The Daily Grind: What do you think of the WoW downtime in China
by Lesley Smith 
Jul 8th 2009 at 8:00AM
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, Expansions, MMO industry, Patches, The Daily Grind
For the citizens of China, Azeroth is silent. During the transition from The9 to NetEase, the servers have been taken offline leaving millions of people with nothing to do. There are other MMOs, plenty in fact. Some from the west and loads with that distinctly eastern vibe. Yet I'm sure WoW has the vast majority of the Chinese MMO player base suffering major withdrawal and pining for Azeroth. Of course, many will have transferred to Taiwanese servers where Wrath is already live, up to date and there is no downtime but the vast majority will be left waiting.The most contact we have with Chinese players is usually through whispers asking if you want to buy gold, gnome corpses in Ironforge linking to websites, phishing scams and bots. I admit, I've noticed a marked decrease on my own server and the corpses have moved to Stormwind instead. Gold farmers aren't exactly the most positive form of contact and most Chinese players seem to be branded gold farmers regardless (guilty until proven innocent) and treated with disdain. So readers, how have you found the last couple of weeks in Azeroth? What do you think of the forced downtime? How do you think this will effect Chinese players (and I mean players, not farmers or bots)? Do you play on a Chinese realm? Have you migrated and rerolled or are you playing the waiting game?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ahac said on 8:14AM 7-08-2009
They really need to come back with Wrath to get all those players back.
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dAnixx said on 8:17AM 7-08-2009
I think Blizzard is losing a lot of cash... Can't they do anything about it? coz it sure is a lot of cash they are losing.
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Pewpdaddy said on 8:37AM 7-08-2009
There goes about 3 million of their 11 million players. =p Some will likely find something else to play and may actually leave the Juggernaut. Life is odd without an MMO sub, first time for me in some 8 years. I simply dont know what to do with all the free time. =] Looking forward to Global Agenda, Aion, and FF XIV.
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ScytheNoire said on 11:39AM 7-08-2009
3 million? Blizzard's own numbers have always pegged it at about 50 to 60% of their player base.
Waxil said on 8:43AM 7-08-2009
Honestly I wish they would take down North American WoW for say, 2-4 weeks straight per year (it goes down for about 12ish days total a year with Tuesday maintenance but that isn't consecutive).
There would probably be suicides but honestly Blizzard has to start weaning the addicts for the inevitable day the servers go down.
No wow, anywhere, for anyone, for say.. the month of August every year.
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Skuz said on 8:53AM 7-08-2009
I think it should be extended globally. (yes I hate WoW).
On a constructive note, I really feel for the Chinese gamers, they get served a daily diet of propoganda & then have to stomach their gaming liberties getting choked to death by their government's bureaucracy, had the administration allowed WoTLK this situation wouldn't have happened.
I hopoe Blizzard bring their forces to bear on the matter to resolve it expediently.
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Mark said on 9:03AM 7-08-2009
My suspicion is that this has a lot more to do with China than it does with Blizzard. If Blizzard could find a way of keeping the game online and getting Wrath live, they would have. They'd be crazy not to.
This sounds more like the Chinese government putting up roadblock after roadblock.
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JGaltTK said on 9:10AM 7-08-2009
It would be great if some investigative reporting were done on the Chinese companies that are involved here.
ALL companies that are successful in China are politically connected and/or have some highly influential patron in the CCP pulling for them.
It would be interesting to see who is standing behind the various protagonists in this conflict, how their political fortunes have changed over the course of this story, and what direct impact this has had on WoW's efforts to cultivate this market.
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mysecretid said on 9:13AM 7-08-2009
When the China servers come back up, I plan to get myself an anonymous user account and start gold farming.
GwailoGoldBoy> 10,000 gold, Only 342 Yuan! Fast. Discreet. www.worldofyuancraft.com. 50 Lvls 500 Yuan!
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Grim said on 9:43AM 7-08-2009
"The most contact we have with Chinese players is usually through whispers asking if you want to buy gold, gnome corpses in Ironforge linking to websites, phishing scams and bots. I admit, I've noticed a marked decrease on my own server and the corpses have moved to Stormwind"
LOLWUT?
Maybe I'm slow, but if the Chinese players aren't there to make corpse ads, why would corpses move to Stormwind?
