Wrath of the Lich King rejected thus far by Chinese government

by James Egan Mar 10th 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Expansions, MMO industry, News items, Legal

Continuing on in that upward ascension toward MMO godhood, Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft has proven to be popular with the Death Knight crowd in Western markets. "Popular" is an understatement, of course. Millions of MMO gamers have bought the expansion to date. Despite its success in Western markets, Wrath of the Lich King still hasn't been released in China, where the title has a significant playerbase. Why? Regulatory issues and censorship.

China-based JLM Pacific Epoch reports: "The government has rejected two applications by the second expansion for The9's (Nasdaq: NCTY) licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft, "Wrath of the Lich King," [...] The applications were rejected due to content that didn't meet requirements, including a city raid and skeleton characters; the submitted version did not contain WLK's Death Knight first hero class..."

World of Warcraft has undergone changes specific to the Chinese market in the past, namely removing skeletons altogether in order to receive approval to operate the game in mainland China. It's likely that Wrath of the Lich King will still be a huge hit in China once the game is altered to the point of being 'acceptable' to the government. When that will be, though, is still anyone's guess.

One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

Tags: asia, censorship, china, death-knight, death-knights, expansions, fantasy, government, jlm-pacific-epoch, legal, mmo-industry, regulatory, skeleton, skeletons, the9, world-of-warcraft, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

moo said on 3:57PM 3-10-2009

Why can't they just let the people decide for themselves? Oh noes Skeletons and the word Death in a game, that'll cause murders all over China :S No wonder why alot of Chinese people come over to Uni here... so they can all play the full version of WoW.

wow said on 4:32PM 3-10-2009

Um... because they are communists?

moo said on 4:42PM 3-10-2009

Our work is done in Iraq so lets go on to Destroy China.

UltimateQ said on 4:48PM 3-10-2009

Yeah. Good Luck with that, I'll be sure to move to canada when the draft hits.

moo said on 4:50PM 3-10-2009

CHina may have more people but all that means is there are more of them to innocently kill and they are all crowded together some one small nuke and half a billion dies in a single city.

Firebreak said on 7:30PM 3-10-2009

While I don't like it we have way to much stake in each other to go to war. It would destroy our economy and we need them to buy more of our debt.

snowleopard233 said on 4:03PM 3-10-2009

This is really unfortunate but not unexpected. I spent about five months living in Shanghai and although I have plenty of nice things to say about the people and culture, the government has a long way to go before they are doing their population justice. Free speech and artistic expression, despite making massive headway since the 1980’s, are still heavily censored in TV, film, the internet and video games.
The ionic part is most of the Chinese public has easy access to these censored materials through bootlegs and the black market, which are really the main source of media consumption there. Had wrath of the lich king been an offline game, it would probably already be in countless internet cafes already albeit in counterfeit form. The difference here however is that The9 has to have permission from the Chinese government to run such a game and we won’t see it go live there until any shred of controversy or free thought is removed from this expansion.

Deadend said on 4:15PM 3-10-2009

Aww the Chinese government is just jealous of the Lichking because he can directly influence his peoples minds.

aleshia said on 2:56AM 3-12-2009

funny comments. It seems that those people were very interested in these Chinese affair. and I as a Chinese also is willing to answer some of those questions from my perspective.

One is wondering that why a lot of chinese come to US so that they can paly a full version.

My explanation: US government will never let a Chinese step in this country without certain skill and profession. Many of Chinese people can not speak English and what they can do is to wash dishes to gain American dollars. Just imagine, if 1/10 of Chinese gamers come to US to play WoW, there must be a source shortage on space, water, food, cloth and economy.

Q: "Um... because they are communists?"

, No , I am not. and so far as I know, most Soliders, givernment officials and servants are communists, most of the ordinary people are not.

Q: Our work is done in Iraq so lets go on to Destroy China.

Hehe, I love peace. But I have suggestion, why not end your economic depression first?

