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.
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