WoW goes China

[Abel]

As reported at http://www.gamespot.com/news/productionupdates/archive/2005/03/02/index.html

Gamers swarm Chinese WOW beta test

After breaking records in North America and Europe, World of Warcraft is storming China, and it isn't even available yet. According to the Chinese game-industry newsletter Pacific Epoch, in the first hour that registration was open, 100,000 gamers signed up for accounts hoping to participate in the game's closed beta test. Beta testing is slated to begin in about two weeks, according to the game's local operator in China, the9.com.

This is another reason why WoW is set to be the dominating MMORPG for the next couple of years : it's one of the few games that gets accross cultural boundaries, together with FFXI.

In fact the same can be said about all Blizzard and Squarenix games and to a large extent this has contributed to their record-breaking sales numbers. It's time some other companies take note of this and the enormous growth of internet usage in Asia. Korea is big in MMORPGs, China is going to be much bigger very soon.

[ahoythematey]

It's a nice number to see, but let us not kid ourselves into not thinking that a significant portion of those registrars are intended to practice gold/loot farming for bullshit like IGE and it's ilk.

[Jayce]

It's a nice number to see, but let us not kid ourselves into not thinking that a significant portion of those registrars are intended to practice gold/loot farming for bullshit like IGE and it's ilk.

Why would the Chinese farm Chinese servers to sell to Chinese people?

The whole thing with the Chinese farmers thing is that they can live on less salary when compared to the US.

[ahoythematey]

Looks like I am a complete fucking idiot when I post after work.  Time to get a handgun and end the suffering...

[Alkiera]

I can't see how Korean's will be interested in WoW, with the leveling curve it has.  What happens when the entire country has lvl 60 characters the week after launch?  Or even at launch, if they do the typical thing of letting beta players keep their characters over there.

I just don't see WoW appealing to the same people that really really liked Lineage.

Well, accept for the character 'customization'.

Alkiera

[Toast]

I would prefer not to hear about all the international expansion Blizzard is taking on.

Yes, there are discreet teams working on WoW China versus WoW Korea etc. ,but the bottom line is that corporate resources and attention are being expended.

Where's the patch? Why are the servers still somewhat unstable? Congratufrickinlations on China. Meanwhile, the natives here are getting really restless.