Although 2000 was the first year of online games in China, there were only "King of Kings" and "Net Three Kingdoms", without much competition. Earlier, there was only MUD (word online game). Chinese net swims really erupt should begin from 2001, a large number of net swims like bamboo shoots after a spring rain ceaseless upper limit, snatching domestic net swims market. Today we will take stock of 2001 those who have appeared in the home of the ancient network games.
Stone Age
Open beta: January 2001
If you are an old player, you should be familiar with Stone Age, after all, this game was the most popular online game in The Chinese market before legend (no one)! As you can see from the 2001 market share chart above, Stone Age was number one, accounting for a quarter of all play time. It's worth noting that Legends killed many of its contemporaries, but Stone Age survived for 15 years.
Stone Age is a 2DMMORPG online game developed by Japanese company JSS (later transferred to huayi international) and released in 1999. Stone Age was only a minor hit in Japan at the time, until 2000, when it spread to China and caused a sensation.
The domestic online game market started in 2001. As the first Japanese online game introduced in history, Stone Age opened the era of "turn-based" online games in China. Despite the competition from three South Korean online game giants, Millennium, Red Moon and Dragon Clan, Stone Age gained a large number of users thanks to its Japanese style of painting and turn-based elements, accounting for nearly a quarter of the market share, making it the first online game in China.
Interestingly, the origin of plugins, which players now hate, has something to do with Stone Age. As the earliest games, game manufacturers did not resist plugins as much as they do now. Of course, the plug - in function at that time is very simple, with present professional term, it is simple script hang function actually, the function of abnormal condition of nothing at all.
"Software" that makes games easier is popular because of a lack of awareness about plug-ins. All players to "plug-in" do not conflict, but agreed to become common, everyone open hang, hang not huan, and the official surface although did not say, but basically acquiesce.
Unfortunately, by the time the authorities realised the evils of the plugins, it was too late to tackle them. At the time, Stone Age was in a state where everyone had plugins, and getting rid of them would only make the game a ghost suit. In addition, there were many problems such as the debut of Legend and copyright disputes, and Stone Age was officially discontinued in 2008.
Then the agent was replaced by Kingsoft, but the good times did not last long, kingsoft was soon replaced. It wasn't until 2013 that Wins became Stone Age's new agent, giving the game a new lease of life! However, feelings are not everything after all, and finally on April 8, 2016, the legendary online game Stone Age came to an end!
"One thousand"
Open beta: March 2001
"Millennium" is a martial arts online game developed by South Korea Actoz company, the game structure of a wonderful ancient martial arts virtual world. Through the practice of all kinds of mutually beneficial martial arts, travel to experience the fun of the game, and into the martial arts overlord, a generation of masters to create this endless hatred of the millennium river's lake.
The millennium's vast map is dotted with towns, each with a different architectural style. Towns are centers where people congregate, where you can buy and sell. Beyond the town lie endless mountains and plains, with beautiful scenery and treacherous waters, where you encounter all kinds of animals and monsters that you can kill not only for coins and potions, but also for weapons.
Millennium was listed in South Korea in 2000 and launched by Asia Union Interactive in China in 2001. At that time, online games were just emerging in China and were at a peak of its popularity. Together with Dragon Clan and Red Moon, it occupied the domestic online game market. However, with the launch of a lot of new games, as well as the replacement of the agency, and eventually due to poor operation, leakage of the original code led to the overflow of private servers and other reasons to stop running.
But that's not the end of the millennium game. Shanda bought about 29% of developer Actoz in 2004 and restarted Millennium's operations in 2008. Subsequently in May 2008, grand in the old version of the "millennium" on the basis of the launch of the new "millennium 3", is still in normal operation in the domestic.
On the other hand, it is a pity that on May 17, 2016, South Korea officially announced that millennium was officially discontinued after 16 years of operation, which also represents the official end of the old game.