Q: CHina may have more people but all that means is there are more of them to innocently kill and they are all crowded together some one small nuke and half a billion dies in a single city.

That's true. Half a billion will die in an explosion, especially in big cities.

Q: Aww the Chinese government is just jealous of the Lichking because he can directly influence his peoples minds

Yep, right! For the horde. :D

It is nothing about the government or the game. Just national condidtion. It will become better I believe. We look like the Lost Generation somehow .

Rudolphe said on 4:21PM 3-10-2009

Nice!

Keep all those fucking Chinese gold farmers out of here!

darkstryke said on 5:07PM 3-10-2009

You realize the gold farmers play on the US version of the client, not the localized licensed the9 Chinese version, right?

Brian! said on 4:30PM 3-10-2009

Ahh, censorship. How grand.

danarchy said on 4:39PM 3-10-2009

Thats communism. Why can't they just be democratic like us? I mean sure we borrow all our money from them, and sure we kill eachother far faster and in more grizzly fashions than even their government can keep up with, but at least were free! (with numerous exceptions...)

snowleopard233 said on 5:58PM 3-10-2009

Sure the US has nowhere near a clean track record when it comes to human rights (Native Americans come to mind).
But don't think for a second that what you experience in your nice little sheltered first world society is anything in comparison to the horrors the Chinese police visit upon their own people everyday. We just don't here about it here because they've gotten really good at covering the disappearance of hundreds of "political" dissidents overnight. Truth is most of these people were just put away for having a religion the CCP felt was a threat.

It's not even communism anymore, just capitalism with an extremely corrupt and paranoid government that is slowly losing control over its ticking time bomb of an oppressed population.

Be thankful for the fact that you can badmouth Obama and Bush all you want and that you can smoke a bowl without having to spend the rest of your life in a prison camp mining sulfur.

nomanor01 said on 7:51AM 3-12-2009

Here's hoping the majority of you posting here are not the average for US gamers. I'm not sure I've seen a more concentrated form of stupid in so few posts than this.

China is a Communist country. It's government controls everything, down to how many children you have. One to many? They will take the child and kill it, no matter the age or when they find out.

The people are good, but for the most part very poor. They have no say in anything.

By the way, one nuke in a city will not kill half a billion people, that would be just under half of their 1.3 billion population. And we wouldn't Nuke china for no reason, just as we don't cause any war for no reason. You have the internet at your fingers people, use it and step away from MSNBC, CNN and the like and do your own research.

Dustin said on 12:29PM 3-12-2009

"China is a Communist country. It's government controls everything, down to how many children you have. One to many? They will take the child and kill it, no matter the age or when they find out."

BS. Learn what you're talking about before you accuse governments, no matter how corrupt, of institutionalized infanticide. It just makes you sound like an idiot.

Vilhelm said on 3:40PM 3-12-2009

"Here's hoping the majority of you posting here are not the average for US gamers. I'm not sure I've seen a more concentrated form of stupid in so few posts than this.

[...] bla bla bla bla bla [...]"

You obviously don't know shit about China. Your post is a perfect example of "concentrated form of stupid." Your first mistake was to call China a "Communist country." Then the fail just continues.

Wjowski said on 6:53PM 3-10-2009

If anything's going to lead to the fall of the CCP it's dicking around with people's MMO addiction.

Plastic Rat said on 10:32PM 3-10-2009

With Chinese officials, you generally have to approach things as if you were dealing with a very spoiled and emotionally unstable 9 year old, who is also armed with an automatic rifle.

This whole thing is just a big face-saving exercise. Once the official in charge has sufficiently proven to everybody that he does in fact swing the biggest dick in this specific equation, everything will go through smoothly.

The actual content being discussed is entirely irrelevant to the situation.

Perhaps though, they could swap the undead models for Tibetan monks and Falun Gong practitioners? Maybe they'll be happier with players slaughtering those?