The World Online

Gaia 3rd year, 1st month, 25th day, Tianya Villa.

Back when Shanhai Alliance had its first alliance gathering, nineteen people had joined. As a result, Ouyang Shuo had jokingly termed it as the Meeting of Nineteen.

In just a year, although there was still nineteen of them, but many things have changed.

Last year, Moon Shines Over the River was still chasing Hong Ying. Now, the two of them were already officially a pair, making all the single dogs jealous.

Last year, Lin Jing had relied on the god weapon Qixing Longyuan to become the biggest power amongst the adventure gamemode players. Today, Jianqi Leiyin, who had the Taia Sword, was able to stand on her level.

Most importantly, during the auction where he spent a million gold to purchase the War Blood God Set, Blood Romance was undoubtedly the strongest person.

Last year, Mulan Yue had accompanied Ouyang Shuo, today, it had changed to Song Jia. The news of their marriage had raised waves in the alliance.

Be it Bai Hua or Feng Qiuhuang, they all looked at Song Jia with weird expressions.

Last year, Black Mamba was specially invited. Now, he had transformed after the disbandment of the Rattlesnake Mercenary Group. The more mysterious Black Snake and the Black Snake Guards that terrified the enemy had replaced him.

Similarly, the Song Wen and Song Wu brother pair was not present.

One became the mayor of Zhenhai City, while the other became the deputy major general of the Leizhou Garrison Division. After the year, Ouyang Shuo was prepared to promote Song Wu to major general of the Xunzhou Garrison Division.

Since some people had left, there were naturally new additions.

As an important member of the guild alliance, The appearance of Thread’s guild leader Qing Sikou was not surprising at all. What surprised them was the appearance of Ji Yinghu and Mengyun Tunding.

It was obvious that Ouyang Shuo wanted to use this chance to completely bring Shadow Alliance and Yimeng Pavillion into the Shanhai Alliance.

After all of this, with four in and four out, they ended up with nineteen people again.

Apart from that, there was also a special presence, Bai Xiaosheng.

Gaia 2nd year, 5th month, Bai Xiaosheng established the Wilderness Publications. From the name alone, one would know that this was a very special guild, and it was mainly composed of reporters and editors.

The main job of this guild was to work with the officials to post on the forums in a special news column known as the Quick Daily News. They were in charge of reporting all the important matters in the wilderness.

Although Quick Daily News was a paid service, with the talent of Bai Xiaosheng’s team in digging out news, they had insane sales. Every day, he could obtain some interesting news.

Players even said that just by reading the Quick Daily News, they could easily understand everything that was happening without even leaving their homes.

The reporter station of the Quick Daily News not only spread out across the nine imperial cities, but they even existed in more than 90% of the layer territories. Shanhai City was naturally not an exception.

Developing to this stage, the number of subscriptions to Quick Daily News had already broken one million. This also meant that one out of every ten in China had subscribed.

If one excluded the children, this ratio was truly astounding.

Reading the Quick Daily News every day had also become one of the habits of a large portion of the players.

The subscription fee of Quick Daily News was extremely affordable at two copper daily. With that, one could read all the available news content.

Even if one read it for ten years, they would not need to even spend one gold.

However, due to the massive subscriber base, they made humongous profits. Each day, they would be able to take in two thousand gold.

Apart from subscription fees, ad revenue was also another source of income.

Be it guilds or territories, if they wanted to post recruitment advertisements, the Quick Daily News was the best choice. If they posted it on the forums, unless they were a huge shark like Shanhai City, their posts would definitely be drowned out.

Apart from recruitment, the promotion of products, trading news of top grade items, chain quest news, and other similar matters were popular posts on the Quick Daily News.

The items pushed out by the Song Chamber of Commerce had also appeared in the Quick Daily News.

Now, similar news media had appeared. Amongst which, there were territory based ones like the Jingdou Publications, and there was also specific media like Swordsmen Island.

Various news media filled the reading news of the variety of players.

Even so, the Quick Daily News continued to hold almost a monopoly of the industry.

