Chapter 37: New Round of Major Reveals
Yesterday, the number of players was less than one hundred thousand.
The speed of new registrations had also obviously begun to slow down.
Why did it suddenly skyrocket by seven to eight times? There must have been a reason that made the game break out of its niche!
When Hang Yu opened the Starsea Game Forum, he saw that half of the trending posts were related to Twisted Three Kingdoms, many of them posted by first test players, such as posts like these.
"First Group Photo of Twisted Three Kingdoms' First Test Players Revealed!" — Midnight Pig Slayer!
"Game Character Encyclopedia — Series 01 of Stories from the Villagers of Hexi Village" — Zha Jiang Mian!
"Every NPC Character Has a Soul! Twisted Three Kingdoms is Truly a Sandbox Masterpiece!" — Salty Fish Thrust!
"Hexi Village's Clothing, Scenes, and Folk Customs Revealed! Interpreting the Hidden Details in Twisted Three Kingdoms' Artistic Design!" — Chenxi!
…………
The vast majority of these posts were related to the process of occupying Hexi Village, and more and more players had begun to research and investigate the characters, history, and folk customs of Hexi Village, ultimately reaching a unified conclusion: Twisted Three Kingdoms was absolutely incredible!
For example, in Salty Fish Thrust's post, there were thousands of long essays and all kinds of examples.
He wrapped it up by writing:
"We players have already communicated with most of the NPCs in Hexi Village, and what shocked us the most about this village was that even the most inconspicuous NPC had a completely independent personality, experiences, values, and thoughts!"
"Yes!"
"Not only vivid!"
"They had souls!"
"Every NPC had their own joys, anger, sorrows, and happiness!"
"Every small villager looked completely unique!"
"This was definitely not the product of reusing identical data models and producing skins in batches!"
"I even suspect that Twisted Three Kingdoms had made a revolutionary breakthrough in the underlying model of artificial intelligence, where each AI's dialogue was not based on big data-driven generative Q&A outputs, but rather real feedback after learning, understanding, and thinking!"
"This meant that the thoughts, actions, reactions, etc., of each game task would change with the environment and time, and because of the uncontrollable variable that was the player, the development of the game's storyline could not possibly be controlled or predicted in any way!"
"From the moment the game test started."
"Its storyline had been uncontrollable!"
"This meant that every player's change to every NPC's fate, every plot direction, would be permanent, and every decision we made, every behavior we showed, would deeply influence, or even determine, the game's main storyline and future!"
"This was a true sandbox game!"
"This was a true masterpiece for the ages!"
"This was a true world!"
Salty Fish Thrust, like Black-Eyed Rui Ge, was a well-known big figure.
This post indeed had a lot of hype and could easily get players excited.
But mere words like these were not enough to break out of the niche, and even less enough to cause the game's registration numbers to skyrocket; the real reason that Twisted Three Kingdoms' registration numbers surged seven to eight times in a single day was definitely not these long essays from first test players.
It was a photograph!
Hang Yu had humbly adopted player suggestions and developed a screenshot function for the game.
Players only needed to redeem a "Photography Crystal" in the hall to get one screenshot permission, but taking even one photo cost five hundred Contribution Points, which was extremely expensive and practically unaffordable for players!
However, the bonfire party last night was bustling and lively, and players felt it was a moment worth celebrating, so under the proposal of Midnight Pig Slayer, they crowdfunded together to redeem one Photography Crystal, thus producing this breakout game photo.
Hang Yu clicked open the photo.
The group photo of Hexi Village appeared before his eyes.
Hang Yu, as the Lord, sat at the center position (C-spot), not only looking powerful and handsome but also exuding a strong aura, surrounded by his territory’s citizens along with the villagers of Hexi Village, with a background of the village’s natural scenery and the eerie yet magnificent, mysterious Firmament.
So that was why!
No wonder it broke out of the niche!
Although Twisted Three Kingdoms had been a hot topic these two days, there were also no shortage of doubts and criticisms; no one could say clearly whether the game really existed or if it was just hype.
Most bystanders did not believe it.
How could today's technology possibly create such an amazing game?
Moreover, from beginning to end, only a few players had posted vaguely without solid evidence — no pictures, no truth — if it were not for some of these players being influential figures in the gaming circle, it would have been impossible to stir up such current popularity and discussions.
At this moment, a game screenshot was exposed.
It undoubtedly ignited large-scale discussions in an instant.
Although it was not enough to completely eliminate doubts, it was perfect for spreading and creating buzz.
Hang Yu noticed that many mega-influencers with tens of millions of followers, as well as various gaming and film media outlets, were all reporting on it; this photo even made it onto several mainstream news platforms, attracting at least millions of non-gamers to watch and discuss.
Not bad!
Hang Yu continued browsing posts.
Although there were a lot of Twisted Three Kingdoms topics appearing among the forum’s trending posts.
Most of the content was not very attractive to him.
Hang Yu noticed that the number one ranked content post was by Chimera Wraith, titled "Twisted Three Kingdoms First Test Player Major Leak Part 2: Deep Dives into Hexi Village and Plot Speculations!" and so he clicked it open for a glance.
"Hello everyone!"
"Wraith girl is back again!"
"Because we made progress and discoveries in the game, I’m posting to record and share with everyone!"
"In the past day, not only did we successfully trigger the first plot task, but we also followed the Lord to seize the first territory for our domain — which is the Hexi Village mentioned in the title — so I will briefly talk about the cause, process, and result."
"……" (one thousand words omitted here.)
"Special thanks to @Midnight Pig Slayer for providing the group photo."
"This game plot experience was unforgettable; the Lord's strength was beyond expectation, worthy of being the backbone of the territory — he was the most charismatic and mysterious core NPC, with tons of hidden settings to be dug up, drooling.jpg."
"Every villager was full of life, and every time we interacted with them, there was a feeling of being immersed through time and space; they were absolutely not just cold data under exquisite modeling, which was fundamentally different from any past game."
"Now, let's talk about discoveries in Hexi Village."
"And by the way, make some guesses about the starter village plot."
"First, let’s talk about two rather important NPCs in Hexi Village."
"The first one was named Wei Ji, one of the disciples of Zhang Jiao, leader of the Yellow Turban Army, who was captured together with Ma Yuanyi at the early stage of the Yellow Turban Rebellion and was supposed to be executed at Luoshui Execution Ground, but survived by sheer luck due to world upheavals."
"We speculated that the BOSS of the first map was Ma Yuanyi."
"Because Ma Yuanyi had little presence in the Three Kingdoms period, many people might find him unfamiliar, so here’s a simple introduction."
"Although the Yellow Turban Army was a peasant uprising at the end of the Han dynasty, there was no shortage of talents among them; besides the well-known Zhang Jiao brothers, there were many other representative figures and generals."
"For example, Martyr General Ma Yuanyi, Pioneer General Bo Cai, Southern Suppressor General Zhao Hong, Divine Commander Zhang Mancheng, Northern King Guan Hai — none of them were simple characters and were referred to by some Three Kingdoms fans as the 'Five Tiger Generals of the Yellow Turban'!"
"Among them, Ma Yuanyi’s status was probably the highest."
"He was most likely second only to the Zhang brothers within the Yellow Turban group and was Zhang Jiao’s most valued confidant general!"
"However, very unfortunately, the Yellow Turban uprising was betrayed by informants, and Ma Yuanyi was killed by the court before he had a chance to show his abilities, leading to the new player village plot in Twisted Three Kingdoms!"