Blizzard’s World Of Warcraft appears to be down indefinitely in China, which is one of WoW’s largest user bases. Blizzard recently changed the company that was operating WoW for them in China from The9 to NetEase. WoW was supposed to be up and running by the end of June. Apparently the transition hasn’t gone so well because WoW isn’t up in China and it appears that there is no update as to when the game will be available.
One report suggests that the Chinese government is looking into the partnership between NetEase and Blizzard as possible illegal joint venture and has suspended WoW until the investigation is over.
Blizzard and The9 launched WoW in China in 2005 and saw a massive response to the role-playing game. In less than one month, the game surpassed 1.5 million paying players thanks to China’s growing gaming community. It’s not clear what the holdup is or if it is permanent. Perhaps somebody at NetEase didn’t pass a big enough brown paper bag to an official at the right department.
Photo credit/Flickr/Juanpol.
Doesn’t matter how many paper bags you pass around. The Chinese seem to block whatever they want whenever they want at random.
Chinese government might ask Blizzard to integrate Green Dam in WoW.
Don’t b startin rumors. Where did u hear that?
Typical Chinese action. The Chinese govt likes to flex their muscles and show who’s in charge. Watch Blizz make sizeable considerations in the near future. If you want to deal with China, you’ll need to abide by Chinese rules.
yeah, shame it wasn’t like that in the US, would have saved a great deal of hassle and money. Just think of Madoff, Enron, Lehman and dozens more. Best that you keep SOMEONE in charge, besides, what’s the problem you all have, it’s not like they can say, oh, we didn’t know that rule, we thought we could come here and make business as usual.
You ever seen what happens to a tourist in the US stopped for 65 instead of 55 who dares to answer a cop, gets out the car or doesn’t say sir? Try telling a cop, oh, back where we come from no-one says sir. So before any of that freedom of information stuff (as if that’s what you really have) just go take a look at what kind of porn your 12 year old has stored on his cellphone. Are you to judge what’s acceptable or not for everyone in the whole wide world, including people you have no idea about? Sorry not you in particular, more the level of thought you see through most of these comments. Anyone really interested in WoW problems had better do some research (i.e. reading at least a dozen different respectable websites), it’s all there.
I am wonderring if I can share your article in the bookmarks of
society,Then more friends can talk about this problem
I bet the game is much better without all those chinese gold farmers ruining the in-game economy.
They are also banning sale of virtual goods for real world money. I’m betting the delay has something to do with this. Oh and apparently WoW causes internet addiction and other social problems.
This doesn’t impede gold farmers. Gold farmers and power levelers have the US version of the game so they log straight onto US servers. This only affects Chinese players wanting to play the Chinese version and on Chinese servers.
On the other hand Blizzard has pumped more gold into the game and players make more money now than in regular WoW and WoW:The Burning Crusade.
Poor players in china
The issue is that the Chinese sensors have a lot of problems with the undead models featured in the game and The9 wasn’t able to resolve those issues with the sensor boards in a reasonable timeframe, so Blizzard dumped them for NetEase. I believe The9 even filed suit against Blizzard for this.
The truly hard-core Chinese playerbase has started playing the game in Taiwan.
You heard it on TC first: The permanent banning of WOW is going to be the straw that breaks the camels back – helping to spark the rebellion that overthrows the communist government in China. Plus, all those mofos gotz some serious arse +9 swords of anti-communism (via virtual currency purchases) already.
Dude, you may joke about it, but you have to remember that this is a country where people regularly die due to 24hour+ video game binges – I would not be surprised if suppression of a popular video game ACTUALLY caused civil unrest there
Perhaps G4 will serve as the vanguard of the revolution
And of course I am sort of joking but sort of not
The funny thing is the Australian government plans to introduce an Internet filter that will block “offencive” content. This will include games played online including wow. I think it’s an outrage that China has done what it has but I’m outraged even more that in Australia they are thinking about putting a filter in place. Who looks at China and says I like the way they handle freedom of information. So very angry.
Uh, yeah.. Child porn IS offencive[sic]… That’s the filter they are talking about in Australia…
That’s how they get it in place, not how they use it.
You’d have to be pretty twisted to say you don’t support the fight against child porn. Then once the systems are in place it becomes increasingly easier to block/filter/track more and more.
This is what they are trying to do in Canada (track everything we do online, not block, yet) in the name of “Child Porn” but people like you who get caught up in the sensationalism are directly responsible for our degradation of rights.
If you seriously think any “big” players in Child Porn are not already attempting to cover their tracks your sadly mistaken. These system will not have the capability to actually do anything about these guys.
I feel so lucky to be living in America right now. We must never forget that we’re lucky to have the freedoms we do!
You must be kidding, right?
As a former regular player of WoW, it’s true the “chinese gold farmer” were sometimes a plegue. But what we once called “chinese gold farmer” are by far not only chinese people. it’ s a wrong categorization. They were juse earning money like anyone on this planet does. There are by far kind of jobs to ban than farming gold in WoW. And not all chinese gamers are gold farmers ;o)
Even I didn’t really appreciated those farmers, I’m really sad for those people living under such a stupid government: China is a prison for 1/7 of the world population …..
i want to know how many of u are chinese?
Please follow up to make this question more relevant. Do you mean to say you want to know how many people writing in this thread are residing in China?
China is a prison for 1/7 of the world population …..
i think u r wrong. maybe 1/5。
How can they live without playing WoW?
Hopefully they’ll see sense, I’ve just written an article on this on my blog, seems many people are misunderstanding that this is just a legal issue, chinese players can still play on international servers and so this doesn’t affect the gold farmers at all. They play on EU and US servers, and are definitely still there according to my trade chat
If only the US would block it too.
That’s just great, no WoW to dilute Chinese productivity. So if they’re not actually playing WoW, then which MMOG forums/blogs are they spending their newly found free time perusing? Anyone have thoughts on the top sites in the US/abroad?
Hello.
I would like to put a link to your site on my blog roll if you want to do the same for mine. It would be a good way to build up both of our readerships.
thank you.
I like very much the writings and pictures and explanations in your adress so I look forward to see your next writings.
To provide useful information, please click to view
Bose headphones
ghd Hair Straightener
Women is Dakota
Sundance UGG Boots
Thank you!