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Chinese gamer sued for using WoW add-on
What if World of Warcraft had no add-ons, would you still play? Worse yet, what if they had the add-ons, and you were aware of them, but it was actually illegal to use them? That's the state of the game in China right now, thanks to the country's licensed WoW distributor, The9.As part of The9's ongoing war against add-ons, they introduced anti-plugin software in 2004, and have threatened to close down any accounts that circumvented that software. In fact, the company just recently won a lawsuit that stemmed from a player who got their account closed when they were shown to use an add-on. In an article discussing this subject over at Virtually Blind, they suggest a server made just for add-ons, for anyone who wishes to participate. Taking into consideration the fact that China would probably never allow this, what are your thoughts?EDIT: It seems there was some confusion in the original article's translation, attributing legal add-ons to illegal plug-ins or hacking software. Our apologies for the misunderstanding in quoting the Virtually Blind article, and thank you to all who pointed this out.
The9 scores again in Q2 '08
The9, which is the company in China that runs Blizzard's World of Warcraft game there, has released their second quarter financial numbers, and they're rocking yet again -- they pulled in record income and revenue, nabbing about US$66.3 million, a full $60.7 million of which came directly from World of Warcraft and all the deals they have surrounding that property there. And their peak concurrent user total for WoW topped 1 million, which means one million accounts (not necessarily people) were logged on and playing at the same time.Apparently the company is also running a few other games, but clearly WoW is dominating their income, and, needless to say, doing very well for them. And probably won't be stopping anytime soon -- if Blizzard follows through on their plan to release Wrath asap in China, odds are that The9's biggest game will get even more popular.
WoW Chinese distributor The9 dominates China's supercomputers
One thing that your average WoW player probably doesn't think about much is the sheer processing power that's needed to play the game. I don't mean your gaming rig personally. WoW's actually pretty forgiving on that front. I mean the server hardware over on Blizzard's end, the stuff that makes us miss some gaming every other Tuesday or so. Do we really stop to think about how powerful it is? It turns out that it's powerful enough to dominate a list of China's top 100 supercomputers. The Register reports that 5 of the top 10 supercomputers in China are owned by The9, WoW's China distributor. Not only that, it also owns at least 12 of the top 100 overall, and perhaps more. That means that more than 10% of China's best supercomputing power is directed toward MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft and The9 make China's top ranked supercomputers list
Real-life scientists recently overran World of Warcraft and wrapped their brains around trogs and intracellular signaling. One mind trip from the mad scientist James Wallis intrigued us with his experimental astronomical calculations in Azeroth. However, there is another real science underneath the brilliant theory-crafting bringing these worlds to life and players across the Globe and that is the computer infrastructure. One entity responsible for this science is the The9, a leading MMORPG operator and developer in the Chinese market, and with over 5.5 million World of Warcraft subscribers that's going to take a lot of computer power to feed the PC baang frenzy. According to the UK edition of The Register, The9 ranked on China's Top 100 supercomputer list taking half the top ten spots with 12 machines overall in the top 100. The 1950–core clusters taking the top spots were built by HP, and when taking all 12 machines into account The9 has a least 18,032 cores of processing power dedicated to keeping MMOG players all across China fixated on: World of Warcraft, Soul Ultimate Nation, Granado Espada, and Joyful Journey West.
Chinese MMO distributor gains new Chief Financial Officer
There's been a recent personnel change to China's leading distributor of online gaming. The9 Limited has recently appointed Mr. George Lai as Chief Financial Officer after the resignation of Mr. Tony Tse, due to personal and family reasons. Mr. Lai brings several years of experience to the table, having worked previously at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu since 2000.The9 Limited operates licensed MMORPGs for Chinese players, including World of Warcraft, Hellgate: London, Ragnarok Online 2, Huxley and many more. The9 Limited is also developing various proprietary games of their own including Warriors of Fate Online and Fantastic Melody Online.