"The red crescent"
Open beta: May 2001
Science fiction, full of fantasy, has always been a hot topic in the film and game industry. It is believed that many players still remember the huge popularity of the wandering Earth when it was released. Compared to science fiction movies, science fiction games are also the favorite genre of the gamer community.
As the introduction of the first domestic sci-fi online games, "the red crescent" has a big influence in China online game industry, in the era of China's online game of universe, compared to the world on the rotten street "fantasy", "martial arts", "red crescent" sci-fi for players to shine at the moment, is to make the game quickly catch on around the great river north and south.
Red Moon is a 2D online game developed by South Korea's ShiLi Network Co.Ltd. The game is based on the original comic book of the same name by Korean cartoonist Hwang Mi-na. The story takes place in a fictional world called Sigonis. The game was praised by gamers in early 2000 for its unique story, unusual sci-fi theme, and fast gameplay. It was also an MMORPG that led Korea into the early mobile game market in Korea.
Interestingly, apart from its contribution to the game, Red Moon has also contributed to the legislation of fake wealth and the craze of "seckilling" in China.
In 2003, a player named "Li Hongchen" in the game had his account number stolen, resulting in the official deletion of equipment. Then Li Hongchen and game agents bar, and step by step to the court. This bar, a direct sensation of the whole game, a new, serious problem: online games in the virtual property needs legislative protection? This problem has been until 2017, the two will pass the "General Provisions of the Civil Law", "virtual property into the law" was settled!
The "seckilling" of various activities in the market now, I believe you have long been accustomed to, and this "seckilling" craze, in fact, also comes from the red Moon.
At the beginning of the Chinese server launch, some mainland players went to the Taiwan server forum to look up the guide materials, Taiwan server players would say "xx seconds" in the discussion, so the image of the saying also spread to the mainland, the second kill is also popular in online games. Then seconds kill in each big online games prevailing, become the game at that time the most popular words! In 2007, "Xiaoxai" became a New Chinese word announced by the Ministry of Education!
Unfortunately, the good times of millennium, Dragon clan and Red Moon in China soon came to an end. Because of a strong opponent out of the line, that is the grand "Legend of Mir ii". Legend is really too successful, 2002 with 500 thousand online directly unified China's online game market!
More pit dad is, in the face of the decline of the game, the agent actually directly abandoned the son to run away. On the night of May 12, 2005, Red Moon "suddenly" shut down all its servers overnight, again in the form of "three nots" - no announcement, no notice, not even a greeting! Customer service phone was also cancelled at the same time, players complain no door, as if this game did not exist in the world in general!
"The dragon"
Open beta: June 14, 2001
Previously, we mentioned two other games that were competing with the other three in China at that time: Dragon Clan and Red Moon. Next, let's talk about Dragon Clan. Dragon Clan is an MMORPG game jointly developed by eSofNet and Samsung Electronics in 2001. Based on the fantasy novel "Dragon Clan" written by South Korean writer Lee Young-do, it is one of the representative fantasy online games.
There are five classes in the game: warrior, thief, archer, wizard and priest, and players must choose one of them to start the game. The choice of class is the most important. Different classes affect a character's abilities, combat styles, differences in weapon use, class-specific abilities, items that he or she carries at the beginning, etc.
"Dragon clan" novel at that time in South Korea has a hot sales of 2 million copies of the astonishing record, was originally published on the Internet in October 1997, by the majority of readers love and published, became the best-selling novel in South Korea. With a huge readership and fan base, the game has become extremely popular since its launch. After the introduction of domestic in 2001, with many professional play, beautiful screen effect, quickly swept the domestic Internet bar, became one of the most popular games at that time.
Jin Yong Online
Open beta: July 20, 2001
For Jin Yong, I believe that all of you are familiar with, his martial arts novels are the beginning of countless players of the dream of martial arts. Such a classic genre, of course, will inevitably be transformed into a game. In fact, back in 2001, China Net Dragon created a semi-real-time 2D online game called Jin Yong's Heroes Online, based on his novels.