Because of that, Bai Xiaosheng’s reputation had bloomed, and he even climbed onto the famous people rankings. Some people said that if Qiyue Wuyi was a giant amongst the Lords, then Bai Xiaosheng was undoubtedly a media shark.

Just one year ago, he was just a relatively known commenter on the forums. His sudden rise was due to the unique business model of the Quick Daily News.

The sneaky rise of the media industry made many people saw the profits within. Or to put it another way, this rise had once again affected the player’s understanding of the game.

To say that the business model was unique was just in the case of the game. In reality, such subscription-based services had appeared two hundred years ago.

Bai Xiaosheng’s breakthrough was to put this model and implant it into the game. Just like the items pushed out by the Song Chamber of Commerce, which were a mental and ideological blow to the players.

Between them, there was a similarity; they treated the game world like the real world.

Simply put, it all went back to the time theory that Ouyang Shuo had mentioned.

From how Gaia was setting up columns for the Quick Daily News, it was not hard to see that Gaia was supporting it.

To make the game world real had always been one of Gaia’s goals.

In the future, when they reached planet Hope, Earth Online could still continue to run and become a part of the player’s lives.

After all, the moulding and selection of talent was a process that never stopped.

People with a business mind had already smelled some opportunities from the rise of the media industry.

On the forums, there were many products being developed that lacked a platform for complete integration.

For example, a network.

Actually, a year ago, players had used the game as a base to create similar web novels like fantasy, history, and military.

These were just random fictions that the authors wrote up.

But if they were able to obtain the support from the officials like Quick Daily News and have a reading platform to promote and run their stories, this would entirely change.

After all, in reality, subscription based reading was already a trend.

Furthermore, dramas and movies.

The shooting equipment that Gaia provided, along with the adventures, battles, and war elements, would allow for someone to create a great movie or drama provided they had professional directors and scriptwriters

Now, the forums were filled with people filming for self-enjoyment.

Undoubtedly, only a more elite and professional production process would push this area forward.

And all of this was only the entertainment related matters.

If one jumped out of this box, one’s imagination would be even larger.

Like online sales and purchases.

Ever since the removal of the Super Auction Platform, cross-territory sales had turned into a dream.

However, in reality, it was a commonality.

Making use of the forums, they could build an online shopping platform. Afterward, they could use the relay to build a parcel service. Using such methods, one could easily replicate Taobao.

There were many more examples and a variety of business opportunities.

As a person who had been through this already, Ouyang Shuo naturally knew that all of this had happened in the last life. Not just this, the future industries would all jump out of the control of the forums.

As the game progressed, the entertainment needs of the players would grow limitlessly.

In future days, the singers and stars in reality would appear in the game.

Ouyang Shuo remembered that in the 4th year of Gaia, superstar Lin Luo held an olden style concert in the square of Jingdou, attracting two hundred thousand people.

With that concert alone, she had earned five hundred thousand gold, and she was known as the money making queen.

Not only stars in reality, as the game progressed, a new batch of stars appeared. They were either highly skilled experts or the pinnacle of work occupations.

All in all, the future game world become more and more similar to the real world.

The reason why Ouyang Shuo did not use his advantage to attack this area was because, ‘Jack of all trades, master of none.’

Bai Xiaosheng did not rely on luck to build the wilderness publications. In reality, he was an experienced media person, and he had vast media experience.

If not, the Quick Daily News would not have gotten popular so quickly.

Similarly, for the other professions to thrive, they needed similar professionals.

To Ouyang Shuo, rather than worrying about other factors, he might as well focus on just running his territory well. Like now, even Bai Xiaosheng, who others had termed as the media giant, was shocked and honoured by Ouyang Shuo’s invitation.

In the end, in the game, Lords still stood at the top of the food chain.

Apart from that, there was another problem.

Be it online dramas, online shopping, or even superstar concerts, the game had to be stable for such events to thrive.

In a chaotic world, all of this was just a pipe dream.

In his last life, only during the 4th year of Gaia did similar businesses start to show themselves.