Rebirth of the Wild Age

At the beginning of the 21st century, the four companies of Great China were still equally famous.

After the government decided to promote adsl broadband technology, Datang, ZTE, and Huawei immediately followed up, and all of them used chipsets from Texas Instruments. Among them, Huawei has invested the most, and has even developed new access-end equipment specifically for adsl, which has been opened and used in many cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

Shida Networks has launched the ADSL broadband modem, Lenovo and Great Wall have launched the ADSL broadband PCI cards, and all of them use chips from Texas Instruments.

Great Wall's PCI cards are the most popular. Most of today's broadband users are telecom broadband, followed by Great Wall Broadband. Lenovo Broadband has relatively few users, which may be due to unfavorable operations. Anyway, it was crushed by the Great Wall for no reason.

In addition to adsl broadband, isdn, which began to develop in 1998, was once called broadband technology because its speed can reach 128k. In 2000, most Internet cafes were connected to isdn, which gave people the feeling that the Internet speed was so fast, because the telephone line dial-up Internet access only had a poor 56k speed.

In the first quarter of 2000, 1 million lines of adsl were installed across the country, and nearly 100,000 lines have been put into use at present. Note that it is 100,000 lines, not 100,000 users.

Everyone knows that adsl broadband is about to develop rapidly, and the direct impact of technological upgrading is that the existing backward technology will be greatly reduced in price.

In the second month after War of Gods and Demons was launched, 2911 (ISP service provider) suddenly announced zero Internet fee surfing, and dial-up Internet access only needs to pay a telephone fee of 3.6 yuan per hour. In order to fight back against 2911, Jinling Telecom directly announced that all Internet access fees are 1 yuan, that is to say, dial-up Internet access costs only 1 yuan per hour for Internet access and telephone charges. 163 and other service providers immediately followed up and greatly reduced the Internet access fee.

While dial-up Internet access fees have dropped sharply, isdn's Internet access fees have also been greatly reduced. The most ruthless one directly shouted out that Internet cafes are capped at 600 yuan per month.

As a result, Internet cafes across the country have followed suit with a big price cut. Even on weekends and summer vacations, the hourly Internet fee has almost dropped below 4 yuan.

adsl broadband is just emerging now, but there are a large number of service providers. Today, the initial installation fee for Telecom Broadband is more than 3,000 yuan, and the initial installation fee for Great Wall Broadband is more than 2,000 yuan. By next year, Telecom will directly drop it to more than 1,000 yuan, and Great Wall will simply jump the price of 500 yuan! The current broadband network fee is still very expensive, and the price will be reduced crazily next year, and the monthly subscription fee will be reduced to 60 to 200 yuan.

The price war has undoubtedly promoted the popularization of the Internet in China, and also provided the soil for the development of online games.

As far as this summer vacation is concerned, more than 90% of Internet cafes have increased their Internet speed to 128k due to the sharp reduction in ISDN Internet fees, which basically meets people's needs for sending emails, chatting on QQ, and visiting chat rooms.

However, there are still very few Internet cafes with broadband installed, and the initial installation fee of two to three thousand does not matter, but the monthly Internet fee is a continuous investment. Internet cafe owners can’t afford to wear broadband, because even with a 128k Internet speed, there is still no shortage of customers, and there are people queuing up to surf the Internet anytime, anywhere.

...

Fei Xiaodong and his cousin are now night owls, because only in the middle of the night can the speed of the Internet cafe be able to support Warrior of Gods and Demons. Even in the morning, they only dared to slash monsters on remote maps, and they would get stuck as soon as they returned to the city. There were too many players in the city!

Just after noon, my cousin came downstairs in a second-hand Poussin and shouted, Xiaodong, get in the car and take you to a good place!

Fei Xiaodong yawned and went downstairs, asking, Where are you going?

It's an Internet cafe equipped with broadband, and the Internet speed is very fast, my cousin said proudly, I only found out about it after asking a lot of friends.

Fei Xiaodong said: What exactly is broadband? The Internet cafe we ​​often go to, the network administrator has always said that broadband must be installed.

Pretend to be broadband, he's just bragging, the owner of the Internet cafe is very picky. Cousin said angrily.

