Rebirth 05: From Coal Mine Owner to Mobile Phone Tycoon

The young man was quite dissatisfied.

"To be honest, I really don't know what the CEO of Nine City is thinking."

"Western online games just don't work here. Do you know EverQuest? It was a wildly popular game last year."

"I've heard of it."

"It peaked at launch, then died after just one season. All the agency fees and early operations must have been wasted."

"It seems like The9 spent even more money to sign the World of Warcraft contract this time, around 3 million RMB, or rather, US dollars."

"This was all contributed by us Miracle MU players. Wouldn't it be better to use that money to buy more servers?"

Indeed, Lu Yuan had just watched them fight the boss on the same screen, and the lag was so bad it was almost like a PowerPoint presentation.

They managed to win even with this, their guild must have had a really tough time.

After saying goodbye to Miracle Mu, Lu Yuan returned to his seat.

05 was an era when Blizzard games were always top-notch.

But Blizzard's asking price was really too high, and the conditions were also extremely harsh.

Aomei Electronics, which had previously enjoyed a pleasant working relationship with Blizzard, immediately packed up and ran away after hearing the terms.

The9 paid a huge price to acquire the distribution rights for this game, a truly desperate move.

The one-time agency fee of $300 million is ten times the market price.

The 22% revenue share is twice the current standard.

The purchase of state-of-the-art servers, costing $14 million, needs to be borne by The9 itself.

Finally, there is a high operating deposit.

That's all we can see from media reports.

Logically speaking, Blizzard's calculations were quite accurate; the latest servers, costing $1400 million, were sufficient to handle 150 million concurrent users.

However, once the game was launched and the number of online players reached 50, a series of problems such as lag, disconnections, and queues occurred.

It was jokingly referred to by players as the "Little Tyrant Server".

The9 explained that the game's popularity was underestimated and they were unprepared.

The real reason is that The9's funds were already very tight, and it was unable to purchase enough servers. It could only use old servers salvaged from the Miracle MU project for World of Warcraft.

More than 20 years later, in an interview with a self-media personality, Mr. Zhu himself admitted to this.

Logically speaking, Nine City, which has been distributing Miracle for several years, has made a fortune and finally went public on NASDAQ. They shouldn't be unable to afford the server costs.

Something unusual is bound to happen; problems arise when the media uses the word "high" to describe the operating deposit, which is only briefly mentioned.

In his previous life, Lu Yuan had accidentally seen The9's annual report. That was during the time when The9 lost the Warcraft distribution rights and the two companies were embroiled in a dispute.

It mentioned this operating guarantee of US$3130 million, which would have been equivalent to 04 million RMB in 2.5.

Part of the money was frozen as a deposit for payment of commissions, and the other part was held in escrow and could only be used for World of Warcraft promotional matters.

The process of reporting and approval is quite complicated.

At the time, The9's market value was at least 1 billion, but it didn't have that much cash lying around in its books.

After paying these agency fees and deposits, and then spending an additional 1.2 million Chinese Yuan to purchase servers, the cash flow was indeed very tight.

Even a skilled cook can't cook without rice. Forced into a corner, The9 had no choice but to resort to dismantling old servers for the new project.

Mr. Zhu's original intention was to buy some new players and add some old ones. Based on the performance of *EverQuest*, getting two or three hundred thousand players initially would be quite good.

Gradually, as we gain more players and generate revenue, we can slowly add more items.

It's perfect because we can buy more as the number of users grows, saving us from wasting money by buying too much.

To Mr. Zhu's surprise, the server opened with over 50 players, instantly overloading it and forcing players to queue.

Players immediately began to complain, which also affected the stock price of The9.

But it must be said that Nine City's gamble this time paid off.

By the end of 2005, just six months after the game's launch, The9's stock price had tripled.

The revenue from games in China accounted for 3% of Blizzard's global revenue, and the stock price of Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi, also doubled.

With this in mind, a plan had already taken shape in Lu Yuan's mind.

Lu Yuan needs a stock manager, preferably someone based in Hong Kong, where it's much more convenient to open US and European stock accounts than on the mainland.

But after looking around, from the second to the sixth oldest, none of them seemed cut out for finance.

Lu Yuan had a headache; he still didn't have enough people under his command.

"I just remembered someone!"

"But how do I get people to come and work for me?"

......

In the end, the brothers didn't stay up all night at the internet cafe. After all, they had a lot to do the next day, and when it was almost time, they all went home to rest.

The next day, the second and third brothers returned early in the morning carrying a large box of mobile phones and test reports. All the core personnel, including Lu Long and Zhou Liren, were present.

"The test results are all back. As you said, Brother Lu, we had the reporters take pictures and report them as soon as they came out."

"Send this to Attorney Zhang; we're going to file a lawsuit in court today!"

"Lu Long, please arrange for the third and second sons to meet with Attorney Zhang later."

"good!"

"Please keep an eye on things at the factory, Brother Zhou. Taking advantage of this situation, the factory can produce a larger batch of phones; the chances of a surge in orders are quite high!"

"The stores must continue operating. I've had my second brother contact someone to order the signs and uniforms. My fourth and fifth brothers, once they're ready, you'll go and pick them up and distribute them to the various stores."

Change the signboard if necessary, change the uniforms if necessary.

"Sixth Brother, take some men and keep an eye on Wang Defa's distributors. If anything happens, immediately tell the brothers."

"Regarding R&D, Lu Long, here are two documents for you to take a look at. These are some of my ideas about mobile operating systems and mobile games. I'll give you 40 slots, and you can recruit some programmers to come and use a mentoring system."

"Let's establish the systems department and the games department first. If we still don't have enough staff, we can recruit more later."

"Brother Lu, where are you going? Have you found another business opportunity?"

"I'm going to Hong Kong for the next few days. You guys keep an eye on this stall for me until I'm back."

"Boss, can you give me a hint?"

The second brother's eyes lit up, and the third brother also stuck out his ears.

"You'll see when the time comes, go get to work!"

Lu Yuan laughed and kicked one of them, shooing them away to work.

Everything was proceeding smoothly under Lu Yuan's arrangement.

……

Lu Yuan booked a flight to Hong Kong for 5 p.m.

I quickly packed a few clothes, took a suitcase and some cash, and hailed a taxi to the airport.

The target of this trip to Hong Kong was Lin Shaoyang, who was not very famous in Hong Kong at that time, but had already begun to show his talent.