Sohu – TL – Final Closed Beta

Sohu’s TL game goes into final closed beta on 4/4/2007. But according to Sohu, anybody can get an account and the account will not be terminated. How is this any different than open beta? Nothing! My guess is that since this is Sohu’s first major internally developed game, they want to be absolutely certain. So if there are anything wrong, they can always pull it back before the “official” open beta.

Anyhow, the response had been overwhelming.

It starts out with 15 servers. All the servers overflows after 5 minutes. It adds 16 more servers (for a total of 31 servers) before the first day is over. After one day, 4/5/2007, it adds 3 more servers (total of 34 servers). On the third date, 4/6/07, it adds 8 more servers (total of 42 servers). So far into the fourth date, 4/7/07, it had added another 6 servers (total of 48 servers). And we are not even into the weekend yet!

Holy cow, only one word can describe this, tremendous success!!!

You would have never heard of this game in wall street. Sohu doesn’t talk about this game in its earning conference. But somehow, Sohu knows how to market its game in China and Chinese players knows a good game when they see one.

From now on, it is all up to Sohu on how it executes. It is still Sohu’s first major internally developed game. She will still hit some potholes. But indeed, the future looks bright.

Finally, I hope this game is free-to-play. If Sohu think this game can compete with the likes of TX2 or WOW, she will be badly mistaken.

If this game is free-to-play, and it will most likely be, it has to be bad news to SNDA and NCTY. It will also be bad news to the upcoming NTES’s two free-to-play games, DT2 and FF2.