NetEase has left countless players in tears—but has it totally won this round?

On New Year's Day, while everyone was busy visiting relatives and friends and snatching red envelopes, the official World of Warcraft team quietly released a short film titled *Stories Around Us: The Post*.

At first, I didn’t pay it much attention, until it started flooding the feed in a World of Warcraft player group. The video wasn’t long, and the story was simple, yet it struck a chord with countless players: It opens with a World of Warcraft player posting a plea for help on the NGA forum, asking, “How can I convince my dad to come back and run Dungeons with me?”

The scene shifts to when he was six years old, standing beside his father as he played *World of Warcraft*. To get a little closer to his father’s “world,” he arranged two discarded cardboard boxes to look like a computer and pretended to sit next to his father, playing the game himself. This became the first bond and legacy shared between the two generations. Back then, his father was an all-powerful hero, the guardian of Azeroth.

But as time went by, I grew up and used my year-end bonus to buy a top-of-the-line computer. I was excited to invite my father—who had once been a force to be reckoned with—back to play with me in the Great Dungeons. Yet my father, who had claimed the first kill of C'Thun on the Chinese server and went by the ID "Golden Hand," simply replied with a sigh, "The old crew has scattered, and I'm getting old. I can't learn it anymore."

After that, he tried everything he could to get his father back into the game, but in the end, the short film didn’t opt for a “happy ending”; instead, it concluded with a shot of the father’s back as he logged into his account.

I suppose this is the quintessential example of the “Chinese father-son” bond. A father’s love is often quiet and unspoken, but *World of Warcraft* once served as a silent bridge between father and son. There was a time when countless Chinese *World of Warcraft* players were just like the child in the video, sitting by their father’s side. That sense of innocence and passion became the foundation of their gaming experiences in childhood, and it continues to shape the preferences of a generation of players to this day.

This short film is adapted from a real plea for help posted on the NGA forum. In fact, long before the short film was released, the post had already gone viral on the NGA forum. Thanks to the author’s heartfelt words, it not only garnered hundreds of replies but was also spontaneously shared by countless players across various social media platforms, moving many who saw it to tears.

Setting aside our emotional reactions, if we examine this marketing campaign from an industry perspective, we’ll find that Leihuo’s approach is actually quite “counterintuitive”—one might even call it a highly risky attempt to stand out from the crowd.

As is well known, the Spring Festival season has always been a “battleground” for game developers. In an effort to capture users’ fleeting moments of attention, nearly all top-tier titles are competing fiercely with giveaways, events, and content. Amid the clamor of “free gifts upon launch” and “hundreds of millions in red envelopes” flooding the screens, World of Warcraft’s heavy-hitting “emotional appeal” stands out as particularly “out of place.”

In my view, while this strategy may seem less “direct” in the context of data-driven marketing, it proves surprisingly effective. The reason isn’t that other companies can’t “play the emotional card”—it’s simply that only an IP like World of Warcraft, with over two decades of history, possesses the depth to truly resonate with players. This moat, built on the weight of time, is something no short-term incentive can replicate.

What makes *World of Warcraft* a classic is not just its gameplay, but more importantly, the people behind it. The game has given countless players a whole new world, but in turn, it is the “ordinary” stories of those players that make this world feel all the more real.Viewed through this lens, LeiHuo’s newly launched “Stories Around Us” annual micro-film project reveals itself as the biggest “open strategy” in this year’s Spring Festival marketing campaign: in a red-ocean market where companies compete on perks, World of Warcraft has executed an irreplaceable “dimension-lowering strike” using “time-based assets”—something no short-term resources can ever replicate.

01

Sincerity is always the most powerful weapon.

The reason I feel this way is that I am one of them—an ordinary World of Warcraft veteran with 15 years of experience. The short film *Stories Around Us* resonates with me because my own story is practically a carbon copy of the one described above.

I still remember back in my freshman year when my cousin “talked me into” joining this epic virtual world. I thought I’d find a veteran player to show me the ropes, but reality is often full of disappointments. Due to work stress and family responsibilities, my cousin gradually drifted away from World of Warcraft and eventually went AFK for good.

