China bars WoW expansion for showing bone
Censors scandalized by skeletons
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Stupendously popular online game World of Warcraft's second expansion, "Wrath of the Lich King" is being blocked by Chinese censors for showing too much bone.
According JLM Pacific Epoch, China's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has twice rejected applications from Blizzard Entertainment and its domestic operator, The9, because of the game's all-too-frequent depiction of skeletons.
The original release of WoW had required Blizzard to modify undead characters and enemies in the game to pass Chinese regulator muster. Among the changes were giving the walking dead extra meat and using graves to show where players have died rather than skeletons.
China had issued the usual People's Republic governmentspeak, sating this is it's way of promoting a healthy and harmonious online environment.
While vanilla WoW and its first expansion managed to pass censors, Blizzard is apparently having a tougher time cleaning up Wrath — with a campaign centered around defeating the Lich King and his mindless armies of the undead. Reportedly, Blizzard even submitted a version of the game without the new Death Knight class of hero, which is a major feature in the expansion.
That's certainly not good news for The9. Although the company made $51.1m in fiscal 2008 and owns six of China's fastest privately-owned computers, it's profits are nearly entirely dependent on collecting monthly fees for World of Warcraft.
The9 reportedly told GAPP earlier this week it would go bankrupt it it couldn't sell the expansion.
The regulator rejection could be related to China's ongoing crackdown on internet pornography and so-called "lewd" digital content. Skeletons are just extremely nude people after all. ®
COMMENTS
"Wrath of the Lich King"
I think their problem stems chiefly not from the gratuitous showing of skeletal remains, but rather from the very idea that a rich foreign ruler might possess metal-turning equipment.
Mines the one with the measuring spanner in the top front pocket.
The9?
Surely that's Lord of the Rings...
Mine's the 1st Age one with +9 Pedantry...
@Leaps of logic for uk.gov
Well they want to put minimum prices on Alchole (coz it's bad mm'kay)
Use tax to disuade you from doing anything they or their sponsors don't like (smoke,drink,drive,fly)
(look to) Make things illegal based on no evidence what so ever (extreme porn, cartoons)
Ignore science when their dogma says otherwise (drugs)
Blindly enact law that devistates our global reputation (much of the anti terror legislation)
Place child offenders with foster families that have children (it's too hard to check these things mmm'kay)
the list goes on and on,
however back to WoW,
I can see our puritan overlords wanting to "deal" with it on several levels.
1) There are children and adults in the same location, therefore everyone should be vetted.
2) It is possible to send communications to people all over the world, this means it should be monitored becouse you it could be used to form underground networks terrorist/peadophiles/bdsm/train spotters.
3) At least one "scientist/guy" has said that it's a dangerous addiction like crack, that means it should probably be banned, controlled, taxed or/and have a minimum fee.
Anyway, yeah the UK wont let China be ahead for long.
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