YY and Miracle MU's fifteen-day internal testing was coming to an end.
During the internal testing period, YY and Miracle MU discovered some bugs and made timely fixes and upgrades. However, the difference in influence between the two products during the internal testing was like heaven and earth.
Miracle MU continued to advertise on the internet. At the same time, it started to burn money. It did a lot of offline promotion in first-tier cities. In addition, it gave away mobile phones and laptops for more than ten days. Now, the number of people who paid attention to the game had reached seven to eight million.
Seven to eight million people. Most of the users in the country who could play large-scale games were here.
Miracle MU kept releasing internal testing invitation codes to give some users a chance to participate. At the same time, it kept releasing pictures and details of the game's internal testing. Although most people couldn't play the game, they had a very high understanding of it. It was the first time that people in the industry saw Storm Entertainment's brutal promotion methods. Seeing that Miracle MU was gaining more and more attention on the internet, they all concluded that this game would become the new king of domestic games in 2002.
As for Legend of Mir, which was currently at its peak, Miracle MU was putting a lot of pressure on it. After all, compared to Miracle MU, Legend of Mir still had a lot of shortcomings. The two were fundamentally not on the same level.
While the attention of the netizens was attracted by Miracle MU, Li Mu's real focus was on YY.
He understood the lifespan of a game too well. Not many games could live for more than three years. Even if they did, the income would drop significantly. Although the revenue of online games was strong, they weren't unique. They didn't have enough user loyalty. At any time, a more fun game could come out to replace it.
The online game market was really a case of the Yangtze River's new waves replacing the old. Sometimes, a new wave could beat a bunch of old waves to death.
However, compared to online games, YY was the most powerful core of an online empire. If it was maintained well, it could be profitable for at least twenty years. It could make money from the PC era all the way to the mobile era. Even if smart wearable devices and VR devices really rose up in the future, they wouldn't be a threat to the powerful social instant messaging software.
What pleased Li Mu the most was that YY's internal testing was going smoothly. Not only was it going smoothly in terms of technology and product, but it was also going smoothly in terms of confidentiality due to the high-profile Miracle MU that attracted attention.
More than ten days had passed, but there was no news of YY in the industry.
According to the time of the internal testing, the first product to end the internal testing was YY.
Due to confidentiality, the testing tasks Li Mu set for YY were only internal testing and not public testing. After solving all the problems found in the internal testing, they could go online immediately.
The internal testing of Miracle MU was basically coming to an end. In fact, there were no more bugs found in the last two to three days of internal testing. The technical staff evaluated that the current stability of the program, the stability of the Chinese translation, and the stability of the server had all met the requirements for official operation. However, because Miracle MU had announced a specific time for internal testing, it had to be officially released after fifteen days before the official public testing. In fact, the main purpose of the public testing was to let people try out the game for free. First, they would use the excuse that the public testing was free and didn't delete files to attract users. It was like a free public chapter of an online novel. First, they had to cultivate the user's loyalty, and when the user's loyalty reached a certain level, they would start charging.
On the fifteenth day of YY's internal testing and the fourteenth day of Miracle MU's internal testing, Li Mu once again gathered the core staff for a meeting. During the meeting, he announced a surprising decision to everyone: delay the release of YY, and the specific release date was still to be determined. Miracle MU's public testing would be carried out according to the original plan. After fifteen days of internal testing, the public testing would be launched on the sixteenth day.
Everyone was surprised by Li Mu's decision, especially Kong Lingyu. He knew how much Li Mu valued YY. He knew that in Li Mu's eyes, YY was more important than anything else. The entire product architecture and technical architecture of YY were personally designed by Li Mu. He had poured a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it. It was almost like his child. Why did he want to delay the release date of YY for no reason?
To this, Li Mu's answer was: "According to the original plan, YY will be officially released tomorrow at eight o 'clock. However, for the past two days, I've been thinking about the release sequence of YY and Miracle MU. Should YY be released before or after Miracle MU?"
Everyone was even more puzzled. The original plan was for both products to be released after fifteen days of internal testing. The difference was that YY's internal testing was done secretly, while Miracle MU's publicity had been high profile since the day of its internal testing. Seeing that YY's internal testing had ended, what was the purpose of changing the plan at the last minute?
Moreover, the most fundamental question was that YY and Miracle MU were two completely unrelated products under two different companies. Could there be some kind of connection between the two?
Lin Ching-ah's thought process was different from the group of technical staff. When the technical staff heard this question, the first thing they thought about was whether there was some kind of connection between the two products. This was just a judgment question, and the answer in their hearts was already leaning toward "no." However, Lin Ching-ah knew that since Li Mu had considered it this way, there must be some kind of connection between the two products. Therefore, she needed to figure out what kind of connection there was between the two products.
Soon, while others were still thinking about whether they should choose "yes" or "no" in a judgment question, Lin Ching-ah had already found the key point.
"Li Zong, I think YY should be released after Miracle MU."
Li Mu asked her, "What did you think about it?"
Lin Ching-ah said, "I didn't think about the specifics. I just think that Miracle MU's early publicity is too strong, and YY doesn't have any publicity. If we directly launch YY, it'll be the same as launching another round of publicity like Miracle MU's closed beta. The cost is too high. If Miracle MU is released first, it will definitely attract a lot of users in a short period of time. In that case, we can think of a way to use the popularity of Miracle MU's open beta to promote our YY."
