Under Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's relentless urging, COG's beta testing date was brought forward to the 13th of February before the new year.
GA's representative expressed that this was a very risky decision, as COG wasn't perfect yet. At least from the designer Raman Clive's point of view, bringing the beta date forward was a very stupid decision.
What was the point of testing a week earlier?
Raman Clive and GA wanted to reject Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's suggestion, as they didn't think it was a big deal for a Chinese company to release a game a week or two earlier than them.
COG was going to be released into the global market. What about the Chinese company releasing League of Legends? At most, it would only be able to cause a ruckus in the Chinese market.
However, Emperor Dynasty Entertainment was very determined, and GA couldn't ignore the huge Chinese market, so they brought the beta date forward.
The reason why it was set on the 13th of February was because Chen Mo had already announced that there would be a special Valentine's Day event on the 14th of February and the week after.
This included limited Valentine's Day skins, limited couple portraits, and special matchmaking quests.
Obviously, Emperor Dynasty Entertainment didn't want to clash with League of Legends at such a crucial time. After all, League of Legends came prepared for Valentine's Day event. For the players, Valentine's Day only happened once a year, and COG … it didn't matter if it was released two days later.
If it was released on the 14th of February, the statistics would be very low.
Lin Chaoxu's sharp instincts told him that Chen Mo came prepared, and if he couldn't come up with a solution, the situation would become very bad.
It all depended on the feedback from the players after COG was released.
…
On the 13th of February, COG (Chinese name: Clash of the Titans) began its beta testing. Emperor Dynasty Entertainment used all sorts of channels to promote it, even using some of Fantasy Gaming Platform's resources.
Although COG's success was uncertain, the smooth promotion of LoL had given Lin Chaoxu a lot of confidence in this new game mode. Therefore, for the first time ever, he had invested a lot of resources into a game that was in testing.
Although many of the original players of COG were Chen Mo's hardcore fans, COG was still their favorite game, so many people chose to give it a try.
Moreover, with Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's promotion, there were many other players who had played League of Legends before.
After all, these were the only two games that had been released before the New Year that were more popular and talked about. They couldn't avoid them even if they wanted to.
COG's beta version was the same as Warcraft's map in terms of playstyle, numerical system, and hero abilities. There weren't many changes.
Because in Raman Clive's opinion, some of the original designs for COG were more complete, especially for the core group of players. COG's art style and controls were some of the key factors that made them like the game. Making changes without careful consideration would mean giving up on this group of core players, and it would not be worth it.
The main difference between the closed beta version and the original map was the packaging and gameplay.
Cog didn't have the rights to the relevant heroes, so he could only redo all the models and adjust the names accordingly to avoid legal risks.
After all, GA was a big company, and they were afraid of being blackmailed.
For example, the Death Knight was renamed to Dark Knight, Dark Ranger was renamed to Shadow Ranger, Keeper of the Grove was renamed to Elven Prophet, etc.
There were also heroes like the Paladin, only the models were changed, but not the name. Since Paladin was a classic class in Western Fantasy, there was no copyright to it.
These changes looked a bit like a knockoff to COG's old players, but it didn't really matter. From Raman Clive's point of view, this game wouldn't be limited to players who had played Warcraft, and most players wouldn't feel that these models were out of place.
After all, it was a European and American company. GA's art designers were very familiar with Western fantasy themes. The setting and hero models were very authentic, so this kind of imitation was not particularly strong.
There were some minor adjustments to the map elements and hero abilities, but nothing major.
Other than that, there were some additional playstyles and profit models.
Similar to League of Legends, COG also made a friend system, matchmaking system, shop system, etc. In terms of profit model, COG also made all heroes free, and paid for their skins. However, there were two things that were different from League of Legends: card fees and unboxing.
COG created a card system, which was like an additional skill strengthening system. Every hero could equip a deck (with four cards), which strengthened four of the hero's skills.
For example, Dark Ranger's Dark Arrow gave extra damage, and would summon little skeletons. There were three different cards that could be used for Dark Arrow, increasing damage, increasing little skeletons' health, and increasing little skeletons' duration. Players could choose any one of them to add to their deck.
According to Raman Clive's idea, this card system would increase the playstyle of the game, allowing players to choose their own deck. Of course, it was also to increase profits.
GA didn't approve of a game that relied solely on skins, as it was too risky. It was completely out of the players' control over whether or not they bought the skins, and wouldn't be able to guarantee the game's profitability.
Unless COG could become popular all over the world. But GA didn't think that was realistic.
GA's suggestion was to either set a buyout threshold, or add a fee system that was linked to attributes. After much consideration, Raman Clive chose the latter. He felt that compared to the slight unfairness, a buyout threshold might cause him to lose more players.
As for the way to obtain cards and skins, it was very "European": unboxing.
Unlike unboxing in League of Legends, everything in COG was obtained by unboxing, and couldn't be purchased directly.
Players could obtain gold through the game, and game coins could be obtained by topping up. These two types of coins would open different chests. Gold chests would mainly open different cards and card pieces, while game coins chests would mainly open skins and cards.
Of course, the speed at which players could earn gold was strictly controlled, and the amount of gold needed to open chests would increase every week. Players definitely couldn't obtain all the cards through gold chests in the early stages, and to form a complete set of cards, they would need to top-up.
Moreover, what they got after topping up depended on luck, and it was possible that they would get cards of heroes that they didn't know how to play at all.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