Mourning for China
Apparently it's natural disaster season in Asia. The massive cyclone that hit Burma () on May 3 has taken an estimated 78,000 lives with an additional 56,000 missing. Last week (May 12) an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale shook parts of china. The death toll for that quake has reached 34,000 with the body count expected to rise. Many of the quake victims have been children, as least 6 schools collapsed while classes were in session. It will take weeks, months, or even years to sort out the amount of damage caused by these events. The Chinese government has declared a mourning period for three days for those injured, missing, and passed. This includes the closing of movie theaters, web portals and television stations. The9, who services World of Warcraft in is participating in the blackout as is Shanda Interactive Entertainment, host of the World of Legend game. If you are helping out, there are a number of charitable organizations taking donations to assist in providing relief to victims in Asia. Studies show that making donations to such organizations actually help to boost your own mood in addition to helping those who are in need.
Chinese decree on mourning curtails MMO play
Out of respect for the over 32,000 lives lost in the recent Sichuan earthquake, China has officially decreed a 3-day period of mourning, during which no entertainment media may be offered. This directly affects players of World of Warcraft, to name one game, as the Chinese distributor for WoW, The9, is complying fully with this edict.Massively extends its condolences to the surviving families of this tragedy.
Gold farmers arrested in China
Here in the US, you can't really arrest someone for selling gold in-game -- it's against Blizzard's Terms of Service, so they can ban you from the game or even file suit against you, but it's not actually illegal. But in China, under communism, things are apparently a little different. Two gold farmers have actually been arrested by the government for "unfair revenue distribution" -- apparently the two had a disagreement about how to distribute the over $200,000 they had made from selling gold in World of Warcraft.Word is going around that "unfair revenue distribution" is the actual charge in the arrest, but it sounds like they just had a financial disagreement, so we really have no idea what they'd be charged with. Unfortunately, China isn't exactly forthcoming with how its legal system actually works, so who knows what's really happening here.Their operation also sounds interesting as well -- they had been going for about seven months, and had a crew of 20 PCs and 20 employees. There's little chance that an arrest like this will make much of an actual difference in the game (and there's no way an arrest in China will set a precedent in the US), but it is an interesting case that we'll follow if we can.[Via WorldofWar.net]
EA executive says they have no influence over The9's WoW contract
N'Gai Croal, of the Newsweek games blog Level Up, recently sent a few questions in the direction of Electronic Arts. He was following up on the war of words that has been developing between the enormous software publisher and up-and-coming heavyweight Activision/Blizzard. Numerous comments have been dropped by ActiBlizz's Bobby Kotick, slamming everything from EA's interest in Take-Two to their habit of 'stripping the soul' from purchases. Jeff Brown, EA's vice president of corporate communications, responded to N'Gai's questions and touched twice on Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Croal very directly asked about EA's investment in The9, World of Warcraft's Chinese publisher, and how that relationship would be affected by company friction. Said Brown, "We've got a small equity state in The9 and no real influence over their management. Their plans for non-EA titles don't involve us and we don't have any insight on what they plan to do." He was more direct (and snarky) when asked how he feels Activision/Blizzard is handling their studio as a whole: "No strong opinion. They've got three great franchises [presumably referring to World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero and Call of Duty 4--Ed.]--it's great that one of them was actually developed at Activision."
WoW China gets all-access pass in Quel'danas
According to our tipster Gwwfps of the blog Potato Skin, World of Warcraft distributor The9 has manually set all the quests in the Isle of Quel'danas to be fully completed -- that is, all quests on the Isle are now open to all players as though Phase 4 had been opened. With the help of Babelfish, as far as I can make it out, this decision was arrived at to "make up several weeks the partial servers to appear returns to the files question for generally to play the loss which the family brings". If my Engrish serves me right, this means that the move was a drastic resolution to having massive downtime for numerous servers which resulted in realms-wide progression rollbacks. Some servers reportedly had their Isle of Quel'danas progress rolled back several times over the course of one day.Gwwfps explains it better in his blog, noting that Patch 2.4 resulted in poor server performance across the board. Apparently, WoW China has been suffering from performance issues for quite some time and some have suggested that the servers upon which the game runs aren't quite up to par with Blizzard's standards. Others argue -- with good reason -- that the forced unlocking of the phases makes the game "less immersive." The sweeping measure also demonstrates an apparent lack of industriousness on the part of The9, who in theory could simply roll back individual servers to specific progress levels. On the other hand, players can probably get all ecstatic about getting their hands on epic gems so early (blast my slacker server!).