In the end, I set out on my journey in World of Warcraft all by myself.I had hoped to make a big splash in this new world, but instead, I was hit with a crushing blow right from the start because I didn’t understand the game mechanics. I kept getting lost while doing my racial quests in Gilneas, and later, when I went to Darnassus to continue my Druid class quests, I didn’t know how to ride birds or boats, so I swam in the ocean until I was exhausted to death. In the end, it took me a full month to stumble my way to level 85, the game’s maximum level.

Fortunately, World of Warcraft is never short of friends, and it was precisely the kindness of these strangers that allowed me to truly put down roots in Azeroth.

I still remember when I was running the "Soul of the Dragon" raid, wearing a hodgepodge of military gear to meet the item level requirement. My damage was so low I felt like a total noob, but the raid leader not only didn’t kick me out—he even patiently taught me over YY how to stay balanced on Deathwing’s back.By the time we reached the Mists of Pandaria expansion, I’d become obsessed with achievements, joining various free public groups to farm achievement mounts. The seven outdoor mounts in the Warlords of Draenor expansion were notoriously hard to farm, so some raid leaders would voluntarily host YY channels, coordinating dozens of players to cast a wide net and camp the spots all day long.

I often wonder what it was about *World of Warcraft* that captivated me so completely back then. It wasn’t until years later, when I interviewed a game developer, that his words finally gave me some closure. He, too, had been a *World of Warcraft* player but had left that world for various reasons; yet he admitted that *World of Warcraft* had changed his outlook on life and how he interacted with others.

“It wasn’t so much *World of Warcraft* as it was a gaming friend I met earlier who taught me one thing: never give up easily. Life is like raiding dungeons; *World of Warcraft* sets the rules, but what keeps the group together through thick and thin is always the trust and perseverance among the players.”

Looking back now, I wonder what those group leaders and teammates—who were complete strangers to me at the time—were after. Teaching a complete newbie how to play in a group was both time-consuming and labor-intensive, and leading free, community-driven groups offered no tangible rewards. In that era of online gaming, when efficiency was everything, this approach might seem downright “silly” to many people today.

I think the reason is simply sincerity.

And that’s what moved me the most when I saw “Stories from Our Community”—just like the veteran players of yesteryear, the World of Warcraft team is using what seems like the “simplest” approach: exchanging sincerity for sincerity.

Why do I say that? In today’s world dominated by short videos, game marketing and promotion have increasingly leaned toward “stunts” and meme-based humor, even falling into a vicious cycle of “entertainment at all costs.”Fast-paced, high-impact, and fragmented content has become the norm, yet LeiHuo has chosen the most “traditional, old-school approach”—the short film. They’ve abandoned the quick-fix formula for traffic and instead opted for long-take storytelling to touch people’s hearts. They’ve meticulously polished the script and recreated real-life scenes frame by frame, all to tell a “ordinary yet authentic” player’s story.

This “anti-mainstream” creative attitude is strikingly reminiscent of those guild leaders from back in the day who would shout themselves hoarse giving orders in YY. They didn’t care about “return on investment”; they simply knew that “sincerity” was the universal currency of Azeroth. It could be said that this mindset originated in the game, yet transcended it, ultimately becoming a sense of identity ingrained in their very bones.

02

These stories from our daily lives together form the warm backdrop of our lives.

In Azeroth, we’ve witnessed countless stories that transcend the game itself. But if you look closely, you’ll see that Lei Huo’s exploration of “player stories” didn’t begin with this short film, nor was it merely a spur-of-the-moment marketing stunt.

On the official World of Warcraft WeChat account, "Stories from Our Community" is a regular feature that is constantly updated. This transforms the official promotional platform from a cold bulletin board for patch notes into a warm and engaging "player chronicle."

You can see the warmth in "Orange Guy’s" story. Because his family’s oranges weren’t selling well, Orange Guy—on the advice of his guildmates—began selling them in-game in *World of Warcraft* for 5,000 gold per crate (about 30 RMB). To his surprise, he sold 6,000 jin in less than a month, and *World of Warcraft* unexpectedly became the best "channel for supporting local farmers."