Jin Yong online takes a high degree of freedom approach to gameplay, currently known as open-world sandbox gameplay. There are no character levels, classes, or storylines. From the moment you step into the game, you are left to navigate the virtual world created by Cha's 14 original novels.
The creative play mode of living alone also makes jin yong qunxia online break the occupation of the game market by games such as millennium, dragon clan and red moon, and become the TOP1 game in each major Internet cafe.
As a domestic online game, Jin Yong online is not only the originator of online martial arts games, taking over the market from Korean online games, but also exporting domestic online games to other countries for the first time. He opened the server in Southeast Asia and set off the upsurge of martial arts online games in southeast Asian countries. Today, there are still southeast Asian player groups on FB dedicated to discussing Jin Yong qunswordsman Online.
It is worth mentioning that Jin Yong Online also pioneered the propaganda mode of inviting game spokespersons for online games, and launched TV advertisements with Zhou Xun as the spokespersons on CCTV 8 in that year.
Later, due to the policy, game ads were excluded from TV screens for a long time. Therefore, the game ads of Jin Yong's Heroes Online became one of the few game ads ever broadcast on CCTV.
Surprisingly, Jin Yong's Legend of Heroes Online is still alive and even has a new server, so longtime players who are interested can go back and check it out.
Legend of Mir ii
Open beta: September 28, 2001
If review The development history of China's online games, so Chen Tianqiao's grand and grand agent "Legend of Mir ii" is absolutely a milestone node.
In 2001, "The Legend of MIR II" was introduced into China by Shanda, which was tepid in South Korea, and then started the legendary history of "The Legend of MIR II" in China. Legend of Mir II reached its peak in 2003, two years after it entered China. Take a simple example, "League of Legends" fire all over the country, the kind of scene we all experienced, a into the Internet cafe are open black. And "Legend" of the grand situation, but there has been but not.
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Although computers and Internet cafes have become the most common things in our daily life, they were new things in 2001, and the overall penetration rate of the whole country was quite low. However, Legend reached 30 million players under such conditions, and the number of online users at the same time exceeded 700,000. That's not an easy number to achieve until now, and there would be a big announcement if a game reached that number. This shows how hot and crazy the Legend of Mir ii was at that time.
Up to now, in the face of the new game with many times of pictures and complex gameplay, "The Legend of Mir II" still has a strong vitality. Not only is the official server, a variety of third-party "The Legend of MIR II" theme games also emerge in an endless stream, a variety of page games I believe we have also seen a lot of advertising, "the Legend of MIR II" still creates a substantial profit every year.
A Chinese Odyssey Online
Open beta: December 2001
It is certainly no stranger to NetEase's domestic players. Although NetEase's game business is now basically focused on mobile game business, there was a time when terminal game was also the top priority of NetEase. If you want to evaluate NetEase's terminal games, then "A Chinese Odyssey" and "Fantasy Westward Journey" these two games must not be missed.
Now, if players mention "A Chinese Odyssey", they are basically referring to "A Chinese Odyssey 2". In fact, before "A Chinese Odyssey 2" NetEase also launched "A Chinese Odyssey 1", probably many players have not played, or even heard of this game. There may also be players who have wondered, since there are 2, why haven't you seen 1? I was curious about it.
The reason is simple: A Chinese Odyssey 1 sucks. After the game was launched, it suffered a devastating blow due to technical and bug problems. Only half a year later, "A Chinese Odyssey 1" was completely shut down, without even leaving too much information on the Internet.
However, the speed failure of "A Chinese Odyssey 1" is not a bad thing, as the saying goes that failure is the mother of success. Based on the experience and lessons accumulated in "A Chinese Odyssey 1", NetEase subsequently developed two versions of "A Chinese Odyssey 2" and "Dream Westward Journey".
Above, how many have you played?