World of Warcraft China 2015
7.0 Launch: Wechat H5 Teaser
THE TASK
World of Warcaft (WOW) is still the biggest MMORPG in the world and China. But as the game got older, so did its players. They grew up, got jobs and families, and just could not devote the same amount of time to playing anymore. They were spending more time on their phones and less time on computer games.
But yet, they still thought back on their days of playing WOW with much fondness, and with the new release of 7.0, it was a chance for us to recapture their hearts and minds again. The 7.0 expansion would feel more poignant to them as the timeline was returned to an earlier time, and classic characters were revived. So even if these lapsed players had missed out on expansions in between, it would make no difference to their enjoyment of the game with the new 7.0 storyline.
How could we leverage this to attract them back to the game?
THE SOLUTION
We knew that everyone was glued to their phones, and especially to WeChat, for both social and work reasons. So, we created a simple faux interactive game leveraging an actual feature of WeChat itself.
Bored WeChat users would use the "Shake Shake" function to discover other bored users around them, or 2 friends could shake their phones at the same time and discover their friends to add them. This was a fun way to pass the time and chat with strangers without any risk.
We "hijacked" this feature so that users would feel like they had personally discovered iconic WOW characters, and would be able to chat and interact with them. In actuality, it was a HTML 5 link that closely mimicked this WeChat functionality.
HOW IT WORKED
1. Users would be sent a mysterious link from friends that would bring them into our H5 page. Once you entered, it was as if you were in the "Shake Shake" function of WeChat. But first, you had to shake your phone to "discover" any other users who may be in your vicinity.
2. Next, as actual WOW characters would seem to "appear" in your vicinity, suddenly a flying axe would rudely interrupt and "crack" your phone screen. The WOW characters that appeared were random and users would get different characters each time.
3. Next, users would click on our WOW characters, showing different their profile pages, written fully in character. It was a cheeky juxtaposition of the fantasy realm of WOW intersecting with the reality of social media profiles.
4. Intrigued, users could then attempt to "chat" to these WOW characters.
5. However, they wouldn't get far before Gul'dan's mystical green flame would devour the whole page.
6. We reveal Gul'dan and his chilling message as the whole interaction then ends on our call to action for the upcoming release of WOW 7.0 and links directly to our wechat account for more news.
