus, all players got to play these fifteen maps within the first five days, and were instantly hooked.
Each of these fifteen maps was incredibly popular and offered immense replayability. The most outstanding and beloved among them were five maps named "Chong Chong Gao Shan, Chong Chong Xian Zu"
"Guard Athena"
"Thermopylae"
"Warcraft Little Sprites"
"Battle of the Three Realms"
The maps for these five games were all renowned in another world's history.
Among them, "Chong Chong Gao Shan, Chong Chong Xian Zu" featured fixed paths for troops to spawn from four directions. Every set period, hundreds of units would refresh from the entrance. If these units managed to complete the path and reach the teleportation point in the center of the map, they would attack the teleportation point.
Once more than twenty units attacked, the game would be lost.
Players had to build arrow towers along the path to eliminate these units, ensuring all of them were killed before they reached the teleportation point.
As everyone can see, this map is the progenitor of all tower defense games in later eras and the world's first tower defense game.
"Thermopylae" is also a tower defense game, albeit a variation. Players no longer build towers but must control a hero to kill the continuously refreshing enemy units until the Thermopylae pass is breached.
"Guard Athena" is also a tower defense game, and players control heroes here as well. However, the hero models have been replaced with legendary heroes from world history, such as King Arthur, Lu Bu, and Zhuge Liang.
Simultaneously, the attacking enemy units have transformed from swarms of soldiers into individual heroes. These heroes also continuously grow stronger, evolving from initial common swordsmen to great warriors, then to superpowered individuals, and finally, legendary gods will also appear.
It is rumored that the current record holder for "Guard Athena" has already encountered Zeus, the King of the Gods.
"Thermopylae" and "Guard Athena" share a common characteristic: besides the continuous stream of opponents, the maps also drop various items that can enhance players' power, such as equipment, forging manuals, ability books, and skill books. Players must defend against opponents while collecting these items to become stronger.
"Warcraft Little Sprites" is not a tower defense game. As the name suggests, this is a mobile-like game. Each player has a fixed five hours, and their objective is to capture the 108 different Warcraft Little Sprites present on the map.
After five hours, players are automatically teleported to the Sprite Trainer Competition in the center of the map to vie for the glory of being the world's top sprite trainer.
In essence, this is practically a replica of "Pokémon," but implementing the "Pokémon" gameplay on a Warcraft map is undoubtedly extremely novel.
The last game is called "Battle of the Three Realms," and it is also the most different among these five games.
The previous four games are basically PvE, where players battle against computer-generated opponents.
However, "Battle of the Three Realms" is an absolute PvP battle. The game map features three paths: upper, middle, and lower. Each path has defensive towers, and their respective soldiers will continuously spawn to attack the opponent.
Players must assist their soldiers, destroy the opponent's defensive towers, and fend off attacks from players of the opposing faction, ultimately destroying the opponent's main base to achieve victory.
So, doesn't this sound like an incredibly familiar game has been born?
However, this is not the historical Dota but Chen Hai's 3C. Although there are many similarities on the game map, there are still significant differences.
Huang He currently has no intention of unleashing the super trump card that is Dota. This is Huang He's ace in the hole, meant to be revealed at a more opportune moment.
In conclusion, by this point, everyone should understand that Huang He has recreated classic maps originally crafted by players using the Warcraft III map editor into special maps, then put them into blind boxes.
Therefore, these maps were essentially player-created, but that mostly happened after 2005. Only with the release of the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne editor, which greatly enhanced the map editor's capabilities, were players able to create so many diverse games.
Currently, the Warcraft III map editor can only create traditional game maps with varying terrain features and cannot accommodate more complex settings.
Of course, Huang He, possessing official power and data, is an exception. Therefore, he was able to create these classic maps ahead of the players and also secure the intellectual property rights for their gameplay, completely transforming them into Jiangnan Group's proprietary game maps to be sold in blind boxes.
Even more devious was Huang He's decision to grant everyone five days of free playtime.
This was clearly a strategy to get people hooked and then fleece them.
The result was as Huang He anticipated: after experiencing the fifteen free maps, most players found that the main content of Warcraft III seemed less enjoyable than these fifteen maps.
Of course, the main content of Warcraft III is undoubtedly more refined. However, Warcraft III had already been released for over a year, and while there were rumors about the next expansion, Blizzard had been conspicuously silent about specific details. Consequently, most Warcraft III players had inevitably entered a lull.
Except for those players who were highly passionate about PvP, most casual players found Warcraft III to be becoming tedious and began seeking fresher, more engaging games.
Coincidentally, at this very moment, the fifteen classic new special maps from the future appeared.
Upon seeing these fifteen special maps, players' initial reaction was shock. They had never imagined that a game could offer such variety. Simply by updating a map, it could generate such a wide range of gameplay; they were completely astounded by these fifteen special maps.
The subsequent feeling was enjoyment, immense enjoyment, so much so that it sent shivers down their spines.
Especially the tower defense genre, this unprecedented new game type instantly struck a chord with a large number of players. This is why three of the five classic maps selected were tower defense maps; they were simply too novel and too fun.
Domestic players were naturally immersed in these fifteen classic maps, and subsequently began frantically purchasing boxes in an attempt to activate the fifteen classic maps.
Although the price of 300 yuan per map was incredibly steep, if it were obtained through a lottery in a blind box, it seemed like a price that could be accepted.
Concurrently, Jiangnan Group made a rare concession by introducing a friendly feature: the room host map system.
As long as the host who created the room possessed the map, players invited by the host or those who could quickly join the room could experience the fun of that map without needing to activate it themselves.
This way, even players without money could experience these fifteen maps. This prevented the free-riders from falling into complete despair, as the price of 300 yuan per map would deter over 90% of players in China.
Similarly, the number of players who could afford to spend 300 yuan for a special map was extremely limited.
Therefore, these players immediately became absolute favorites in the game. Once they created a room, they barely had to wait; the room would instantly be filled with players scrambling to join. This was a level of enjoyment rarely experienced in normal gameplay.
However, players without maps were in a miserable situation. They had to nervously refresh the map page constantly. As soon as they spotted a room with a special map, they had to click to enter within 0.1 seconds, otherwise the room would be instantly full, and they would have no chance to enter such a room.
At the same time, as the host, players had the right to set room passwords, remove players freely during the preparation phase, and invite their friends to join the room.
The host only needed to set a password when creating the room, which would prevent other players from joining, allowing only friends who knew the password or those they directly invited from their friend list.
Consequently, players who couldn't afford the maps discovered that if they didn't want to compete with a large number of players for the publicly available rooms, the best approach was to find players who owned maps, add them as friends, and ask them to proactively invite them into their rooms.
As a result, a large number of free-riding players transformed into sycophants, showering these map-owning players with flattery, all for the sake of obtaining a friend slot and a promise that they would be immediately invited to join once the other player started a game.
Naturally, the players who purchased the game maps immediately experienced unparalleled satisfaction, the pleasure derived from real-world players acting as sycophants.
This was a pleasure that was difficult to obtain under normal gameplay circumstances, and the sense of satisfaction was explosive, leading players to declare that the 300 yuan was truly worth it.
While some players were willing to be sycophants, others were not. They began to endure hardship, meticulously saving their money, which they then exchanged for blind boxes, all for the purpose of owning a special map themselves and experiencing the joy of others being sycophants.
Thus, a perfect virtuous cycle was born.