With the official scheduling of Diablo: Immortal on June 2, whether you are the "riot" or "black" in the player's mouth, there must be a question that haunts you - what about the Warcraft mobile game?
Back in the fourth quarter of 2020 earnings call, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed that Blizzard is developing a number of free mobile game products based on the "Warcraft" IP. It wasn't until early March that Blizzard said it would announce more about mobile games in May.
Therefore, after being hung by Blizzard for more than a year, in the early morning of May 4, Beijing time, the first adaptation of the mobile game of the legendary IP "Warcraft" that spanned 28 years was officially announced. However, players are not waiting for the original end game transplant masterpiece like "Diablo: Immortal", this mobile game called "Warcraft Arclight Rumble", along with the joy of exploding the pot in the game, but also let the players outside the game really explode the pot.
Gameplay videos
Tower Defense Becomes Tower Attack, Warcraft Version of Clash of Clans?
From "Ball Battle" to "Jelly Bean Man Battle", this year, most of the games with "Big Battle" in their names are happy products that can't be taken seriously. This of course also applies to Warcraft Arc Light Battle. In an interview with the media, the head of the game team said that the "Chaos" constantly emphasized in the promotional video is also to show "a very happy chaotic situation".
And this "joyful chaos" is also reflected in the gameplay of the game. Although many players' first impression after watching the promotional film is "Warcraft version of Clash of Clans", the official said that although the gameplay of this mobile game is inspired by tower defense games, this is not a real tower defense game, but a "tower attack" game.
Game demo video
According to reports, the current game has contained more than 65 well-known characters from the "Warcraft Universe", divided into five legions, each legion includes three types of units: leader, soldier and mage. The leader is the core of the team, and there are six vacant seats under each leader for the allocation of soldiers and mages, and they do not need to be subordinate to the leader, which also makes the platoon more flexible.
Each unit in the game has three talents, and while players can't directly control each unit's actions on the battlefield, they can change their behavior and patterns by adjusting their talents. For example, the Angry Chicken is a unit of nine chickens that kill enemies in a furious manner, but one of the talents allows one chicken to be turned into a huge tank, and the other eight chickens move around it, which also gives the Angry Chicken more combat mode and strategic value.
In addition to the symbiosis between factions and talents, the game also contains three different types of soldiers: melee, ranged, and flying, and there are also restraint relationships between them that can be used and changed. In addition, on the battlefield, in addition to sending out legions, players also need to turn the tide of battle by occupying certain key strongholds, so compared with simple tower defense games, Warcraft Arc Light Battle has a deeper strategic and operational space. In the words of the team leader, "Strategy games are like DNA engraved in our (Blizzard)'s body."
No card draw, high reduction, "small and beautiful" IP interpretation
In order to create a "small and beautiful" "tower attack" mobile game, the research and development team of "Warcraft Arc Light Battle" has reached a scale of "slightly less than a hundred people", although it is not as good as the team of three hundred people in the "World of Warcraft" terminal tour, but it is by no means a "small workshop outsourced production" that "riot blacks" have made out of nothing.
In terms of details, the classic characters born from Warcraft to World of Warcraft in the past 28 years have appeared in this game, and even the map design is extremely restorative. From the Eastern Kingdom to Kalimdor to the Forest of Alvin, there are 70 maps in various styles, seeking to restore the entire world of Azeroth.
In addition to the campaign mode, the game also offers PvP gameplay and dungeon challenge mode, and these dungeons are all from the classic design of World of Warcraft. In order to enrich the playability, the mode also adds a light Roguelike design, players can freely choose one of the three holy relics to bring in, to assist their own raiders.
At the same time, the art design of the game also fully considers the hardware limitations of the mobile game itself, such as the small size of the mobile phone screen. Therefore, on the basis of ensuring that the "Warcraft Universe" is fully restored, the art team also specially adopts a more saturated color rendering, so that players can more easily distinguish between different types of units.
