Forget it Blizzard, This is Chinatown

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Forget it Blizzard, This is Chinatown

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 01:22pm 04/11/09 | 16 Comments

A Chinese regulatory body has ordered the cease of World of WarCraft gaming operation in its territory, in what is being suggested is nothing more than an internet "turf war".

It's not even clear if the body has the authority to do so, says Reuters, but NetEase, the company behind World of WarCraft distribution and maintenance, was told to no longer accept any new account registrations, and to stop taking money from existing subscribers.

It's believed the move is to redistribute growth in the online gaming sector to other companies and titles as the momentum for World of WarCraft, since its commercial launch in September, has been incredibly strong. Check the above link for more.

Tags: world of warcraft / blizzard / china / ban

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jadz0r
Posted 01:58pm 04/11/09

Haha. I think it's awesome that WOW has such a stronghold that China is now asking it stop letting people register and pay subscriptions.

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scuzzy
Posted 01:58pm 04/11/09

Chinese gold farmers are now a rare commodity

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Obes
Posted 02:38pm 04/11/09

Deceptive thread title!

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Syco
Posted 02:54pm 04/11/09

Sort of on-topic. With the new merge to battle.net thing. Am I able to merge two accounts but keep the same separate payment method and have both logged in together?

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Obes
Posted 02:55pm 04/11/09

Sort of on-topic. With the new merge to battle.net thing. Am I able to merge two accounts but keep the same separate payment method and have both logged in together?

Yes

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Reverend Evil™
Posted 02:58pm 04/11/09

I would say so dude. I've got two accounts although I haven't checked my bank thingy since the merge.

Also bought myself an authenticator and changed my email just in case. Would suck having multiple accounts linked and then being keylogged. Not that I go to dodgy sites but it's nice to have peace of mind.

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AverageCowboy
Posted 03:21pm 04/11/09

lolling

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XaartaX
Posted 03:29pm 04/11/09

"The news comes as Beijing tries to tighten its control over online gaming, worried about undesirable content. In October, the regulator banned many forms of foreign investment into the country's online games industry -- expected to grow 30-50 percent this year to up to $4 billion".

and

"Millions of Warcraft players will suffer the most," said Leon Li, vice president of Chinese mobile Internet firm KongZhong (KONG.O). "But if you take a long term view of the industry, many of these Warcraft gamers may migrate to other games, so for the other Chinese online game companies, it is a good thing.""

Just because Blizzard's offering is better than the usual junk being churned out.

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Reverend Evil™
Posted 03:51pm 04/11/09

Yeah, it all sounds like shit to me. It's like someone here in Australia saying we can't play any games from overseas because we'd like to support the local game market.

Stupid chinese chinaman!

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trog
Posted 04:12pm 04/11/09

How weird would it be if this was the social change needed to push China's citizens into demanding a change of government

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Scooter
Posted 04:18pm 04/11/09

Their population is over 1 billion, Their Wow players is estimated as just over 1 million.

But yes, it would be weird having a game have such an impact on a countries government.

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Trauma
Posted 04:54pm 04/11/09

Trog, that would be truly epic.

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ViscoS
Posted 05:04pm 04/11/09

The poor buggers would actually get to see new content.

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Gomez
Posted 11:05pm 04/11/09

If China doesn't want our products then maybe we should stop importing all there stuff as well. We'll see what happens to there economy then! Fuckers can't have it both ways.

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