It is reported that Blizzard's return to the national server will be officially announced within a month, and NetEase will still be responsible.

DoNews March 13 news, according to Jinghe reports, NetEase will officially announce the return of the Blizzard game national server at the end of March and early April. The operation of the national server will be operated by NetEase Interactive Entertainment Guangzhou and Leihuo will be responsible for marketing. Together with the former NetEase This is consistent with what Blizzard head Zhang Dong said.

According to the report, unlike the previous company that was specially established to be responsible for the operation of Blizzard games, this time the two major business groups of NetEase Games have joined forces to take charge of Blizzard games. “This seems to be another emphasis on Blizzard games, but it also seems like Both sides get what they need."

The current separation of publishing and operations is relatively rare in the industry. The reason why Thunderfire is responsible for Blizzard game marketing this time is mainly for the following reasons:

Early 2023 After NetEase and Blizzard "separated", Leihuo's "Backwater Cold" PC game took advantage of the situation to launch the "Warcraft Veteran Server" to take over some "World of Warcraft" players. From a publicity point of view, it gave the Warcraft players who had "nowhere to go" at the time I feel NetEase’s sincerity in treating players.

The mobile game "Eternal Calamity" developed by Thunder Fire 24 Studio will be launched for testing on April 1st, which is close to the time when NetEase officially announced the return of Blizzard's national server. There may be certain promotional and marketing issues between the two parties. Linkage.

Leihuo has taken a fancy to the value of Blizzard's game IP and is expected to obtain the IP authorization of "World of Warcraft" through the return of Blizzard's national server and develop a mobile game version of "World of Warcraft".

Regarding the specific time, the media quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that it will be mainly based on the rhythm of the "World of Warcraft" version update. According to the roadmap of "World of Warcraft", the game will have four major version updates in 2024. From a time perspective, the "earliest" version of the national server of Warcraft may be back online in the 10.2.7 version at the end of March. "Late" is also the eve of version 11.0, and we do not rule out the possibility that it will be launched on April 1, the day when the "Eternal Tribulation" mobile game starts testing.

The report also mentioned the potential reason for being operated by NetEase Interactive Entertainment Guangzhou: It may be that after the resumption of cooperation, NetEase will no longer have a dedicated department responsible for operating Blizzard games, but will be classified as other cooperative products. NetEase Interactive Entertainment Cooperation Products Department operates.

Currently, the only product that the two parties are still cooperating on, "Diablo: Immortal", is also developed by the Guangzhou team of NetEase Interactive Entertainment's Singularity Division.

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