Blizzard ditches long-time WoW operator
Dependency issues
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
Blizzard Entertainment is dumping its long-time China World of Warcraft distributor and operator, a company that relies heavily on the online adventure, for a rival operation.
Online games operator NetEase.com said on Thursday it has won a three-year license to host Blizzard's massively popular role playing game in mainland China. The firm presently hosts nearly every other Blizzard game in the country.
WoW's current license is held by rival The9, a contract that's set to expire on June 8. The9 has some of the most powerful privately owned supercomputers in the country, which it uses to host a number of online games. However, the company gets at least 75 per cent of its revenue from WoW alone. Clearly not good news for The9.
NetEase said it's not going change the current time-based billing model for WoW when the license to operate the game is transferred over. In most other areas, Blizzard charges gamers by the month. Last August, NetEase scored a license to operate Starcraft II, Warcraft III multiplayer services in China.
The fate of WoW's new second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King is still unclear in China. Although NetEase acquired the license to sell Wrath there, Chinese censors wouldn't have any of The9's earlier attempts to bring the expansion into the country. Officials cited People's Republic govermentspeak grievances over Wrath's "objectionable" content, like its frequent depictions of skeletons and the new Death Knight class of hero. ®
COMMENTS
Ugh...
Sorry commentty people. But as anyone who has ever faced the CrackCraft can tell you, the Chinese servers, EU servers, and American servers all use different serial codes to allow you on to them.
For the 'Chinese' gold spam you are talking about the players must be running on a version of the game suited to your locality. And if they have a copy of the normal version of the game attuned [*cough*] to your local version, there is nothing to stop them getting a version of Wrath for that locality either.
Also, the changing of the hosting company in China will have no affect whatsoever on players using versions of the game hosted in other localities.
Sorry...
@Bad Beaver
I'd imagine there's not much gold trade happening on the chinese servers regardless - what makes it profitable on the US/EU realms is the currency imbalance between the countries involved.
WotLK not available in China
Which explains why the powerlevelling spam in the game has dropped off - they can only take you to level 70 not level 80.
Unfortunately, level 1 players will still invite level 80s into a party just to ask the same message "Do you want to buy gold again. We have 25457k going spare"
I just tell them to "f u c k o f f" knowing full well that they won't complain.
Can the game be played in Chinese? Does anyone know?
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
