world-of-fight
Latest
World of Fighter is Street Fighter rip off
World of Fighter (yes there's been a name change), the newest game from The9, the former publisher of WoW in China, is not going to be a WoW clone, or a Warhammer ripoff. Rather it seems to embody most of the characters from Capcom's flagship title Street Fighter and a few of their other IPs. The teaser website for the game has been updated with a flash movie showing artwork of Chun-Li, Ryu and other characters moving across the screen and announcing the game's new name. It seems like Simon Belmont from Castlevania is also among the ranks along with some generic Asian-style characters. However what it actually is in terms of game play or genre remains unknown. Could it be a Street Fighter MMO?We'll keep you updated but given the announcement that The9 are suing Blizzard, it's really no surprise that this new title has taken such a drastic change. How Capcom feel about this, however, remains to be seen.
The9 sues Blizzard
In an interesting twist to the dramatic saga of World of Warcraft in China, The9, the former distributor of the game until they lost the license last April, is suing Blizzard in two cases involving property loss compensation and commercial defamation. A company representative confirmed the news to sources at the same time stating that The9 will no longer comment on the matter. The Shanghai Pudong District People's Court will hear the assets damage case and the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court will hear the commercial defamation case on June 18 and July 8, respectively, according to 178.com. This news comes after the announcement that The9 was deep in the development of a game conspicuously similar to World of Warcraft called World of Fight. Numerous delays in the release of Wrath of the Lich King in China fueled rumors leading up the non-renewal of The9's contract. The situation became so dire that a large portion of mainland players migrated (re-rolled) en masse to WoW servers in Taiwan, where Wrath was available. In fact, some had made incredible progress in such a short time, such as killing Mimiron in hard mode despite having re-rolled. Blizzard had planned to award the contract to The9 competitor NetEase once their contract with The9 expires in June.
Chinese guild heads to Taiwan, kills Mimiron on hard mode
WoW has been in a state of flux in China lately, with the9 failing to gain approval from the government to publish Wrath of the Lich King, which in turn may or may not have lead to Blizzard licensing the operation of WoW in China to Netease instead. In the midst of all this, it has been the players stuck in the middle, their play availability up in the air, stuck killing Kil'jaedan over and over and over as they wait for Northrend with bated breath. That said, there's still been a few players who have taken matters into their own hands.
The9 releasing World of Warcraft clone or Warhammer Online?
The9's loss of publishing rights for World of Warcraft in China has been in the news quite a bit. Surrounded by rumours of bankruptcy in the wake of losing their biggest license, the company survived and it has plans. Now both the Wall Street Journal and our sister site are reporting about their newest venture: World of Fight.At the moment all we know about this mysterious new title comes from the trailer website. For starters the teaser site uses a font familiar to anyone who plays WoW. Indeed the web address itself (www.wofchina.com) is but a letter away from the official Chinese WoW site. However that weird stargate-esque contraption is straight out of a Warhammer Online starter area and The9 is partially owned by giants Electronic Arts -- who also publish Warhammer in North America. It could easily be a cheap ploy to get gamers interested in a WoW clone or a legitimate teaser site for Warhammer with a terrible Chinglish title. We won't know for sure until the 'gates' open but when that could be has not yet been disclosed. We'll bring you more as soon as we find out.
The9 prepping WoW-clone World of Fight
You have to give Chinese company The9 a bit of credit. The loss of such the publishing rights to World of Warcraft would have destroyed lesser companies, it just made them teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. Now they're back -- with World of Fight.The teaser site went up earlier in the week and reeks of WoW in a way that only Chinese knock-offs can. At the moment we know next to nothing about the game but we can certainly guess. The domain name (www.wofchina.com) is suspiciously similar to the one for World of Warcraft (www.wowchina.com) but with one letter changed. Just look at that font, remind you of anything?It's not a stretch to bet that The9 are hoping to attract people who associated them with WoW, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard won't be too happy to see their former publisher in Asia trying to promote a game so similar. We'll certainly keep you updated as I'm quite keen to see what World of Fight looks like.