Li Mu smiled, nodded, and said, "You're right. It's like how entertainment companies always use established big stars to promote small stars who just debuted. For a small star who just debuted, the actual effect of spending tens of millions of dollars to crash a concert might not even be as good as him appearing on stage once in the middle of a big star's concert. Now that 'Miracle Mu' is the big star in our hands, since 'Miracle Mu' is now the focus of the people's attention, we might as well let 'Miracle Mu' be released first. When it has users, it will be much easier for us to promote YY. Otherwise, now that so many people's attention is on 'Miracle Mu', if we re-promote YY, the effect is likely to be greatly reduced because the users' expectations for 'Miracle Mu' are too high."
Sun Qian, who had joined the Makino Technology team during the Easy Listening era, suddenly raised his right hand. Li Mu saw him raise his hand and gestured for him to speak. "Sun Qian, tell me what you think." Sun Qian said excitedly.
Sun Qian said excitedly. "I have an idea. If we do as you suggested and place the YY group after 'Miracle MU', then we can make a big deal out of the YY group function. I have been following the situation of the Legend of Mir. Guilds are very common in all the major servers, and the guilds are very united. However, the problem is that there isn't a good channel for guild communication. The guild chat in the game isn't reliable. Firstly, it can't receive offline messages. Secondly, there isn't a way to save chat records. Thirdly, the design of the Legend of Mir chat isn't suitable for a large group chat. It's very easy to miss the content, and it's very difficult to go back and find the content. This problem also exists in 'Miracle MU'. The gamers need a real group chat tool, and our YY group is their savior."
Although YY and Miracle MU are essentially two different products, and even belong to different companies, we know in our hearts that these two products are open to each other, so we have to try our best to explore the points where these two products can be combined. Once they can be combined on a certain level, it will be a considerable boost for both products. It doesn't make much sense for the two products to start together, so we might as well let the awesome product go first. "
After listening to this, everyone understood why Li Mu wanted to launch YY after 'Miracle MU'.
Compared to YY, 'Miracle MU' was well prepared. Tens of millions of users were paying close attention to 'Miracle MU'. They were all looking forward to its release. Everyone was waiting for the 2.5D MMORPG, which could be said to be an epoch-making MMORPG, to end its internal testing and officially open beta. 'Miracle MU' was definitely the most popular product on the internet in China. Therefore, Li Mu decided to temporarily change the launch plan and let 'Miracle MU' be launched first.
Within Makino Technology, this strategy had become the standard operating rule for future products launched at the same time. The staff called it 'Let the awesome product go first'.
…
In April, the weather in Yanjing had begun to warm up significantly.
Zhao Kang's internet cafe had been opened. More than a hundred brand-new computers, clean, tidy, and high-class internal space made the internet cafe, called 'E Family', quickly become the favorite of the top students from the surrounding universities.
The name 'E Family' was given by Zhao Kang. This project was almost run by him alone. At first, he insisted on Li Mu naming it, but Li Mu didn't agree. Instead, he threw the naming rights to him. In the end, he thought for a long time before he came up with such a name. According to him, the letter 'E' represented the 'E Era', which was the most popular letter on the internet. As for the combination of 'E Family' and 'E Family', it had two meanings. One was the home of the internet, and the other was a homonym for 'family'.
'E Family' and 'E Family' were quite interesting.
The internet cafe had been very popular since the day it opened. It was almost full 24 hours a day. Apart from the 20 minutes of cleaning after every morning, the internet cafe operated at full capacity almost all the time.
Zhao Kang bought a reliable multi-function software for internet cafe management, membership, and cashier. He also hired a reliable manager. Together with a few network managers and salespeople who worked in shifts, the operation of the internet cafe was very smooth.
In the first two days of the internet cafe's opening, most of the users only played two games and one software: Half-life, Legend of Mir, and QQ.
However, at seven o 'clock that night, almost 90% of the more than a hundred computers in the internet cafe were running a game –' Miracle MU '.
The low-key Zhao Kang pretended to be an ordinary customer. He sat side by side with Li Mu in front of the computer. The internet cafe was bustling with noise. Everyone was talking about the 'Miracle MU' opening of registration at eight o 'clock sharp.
Although the client of "Miracle MU" could be downloaded a long time ago, users couldn't play it at all because they didn't have an invitation code. Today was the day that "Miracle MU" officially opened for beta testing. "Miracle MU" had been promoted for so many days, and users had been looking forward to it for a long time. Therefore, before eight o 'clock, the computers in the E Family Internet Cafe were all occupied by "Miracle MU" fans.
These people from the National People's Congress came in groups of two, three, or four friends. There were even eight people in a dormitory. They were waiting for the moment the registration opened to rush into this long-awaited game world.
From time to time, someone would shout, "Aiya, there are still twenty minutes left. Everyone, pay attention. We are the first to register and join, and we have the chance to become the most awesome person in the server. If we have the chance to create the first guild in the server, that would be even more awesome!"
Someone else said, "When you register later, you must study the characters carefully. The characters in this game are much more complicated than Legend of Mir. I heard from users who participated in the closed beta that the coordination of the characters in this game is very important. Let's choose a different character to familiarize ourselves with and find the pattern. Let's see which characters are easier to coordinate with!"
Other than these people who were seriously discussing the game, there were also impatient people who kept cursing, "Damn, why is time passing so slowly! I can't wait any longer! "
Zhao Kang whispered to Li Mu, "'Miracle MU' is really popular now. This game will definitely be popular once it's released!"
Li Mu smiled and said, "It will definitely be popular. The question is how popular it will be."
As he spoke, Li Mu asked him, "How are the monthly activation codes for our Legendary Overlord selling recently?"
Zhao Kang said, "It's still the same. It's only a million a month. It can't go any higher."
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