Posted by pixiestixy on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 - 17 Comments
As you guys may remember from a while back, WoW in China is in the process of switching partners. Former provider The9, a Shanghai-based company that ran WoW China for four years, lost those rights after a bout of financial troubles and no launch yet of WotLK. They’ve filed two lawsuits against Blizzard in the aftermath, but didn’t retain rights to distribute the game. The company just ceased powering mainland WoW servers as of 12 a.m. on June 7, according to JLM Pacific Epoch, who has been following the situation.
According to the JLM story, all users’ character data now is in the process of being transferred to Blizzard Entertainment, and soon NetEase.com will be operating servers. And a NetEase affiliate is poised to license WoW for the next three years.
But there’s one slight complication: the transferring of all this data takes time. The first set of servers aren’t set to come back up until late June, and the remaining servers may take several weeks after that, said NetEase CEO William Ding in the story. And who knows what will happen after that. I certainly would suspect such a giant operation to run into some snags along the way. Though, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for the sake of all the WoW China subscribers that things go smoothly.
Then there’s the issue of unused prepaid subscription cards and security tokens. Just this week, The9 said it would refund the cards that have been bought within 45 days. NetEase, in the meantime, has plans to release its own prepaid cards. I’m sure THAT won’t cause any added confusion to an already complicated situation. /sarcasm.
So it looks like the next few weeks will be quiet for the 3 million+ WoW subscribers in China. If I were them, I’d be on pins and needles just hoping that nothing goes wrong with the transfer.
What do you guys think of the situation? It seems that China is one of, if not the biggest market for WoW, yet they’re going through a rough patch. At least they’ll have a new provider and, with any luck, see WotLK before too long.
Related Posts: Blizzard Switches World of Warcraft Partner in China, WoW China Can’t Catch a Break, (Censored) World of Warcraft Returns To China, Carebear, WoW’s Legal Rampage,
By Kelith on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I think that we’ll see a reduction in gold selling. Sweet.
By Nomzz on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 11:57 am
@ Kelith
Thats exactly what I thought.
By ♫♫♫♫♫♫ on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
@ Nomzz
I believe we all did, and i’m looking forward for questing without getting a: Hey, Do you wan’t to buy gold? Bla bla bla, every 20th sec.
By bobby on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
How does the chinese servers being down affect gold sellers on us/eu realms?
By The Best Stuff On Earth on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Oh No! I guess they will have to go outside and maybe get jobs or meet real people. I think they are going to be very sad when they find out that they can’t rez after they get killed.
GO OUTSIDE! OR STAY IN! OR DO BOTH!
I’M A DOCTOR!!!
By iTZKooPA on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I assume this will result in some serious lost revenue for Blizzard (and thus Activision-Blizzard) as well.
By Sno on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
@ Kelith
No because the goldsellers in china play on the american servers
By cocopuff on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
lol china gets the short end of the stick again
By Amatera on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I don’t think it’s a good idea to put an entire country through withdrawals like that.
By mabus on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Those of you that say, it’ll stop chinese farmers.. um.. they all play on chinese realms.. if anything the amount of chinese people that come to play on US realms might increase as they buy the game for us servers (which they can do through other websites and places).
By Healzrus on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
The World, comrades, is unfair.
Business politics and international law still governs the distribution and operation of games, no matter what the gamers have to say.
In the end, Cashflow statements and balance sheets determine business outcomes.
By Sean on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Wow, that’s a long time to be raiding gruul’s, maggy and kara.
Must be rare to find a Chinese WoW player that doesn’t have Sunwell on farm. Half the population will probably be in tier 6.
By theone on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 3:56 am
@ Sean
thats exactly what i thought ….
By power leveling guide on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 6:48 am
China gets screwed….again!
By WoWwife on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 7:23 am
I knew a bunch a people from mainland China that all went to Taiwan when Wrath was released and started new characters on Taiwan’s (Oceanic I think) servers. I feel like most hardcore Chinese players saw it coming and are finding loopholes.
By mthrl on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Wow, what a bunch of Xenophobes. Account hackers and gold sellers aren’t exclusively Chinese. And the people who are losing out here are honest, hard-working people like yourselves. In fact, judging from the average Chinese working day, they’re probably people who work a good deal harder than any of you!
By Dave on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Who knows, with all the Chinese not seeing Wow, they might quit it, do something with their lives like join the Chinese military, then be the first to invade westcoast shores while they watch the Blizzard building burn for their suffering.. Who knows O.O