The two came to a large Internet cafe by car, and were about to pay to go online, but were reminded to wait in line slowly. It was only one o'clock in the afternoon, and more than 200 computers were already full, with several onlookers standing in front of each computer.

Hack him to death, don't let him run away, the Taoist is going to make an enchanted formation!

To grab the boss, there is still a trace of blood left.

Fuck, it's a big explosion, and there's a weapon I haven't seen before! Go grab it!

Fuck the shit, I'm stuck.

I'm stuck too, what's going on?

Everything is stuck, there are too many people, and the internet speed can't afford it!

Fuck, didn't you mean broadband? Broadband is also stuck like this!

Network administrator, come out quickly. The Internet fee is 4 yuan an hour at other companies, and you want 5 yuan here. Why is it still a card?

...

There was yelling in the Internet cafe, Fei Xiaodong and his cousin looked at each other, both were shocked by this scene.

It may be because of the broadband, players who are far away come here to play games. Of the more than 200 computers in the entire Internet cafe, two-thirds of them were playing War of Gods and Demons. The collaborative atmosphere of fighting and killing made people feel extremely excited at this time.

It's a pity that even if broadband is installed, there are too many people and the card will explode.

The boss seemed to be here by chance, and he suddenly shouted: Everyone, don't worry, now it's 512k broadband, I can upgrade to 1m, but after the upgrade, the Internet will cost 7 yuan an hour. You can choose by yourself, in the end it costs 5 yuan 512k , or 7 yuan for 1m broadband?

7 yuan, hurry up and upgrade, don't talk nonsense!

I came here to play games with you, and the round-trip fare is 2 yuan.

Upgrade your internet speed, it's getting stuck!

Damn, don't play anymore, let's just chat on QQ with this broken internet speed.

...

The owner of the Internet cafe called the service provider with a smile. He was very willing to upgrade the Internet speed. Although there is no need for broadband and there is no shortage of customers, but with broadband, it can attract players from a radius of ten miles. Even if the Internet access here is more expensive, these players will not be deterred, and the machines will always be full in the middle of the night and in the morning. Moreover, War of Gods and Demons also gave Internet cafes a 10% point card commission, which actually earned more.

By the way, there are only two online games in China now. King of Kings only sells monthly cards, not point cards. Each monthly card is 15 yuan, and you have to buy a character card to build a trumpet.

The monthly card of Warrior of Gods and Demons is 45 yuan a piece, and the point card is 50 cents per hour, and the trumpet can be created at will.

In general, Warrior of Gods and Demons is darker. But if you look at the Internet access fee at this time, it is really not bad. The Internet fee is much more expensive than the point card fee, and the operators including China Telecom are the big devils.

By the beginning of September, both games started charging, and the number of registered players both exceeded 500,000. Due to the poor network environment, the large-scale team battles of these two games are abolished. Players only choose places with few people. The more people are displayed on the screen, it is basically impossible to perform any operations.

You can definitely make money, but trying to get rich is just a dream.

Take War of Gods and Demons as an example. In the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, only a few Internet cafes in each city have installed broadband. Only these Internet cafes can barely play, other Internet cafes can only fight wild monsters in the middle of the night, plus some home computer players, 15,000 people online at the same time is the limit, 80% of the registered players are stuck and abandoned .

Jinshan Company only wanted to recover the cost and make a little money by the way. But there are also some expectations, hoping that broadband will be popularized soon, and the game will be detonated by then.

Even if China's Internet speed is not suitable for online games, even if War of Gods and Demons and King of Kings don't make much money, they still attract countless Internet companies. People found that video games can still work like this, and this is an emerging market waiting to be developed.

Ever since, Three Kingdoms on the Internet was launched on the mainland soon, followed by Dark Light at the end of the year. By next year, games such as Stone Age, Millennium, Dragon Race, and Red Moon will also be introduced to China, and the Chinese online game market will explode at once.

But Song Weiyang is not afraid of competition at all. Xishanju is the only team in mainland China with experience in online game development at this time, and is still slowly accumulating experience in online game operations. When these two experiences are combined, by 2002, when broadband users become popular, there will be a big explosion.