Server Expansion

People often use "money flows like water" to describe spending money very quickly.

The current Chen Hao was fully experiencing the terrifying spending power of players!

Chen Hao and Pang Ban each had a computer and a QQ account, processing top-ups. Between them, a laptop screen displayed the bank account page.

The only action was constantly refreshing the webpage.

6 yuan, 6 yuan, 198 yuan, 6 yuan, 98 yuan, 648 yuan.

After half an hour, several "whales" suddenly appeared, their top-ups measured in tens of thousands. It was as if money was just cheap numbers in their eyes, and they were throwing it in without a second thought.

Chen Hao's account balance, which was 233 yuan, rapidly increased.

Over 10,000 in 3 minutes.

Over 50,000 in half an hour.

After 2 hours, the income exceeded 100,000!

Chen Hao's adrenaline surged. He squatted on the stool, his hands moving non-stop, his expression incredibly excited! They'd made it!

He turned his head and saw Chen Hao and Pang Ban, their faces expressionless, fingers flying, operating with extreme efficiency.

Damn, you guys are ruthless!

Look at them, so calm!!!

My heart is pounding, my hands are shaking, damn it! How can I not control myself!

Since he couldn't control himself, Chen Hao decided to go with the flow. He thought, Damn it, I'm only 22. If I'm not impulsive now, am I still young?

The money he earned in an hour now was more than his salary in several months at his peak in his previous life.

Who wouldn't be excited?

Chen Hao closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair, savoring the rare feeling.

In less than a minute, Pang Ban patted him. "Hurry up and process these, we're getting backed up."

Unlike the internet cafe top-up event before, which relied more on the existing infrastructure of his family's internet cafe, this time they had started completely from scratch, from nothing to something. The sense of accomplishment was overwhelming!

The effort over these past few days was worth it!

Chen Hao calmed down, opened his eyes, and quickly processed the top-up requests.

The initial battle was a success. They couldn't stop now; they had to press their advantage and expand their gains.

The plan was simple: expand based on the existing foundation.

The steps were also straightforward: continue promotion, increase bandwidth, and expand server capacity.

First, they prepaid another 20,000 yuan to Baidu's paid search. This should last for a while.

The main player base for Legend of Mir at this time was mostly students, especially university students, followed by young people who had only been in the workforce for a couple of years.

Chen Hao transferred 30,000 yuan to Xu Pengkun, telling him not to limit his focus to Beijing but to mobilize people to recruit students from major universities nationwide for promotion. He specifically advised focusing on university internal BBS forums and placing advertisements there.

Then he gave Old Ban 10,000 yuan to go and pull more network cables. If any household in this unit didn't have internet, he was to pull cables from other apartments, choosing the highest bandwidth available. Money was no object!

Hearing the instructions, Old Ban put his phone in his pocket and left directly to handle the task.

Chen Hao didn't feel any heartache spending most of the money he had just earned. The wool came from the sheep, after all.

The most important part remained:

Server expansion.

He had initially thought this server could last a few days until the new ones arrived, but it seemed plans were no match for changing circumstances.

Chen Hao pulled up the statistics for online players and queue times for the three servers (micro-change, mid-change, super-change).

The number of players on the super-change server was the sum of the other two, clearly showing that the vast majority of players were fed up with Shanda.

He temporarily adjusted the online player thresholds for the three servers.

The limit for the micro-change and mid-change servers was set to 300 players, and the super-change server was expanded to 1,000 players.

For the first few days, maintaining the current situation would create a sense of scarcity, driving people to flock to it even more, which was beneficial.

However, if this continued for too long, it would easily lead to user dissatisfaction, inadvertently benefiting competitors.

Like the emergence of Lei Hou later on.

Chen Hao took out his phone and dialed a number.

"Old Brother, the private server is working. The plan has changed, and I urgently need servers now."

"Money is not an issue; the faster, the better! Preferably tomorrow. Actually, I need them tonight!"

