No matter what the media said, the enthusiasm of the game fans spoke for itself.
The 100,000 CDs prepared for the first day vanished at the speed of light.
When players arrived at the Antarctic Game Building, everyone remained remarkably polite—after all, this was a sacred place.
The crowd never became chaotic. Instead, it moved in orderly, rapid waves, and everyone who received a disc wore a grin of pure joy.
Each disc contained nothing more than the CD-ROM edition of World of Warcraft and a handful of Warcraft-themed mini-games.
Giving away 100,000 copies for free was no small gesture.
But New York City was overflowing with fans. Judging from the masses flooding the streets, they would do anything to make this "pilgrimage."
The free physical copies weren't offered for charity alone—Antarctica's official website had been overloaded once again.
Part of the giveaway was meant to reward fans. The other part was to ease the traffic burden.
Global release downloads had to happen simultaneously through the official website; nothing unusual about that.
Fortunately, Stark Industries' hardware was supporting the servers. Otherwise, the site might have crashed completely instead of just lagging.
Xu Dan had zero tolerance for machines that stuttered.
Humans dazing off could be cute; machines lagging was a hardware failure.
So after giving it some thought, he began drafting plans to create his own game platform.
A platform was different from an official website.
Something like Steam—capable of hosting multiple games, offering discussion boards, reviews, uploads, downloads, and delivering the fastest possible speeds.
With a platform to distribute traffic, scenes of tens of thousands of people flooding the streets might not happen again.
…
That night, on the other side of the world, World of Warcraft officially went live.
The distributor was still the same "Little Pony" as before.
Xu Dan had a dream—that World of Warcraft would run on a single, synchronized global server. He had even built certain hidden settings into the game with that goal in mind.
But current technology simply couldn't support it.
With today's servers, he would need to fill an entire football stadium with hardware just to run a unified global server.
This could only be achieved in the future.
For now, World of Warcraft was live.
And this day marked the dawn of a new era in gaming.
Ever since The King of Fighters, Antarctic Studios had revolutionized game imaging technology, bringing extreme visual fidelity into gaming and even surpassing the resolution of many TV shows at the time.
Then came Warcraft, and Antarctica Studios—refusing to be acquired by any conglomerate—built its own company, showing players worldwide what games could truly be. What fun truly meant. What addiction really was.
The word addictive first appeared meaningfully in adult gaming circles.
Before this, games never felt addictive at all.
Yet even when Warcraft was at its peak, Antarctica never grew complacent. They didn't "eat for a year" off their success—they built the monumental world of Warcraft again in World of Warcraft.
Thanks to the optimization pack, even with an enormous 50-gigabyte first version, the game didn't turn players' computers into smoking wrecks.
On the official website, the minimum specs listed for World of Warcraft were so absurdly low they frightened even Xu Dan, the developer. His game could actually run on ancient machines?
In his mind, "minimum specs" meant something like a big-headed CRT dinosaur.
God.
That's the power of the Advanced Effects Optimization Pack.
Countless players were skeptical at first. After all, 50 GB was enormous for this era, when most households still crawled on 4M broadband.
At full speed—five to six hundred kilobytes per second—it would take days to download.
Players couldn't believe that a single game big enough to fill their entire hard drive would run smoothly.
But the most important thing?
Performance.
Antarctic Games had always been the gold standard.
A pioneer of black-tech gaming.
If it could launch, then players had no reason not to enter.
They clicked.
The screen shook.
And countless players had the same first reaction—
"What… is this?"
This wasn't a computer screen. This wasn't even a game. It was a window into another world.
It was so real.
Was this still a game?
Tech enthusiasts were stunned. What kind of black-technology monster was Antarctica Games, and how could it create something like this?
With these technologies alone, Antarctic Games could dominate the entire industry.
Its technical department outclassed the world.
———
"Woooo—"
"What's that sound?" Xiao Ming yelped. "Is my computer about to explode?"
"Which idiot shut off voice chat? You want all of China to curse you out?"
"S-sorry! Sorry!"
Xiao Ming exhaled in relief. The game was still running smoothly. He touched the computer case—barely warm.
Then the voices sounded again.
"Hahaha! Xu-shen really is divine—Huaxia gamers crushing the American scrubs!"
"Right?! What garbage games do America and those island nations make? Only fit for a 'Little Bully' console! Xu-shen makes games with conscience—games that actually consider the player!"
"Hey, buddy, no need to roast everyone to praise another."
"You idiot, what do you know? I can trash them if I want and praise Xu-shen as much as I want! It's a privilege! Xu-shen is amazing—he brings honor to our country!"
Xiao Ming's attention drifted from the scenery to the system interface. He noticed a tiny speaker icon and a tiny microphone icon.
In an instant, he understood: one for speaking, one for listening.
He hesitated, then clicked the microphone—his first attempt at speaking to strangers.
Nervously, he said, "Um… is anyone there?"
"…"
"Hello? Can anyone hear me?"
"…"
"Ah… I guess not. Too bad. I wanted to talk about my idol."
"Hey! This kid must be a newbie—can't even read the icon prompts?"
"Huh?! You can hear me?"
"Of course. Read the icons! Tell me where you are—I'll take you to level up!"
Xiao Ming felt a warmth spread through his chest. Embarrassed, he said, "Can you even do that? Isn't that… not okay?"
He was socially anxious, practically unable to talk to anyone outside his family—and rarely even with them.
This was the first time in his life he felt genuine warmth from a stranger online.
"It's fine! Just say it!"
"Oh… I'm at XXX."
"Hahaha! I'm coming!"
"Huh? Why did you kill me?" Xiao Ming burst into tears.
-----------------------
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(End of Chapter)