You can also witness the relentless determination of the “Zhao Yun Group.” Led by a streamer named “Zhao Yun,” this group of ordinary players formed an Epic raid team and, after a staggering 832 wipes, finally brought down Demosthenes on Epic difficulty.They didn’t have top-tier gear, and their tactics board was probably scrawled in a messy handwriting, but through sheer perseverance and mutual support, they turned the “impossible” into a unique “glory.”

We can also see the remarkable resilience of the “one-finger gamer.” Due to an accident, this player, who had just celebrated his 20th birthday, was unfortunately left paralyzed from the waist down. Yet, thanks to World of Warcraft, a whole new world opened up for him. Running dungeons and grinding for basic gear—it was precisely because of the understanding and tolerance of other players that, relying on a single plastic rod, he managed to reach the highest-tier Mythic+ dungeons, allowing countless players to witness a true miracle of life.

As recently as last year, Xinhua News Agency took the initiative to produce a documentary titled *The Beginning*, drawing inspiration from the stories of these *World of Warcraft* players. The film was created not only to look back on the 20-year history of *World of Warcraft* in China, but also to document the grand narrative of how the game has grown in tandem with China’s socioeconomic development.

It is precisely because of this long-standing commitment and accumulated experience that the creation of the "Stories from Our Community" short film felt like a natural progression. It simply serves as another heartfelt way to tell, through the medium of film, the story of what Lei Huo has been doing for so long.

Of course, in addition to its heartwarming narrative, “Stories from Our Neighborhood” also boasts exceptional production quality. Lei Huo specifically assembled a top-tier production team—featuring Asia’s leading advertising directors and the best cinematography team from major film festivals—to meticulously recreate, on a 1:1 scale, the various scenes from the original NGA post.Many players have also unearthed a wealth of astonishing details from the short film: for example, the real-life login credentials of the character’s real-life inspiration, Lao Guo; the 9800X 3D water-cooled PC case personally assembled by Xiao Guo; and even a screenshot from 20 years ago showing a boss fight in Ahn’Qiraj.

Some may wonder why LeiHuo went to such great lengths to launch the annual “Stories Around Us” micro-film project. In my view, in an era where traffic reigns supreme, filming the stories of these ordinary players is clearly about more than just nostalgia and community events. Just like the touching story from *Rules of Survival 2*, where players from around the world joined forces to defend Shanghai—a move that helped the game break out of its niche—this wasn’t a deliberate marketing campaign by the developers, yet it proved more effective than any marketing effort.I believe that while everything Lei Huo is doing may seem like a thankless task, one day it might truly unearth stories comparable to the one mentioned above. This could help break through the current insular circles and attract more outsiders into the world of Azeroth—a form of growth for the game that might surpass anything else.

Ultimately, the story of World of Warcraft is the story of its players, and the players’ stories together form the foundation of the game.

It is precisely because of the players that “We Have Two Worlds” is more than just a slogan—it is a pledge that carries the emotions of countless players. It is precisely because of the players that those data-driven NPCs come to life, collectively building this magnificent fantasy world.When we focus on an ordinary player like “Golden Hand,” what we see is actually a microcosm of everyone. And it is this unadorned, pure, and profound passion that has been the strongest catalyst keeping World of Warcraft at the pinnacle of its genre for 21 years.

Leihuo’s annual “Stories Around Us” short film project is not merely about recreating the past, but also about defining the future.By encouraging players to share their own stories and accepting submissions in any format without restrictions, it’s clear that for Lei Huo, it’s not just about paying attention to these stories—removing submission barriers is also meant to encourage everyone to share actively, allowing more people to witness this ordinary greatness together (we also welcome you to share your own stories in the comments section of this article; who knows, your story might just catch the official’s eye).

They are committed to helping players build and fulfill their dreams because they know that “the stories of the players are the true history of World of Warcraft.” As long as these stories continue, Azeroth will never grow old.