"Not 2 units," Chen Hao paused, calculating in his head.

"I need 5 units!"

At the same time, Lin Lang looked at the brand-new servers in front of him, which were part of the Netcom network renovation project and served as redundant backups.

Exactly 5 units, no more, no less.

He asked suspiciously, "Are you a fortune teller, kid? How did you guess the number of cards so accurately!"

"Okay, I got it. Transfer the money to my account. I'll have someone bring them over tonight."

He hung up the phone.

The Netcom project usually took at least six months, and it was anyone's guess when these five servers would be put to use, or if they'd just gather dust as backups forever.

Since that was the case, he decided to use the good steel on the sharpest edge and move these servers over first.

He quickly contacted the supplier, paid the deposit, and had five more servers delivered, even paying an extra fee for expedited shipping.

There might be a few days' delay.

This operation went against the usual procedures, but he didn't care.

Lin Lang, working at IBM's Ice City office, not only completed his daily tasks with his solid technical skills but also handled all the hosting and entertainment duties.

He had already given his superiors so many perks – entertainment venues, massages, gifts – if he couldn't even handle this small matter, what was the point of him being there!

The next day, the top-up amounts began to decrease. Pang Ban became a full-time customer service representative, managing recharge requests with two QQ accounts open.

Five days later.

The apartment Chen Hao rented had essentially transformed into a small server room.

Eleven servers, ten new and one old, were neatly arranged, completely filling the living room.

Three regular desktop computers and one used laptop were reluctantly squeezed into the bedroom.

All of them had independent, top-tier bandwidth.

This was the best configuration he could manage on his own for now.

Fortunately, the temperatures in Northeast China were still low in March, and the heating had been turned off. Even so, following Old Brother's advice, Chen Hao installed a two-horsepower floor-standing air conditioner in the living room to cool the servers 24/7. Oh, and he also bought a voltage stabilizer.

Thanks to the joint efforts of the three of them over the past couple of days.

The Greedy Blue Moon private server could now simultaneously accommodate up to 20,000 players.

Even with expansion, the Greedy Blue Moon private server was still packed every day.

However, it significantly eased the user queuing situation.

What did 20,000 concurrent players mean? Keep in mind that Shanda's Legend of Mir had only a little over 200,000 concurrent players in early '02.

In just a few days, they had reached one-tenth of the official game's scale.

Chen Hao looked at the balance in his account.

All the money earned in the past few days had been poured into servers.

Yet, even so, his balance was still in the hundreds of thousands. Its profitability was even more outrageous than the "super-change" private servers.

"Brother, I've finally gone from being millions in debt in my previous life to a millionaire. I want to cry!"

The number of registered members had already surpassed the 100,000 mark.

Chen Hao had already asked Old Brother to start setting up a dedicated server room.

After all, this makeshift workshop wasn't a long-term solution!

The "super-change" version had its pros and cons, similar to poorly written web novels. It immediately hooked readers with constant excitement, but after reading too much, it became bland and lacked staying power.

However, while the "mid-change" and "micro-change" versions didn't yield profits as exaggerated as the "super-change" version, they had the advantage of a much longer game lifespan.

Starting from the sixth day, the profits from the "super-change" version began to decline. Chen Hao had anticipated this and started implementing Plan B.

He updated the Greedy Blue Moon Legend private server with a new version, adding a brand-new VIP map. The BOSSes there dropped the top-tier equipment seen on the statues, but the difficulty was also extremely challenging.

It required multiple top-tier players working together or a dozen players taking turns to defeat the BOSS.

Additionally, a 7-day ranking event was introduced, ranking players based on their combat power. The top three received a unique tier of top-tier equipment, followed by the next tier for ranks 4-10, and then another tier for ranks 10-100. The rewards scaled with the ranking, with higher ranks receiving better equipment.

The first-place winner would not only receive a top-tier weapon but also a unique server-wide title.

"Unrivaled Under Heaven"