It is precisely because of these visual and IP reduction considerations that the overall look and feel of "Warcraft Arc Light Battle", especially the UI part, is very close to the other blockbuster "Hearthstone" hatched by the "Warcraft Universe". In fact, the game does have the same Azeroth Tavern flair as Hearthstone – the game's starting point is an ancient game console set up in the basements of various taverns in Azeroth.
In the trailer, there are many small models at the bottom of these consoles, and when the console is launched, these models jump on the console as if they have been given life, thus starting the battle in Warcraft Arc.
It is worth mentioning that as an F2P (Free to Play) game, the paid design of Warcraft Arc Light Battle is also quite conscientious. Team leader said that the currency used in the store can be obtained by completing the campaign mode in the game, except for cash purchases, while all characters (units) can be purchased directly in the store. In other words, you can unlock all the characters as long as you continue to play the game, and there is no such thing as random or draw cards.
At present, Blizzard has not yet announced the official launch time of the game, and the research and development team also said that it will take several months for the 70 battle mode maps alone to be fully designed. However, the official has opened pre-registration on Google Play and said that it will soon open closed tests in some areas.
Taking into account both size and size is the way to refine the IP matrix
Although from the various information released by the official, "Warcraft Arc Light Battle" is not a skinning game with fast money, but a real IP derivative mobile game of "Warcraft Universe". However, due to the far distance from the expected end game port, players are still a little speechless about this small volume game that debuted in the name of "the first Warcraft mobile game". In the Chinese community, one of the most liked comments was "Both white and black are silent."
In the English-speaking community, there is no shortage of voices of decline. In the final analysis, players still show regret that this mobile game is "not heavy enough" and "not big enough".
However, in GameLook's view, players' regrets are not necessary. On the one hand, Blizzard's Warcraft IP adaptation mobile game is not only one, and the "World of Warcraft" mobile game transplanted in the real sense may have more news in the near future. On the other hand, in terms of the idea of creating an IP matrix, small-volume products have become a normalized choice for top-end game IP in Europe and the United States.
The most representative is the "League of Legends" under the fist. In November last year, Riot Forge Studios, a subsidiary of Fist, held a special event to launch four new games built around the League of Legends IP. These four products are all created by third-party studios in the name of "League of Legends", although they are "outsourced" products, and the volume is relatively small, but they have played a very beneficial supplement to the fullness of the "League of Legends Universe".
King of Destruction: League of Legends
From a business logic point of view, the value of these small-scale products is no less than the animation "League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities" that won the award last year and swept the top ratings of Netflix's multinational countries, which has played a role in making the IP threshold as low as possible. Compared with the "League of Legends" game itself, which focuses on the goal of improving competitiveness and professionalism, IP creation is obviously aimed at meeting the needs of more audiences. Therefore, too hardcore large-scale products can not maximize the coverage of IP audiences, through small-volume, casual products, in order to create more potential audiences for the creation of the IP universe.
The same applies to "League of Legends E-sports Manager", "Genting Game" or Blizzard's "Hearthstone", these products compared to "League of Legends" or "World of Warcraft", undoubtedly have the advantage of lighter volume and lower operating threshold, not only more in line with the characteristics of mobile game socialization, fragmentation, and leisure, but also allow more former "cloud players" to have the opportunity to personally contact these top IP, thus laying a more solid player base for the long-term construction of the IP matrix.
Hearthstone
Therefore, although the small-scale "Warcraft Arc Light Battle" may not be so attractive to hardcore warcraft veteran players, it bears the responsibility of "Warcraft Universe" to be close to the people. Especially in the European and American markets where ultra-casual games are prevalent, many casual mobile game players who have not been exposed to terminal games will find it difficult to resist its temptation in the face of the "Warcraft Arc Light Battle" with a happy atmosphere, simple hands-on, fresh painting style and friendly payment, and become new loyal fans of Warcraft IP.
For hard-core Warcraft veteran players, with a steady stream of living water injection, the "Warcraft Universe" can continue to prosper, and the heavyweight products they expect have the soil to take root. With the announcement of "Warcraft Arc Light Battle", it is believed that in the near future, Blizzard will also bring more news of Warcraft IP mobile games, and the feud between "alliance" and "tribe" in the era of mobile games may also open a new chapter.
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