The9 and Soft-World to carry Wrath in Asia
Blizzard announced today that the forthcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion will be published by The9 in mainland China, and Soft-World in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. The9 and Soft-World have brought both the original WoW and Burning Crusade to their respective regions, so it's not surprising that they'll be handling Wrath as well. Release dates, of course, are still TBA, there as here. However, if there's one thing I like to do, it's speculating based on insufficient data. The agreement with Soft-World to carry BC appears to have been made just a month before BC's January 2007 launch in North America and Europe. So if Wrath follows this pattern, it will be out next month. On the other hand, the agreement with The9 to carry BC in mainland China was made in February 2007, a month after BC came out here, so if this holds true for Wrath as well, we should have been hitting Northrend a month ago. Either one of these is pretty unlikely; maybe there's not much information to be gleaned from this announcement after all (aside from that WoW is still doing well in Asia).
WoW achieves a million concurrent connections in China
World of Warcraft's Chinese overlords, The9, announced the game hit the epic (but not legendary) feat of having over one million concurrent connections. According to The9 it breaks the concurrency records set by the game's launch in China on September 6, 2007.Instinctively, the finger for this record-breaking concurrency is pointed at Chinese gold farmers, but apparently those players are on the North American and European servers and wouldn't be counted in The9's tally. The milestone isn't too shabby for a game that's allegedly peaked.[Via Massively, Ancient Gaming Noob]
Chinese WoW hits 1 million concurrent players
var digg_url = 'http://wow.joystiq.com/2008/04/11/chinese-wow-hits-1-million-concurrent-players/'; The9, which is the company that runs Blizzard's World of Warcraft in China, has announced today that the game has hit a full million concurrent players (which means that they've had one million people playing the game all at the same time) following the release of the Burning Crusade expansion there last year. Here in North America, concurrent users hasn't really ever been as high (although that is of course unofficial data, and we don't have information after the first month of this year). But MMOs are a different beast in China and other Asian countries -- not only do players pay-to-play (instead of a monthly fee, many players often pay hourly or daily, which means concurrent users equals paying users), and there are actually three games that have hit a million concurrent users over there (while here, WoW is far and above the largest MMO online).Still, it's quite an achievement. It's interesting that it's coming so late in the product's life -- it seems that, just as over here, the expansion had a significant impact on player interest. Definitely a big milestone for Blizzard's game in China.
GDC08: Is Asia the Hollywood of MMOs?
When you talk about gaming in North America, it's almost presumed you're talking about console or single-player PC games -- but in Asia it's the other way around. With the vast success of massively multiplayer games in the Asian market, it's no surprise to see American companies attempting to emulate similar models -- both in North America and overseas. But that level of success has proven difficult to emulate. Yesterday afternoon at the Worlds in Motion Summit, Susan Choe, David Wallerstein, Daniel James, and Bryan Pelz got together to chat about the future of the Asian market.
WoW China Distributor CFO Resigns
According to Worlds In Motion, the CFO of The9, distributor of World of Warcraft in China, has recently announced her resignation in order to pursue other interests. Hannah Lee, The9 vice president and CFO, has worked with The9 for over four years and will be stepping down at the end of February. The resignation comes at a curious time as the Shanghai-based company outperformed expectations in the last quarter of 2007. The announcement dealt a crit to the company's shares, which subsequently fell over 8.75% on the Nasdaq.The9 is China's biggest online gaming operator -- naturally with the license for WoW -- and also develops as well as distributes games in the region. Among its licenses are familiar titles such as Guild Wars and Hellgate: London, as well as titles more popular in Asia such as the control-three-characters-at-once Granado Espada, Ragnarok Online 2, and others. The company's CEO had this to say, "Hannah has been with us since before The9 went public in 2004. Over the years, she has played a vital role in transforming our company into a highly regarded US- listed public company with substantially improved financial reporting and internal control systems. We want to thank Hannah for her many contributions to The9 and wish her all the best in her future endeavors."The company has announced a search for a replacement and expect to make an appoinment before the end of February. Let's hope that The9 stays in good shape despite the departure of the key person responsible for crunching their numbers! Otherwise, we might no longer see silly news stations using maps of the Arathi Highlands!