-Grim (http://www.dc-mmo.org)
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Jack said on 9:44AM 7-08-2009
I feel sorry for the China players I hope they have some fun still playing on the US servers until Blizzard work out all deals and paperwork!
Not worry China WoW fans soon you will be able to play this great game again and maybe the service will be much better for you guys!
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wolfsterne said on 9:56AM 7-08-2009
Anyone who thinks this has effected the WoW community in china (Oh there goes 3 mil of Blizzards players!!!) is an idiot. Blizzard has in fact lost very little as most players have just moved over to the Taiwanese servers. I would say Blizzards numbers are either about the same or possible a little more than they were when the 11.5 mil was announced.
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koehler83 said on 10:35AM 7-08-2009
I think it's hilarious. I don't have anything constructive to add.
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Ken said on 10:59AM 7-08-2009
Aren't the ongoing riots a result of this persistent downtime?
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Matt Mihaly said on 11:31AM 7-08-2009
The author wrote:
"Yet I'm sure WoW has the vast majority of the Chinese MMO player base suffering major withdrawal and pining for Azeroth."
Actually, WoW is not even close to the most popular MMO in China. Games like ZT Online, Zhu Xian, and Fantasy West Journey, etc are more popular.
--matt
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ScytheNoire said on 11:48AM 7-08-2009
Few things to remember, or inform about for those without knowledge on the situation (which is a few based on these comments).
China, according to Blizzard, makes up over 50% of the player base. So their numbers have been cut in half. If their numbers went up by 500K, they'd be advertising it, as they always have. Instead, Blizzard has been quiet about WoW numbers, and been making rash game changes, because their numbers are declining.
Players in China don't pay the same way we do over here, and their contribution to Blizzard's profits is much smaller. Most of the profits for Blizzard comes from North America and Europe.
NetEase doesn't even have a license to run WoW in China yet, so beyond any other problems they are having, NetEase has to deal with the government to get the rights to even run the game. Because The9 is fighting this in court, things could be down for a long, long time, years in fact.
Wrath of the Lich King never launched in China, due to the government fighting against the content. Their government gives games made outside the Asian market, especially overseas, a very hard time. Even if the WoW servers came back up, don't expect Wrath any time soon.
No mention of whether Blizzard and NetEase even have player data has been mentioned. As far as we know, The9 has that data, and could very well never turn it over, thus, all the work players have put into their characters may be gone.
So don't expect WoW to pop up in China any time soon. Blizzard's WoW numbers are significantly less than they were, but don't expect that to hurt their profit much, as China wasn't a major profit location. And as someone else mentioned, those who really want to play WoW, will probably have already moved on to playing other versions from nearby countries. But we may have seen the end of WoW in China, for years, if not forever.
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Pewpdaddy said on 1:41PM 7-08-2009
@Wolfsterne .... read this... http://www.massively.com/2009/03/16/china-to-impose-more-restrictions-on-foreign-online-games/
Basically unless they want to reroll & roll old content / smuggle in WotLK it cannot be purchased because it has "zombies" in it. China also banned gold farming which I'm sure has further declined the number of subs coming from China.
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Siya said on 3:30PM 7-08-2009
From what I have read from the Taiwanese game news, China players had been migrating into their servers, and caused some problems for the Taiwanese players, it is said that it takes at least 4 hours to get into the game, another problem is the cultural differences between Mainland China and Taiwan, the players uses different terms for different things, and with the political differences... lets just say Taiwanese players are not happy about the fact that China players are moving over to their servers.
Some Taiwanese players had filed complaints to the government and the government is investigating the problem. I wonder what could be done.
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Siya said on 3:40PM 7-08-2009
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgnn.gamer.com.tw%2F8%2F37838.html&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&history_state0=zh-CN|en|
for those who are interested in the original posts, I used google translator for the article, but if you want to try your own translator use the link below
http://gnn.gamer.com.tw/8/37838.html
Knyle2 said on 12:22PM 7-09-2009
I hate everything about wow in china.
I hate that they pay $0.06/hr and we pay 15 a month.
I hate how it lets blizz sens false signals like "12 million players".
I hate how Chinese ppl make US accounts and try to steal and break TOSs.
I hope China's freakjob Gov perma-bans WoW.
Let them play all those weird (curvy white girls with elf ears) games they are always spam advertising on webpages.
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