World of Warcraft hits 10 million players
Blizzard has announced that the little game that could has hit another big, round number: they are now claiming 10 million World of Warcraft players globally. Gamasutra is reporting that WoW has about 2 million subscribers in Europe, about 2.5 million in North America, and approximately 5.5 million in Asia. They've also taken the step of qualifying what they mean when they say 'subscriber', something critics have used as a knock against their impressive subscriber numbers in the past due to the way that accounts are used in Korea and China. A subscriber, according to Blizzard, is someone who has "paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access."That number notably doesn't count promo subscriptions, expired accounts, canceled subscriptions, or unused prepaid cards. They are counting 'PC Bang' players by considering an account active if it has been used within the last 30 days. Subscribers that connect to the game under licensees like The9 are counted under the same guidelines.It's a little staggering to consider the sheer number of people playing this game now. When I started playing these games 50,000 people in one world was a big deal; Lineage, EQ, and FFXI were big-time by being at or over 500,000 people. Now with titles like WoW, Gaia Online, MapleStory, and even Habbo Hotel demolishing the old concept of a Massive world, it's ... more than a little bit exciting. I also think it's time that people just stop comparing WoW to other US-developed MMOs. People keep talking about a "WoW Killer", but ... 10 MILLION people, people. World of Warcraft isn't a game, it's a city. It makes as much sense to compare WoW to Dungeons and Dragons Online as it does to compare Scrabble with Chicago. That's just my opinion ... what do you think? Will there be a "WoW Killer" someday?
Analyst: The9 did very well last quarter
Chinese company The9 (which is the licensee for World of Warcraft in China) saw their stock rise after an analyst posted higher-than-expected estimates of their fourth-quarter profits. In short, more people are playing WoW in China than ever before. Which isn't surprising at all, given that right before the fourth quarter started, The9 released Burning Crusade over there. And we all know what kind of effect that had on the game on this side of the world.However, there may still be dark clouds on the horizon for The9. As you probably know, Blizzard recently merged (along with its parent company, Vivendi) with Activision. And Activision is a competitor with EA... which owns a 15 percent stake in The9. So while The9 currently licenses WoW from Blizzard to sell and service in China, that relationship may be short-lived. And you can bet that will have an effect on the stock, if and when that deal ends.But for now, The9 is going gangbusters, and Chinese players are enjoying Outland as much as we did last summer.
The9 buys shares in ... itself
The Escapist reports that following disappointing profits despite record sales, Chinese gaming company The9 (the Chinese carrier of World of Warcraft) saw its stock values plummet by 32% recently. The company then took the opportunity to purchase back $50 million worth of shares in itself.CEO and Chairman Jun Zhu was quoted by The Escapist saying, "We think that the current shares price level do not reflect the company's value and potential. Mirroring this confidence, our board of directors has authorized the company to repurchase up to $50 million of its own stock."This curiously comes after a great deal of growth of the Chinese World of Warcraft player-base in Q3 and the recent launch of Sword of the New World: Granado Espada.
Gamasutra's "China Angle" reports on The9, Giant Interactive, NCsoft
To North American and European MMO players, China is more than just a different country; it's a different universe. But it's important to keep an at least one eye on the Chinese market. Gamasutra ran its latest "China Angle" column today. Here's what we learned this time. The9, the Chinese publisher of World of Warcraft, will be responsible for the Chinese version of EA's FIFA Online 2. The9 already operates the original FIFA Online in the PRC, and EA owns a 15% share in the company, so that's no surprise. Newer company Giant Interactive -- who are behind the highly profitable Zhengtu Online -- saw a $38.7 million profit in Q3 2007, and all 800 employees of the company were given actual, real-life gold coins in celebration. The company is also actually awarding stocks to some of its customers. Finally, Korean MMO supercompany NCsoft has selected a new partner company called Shandra to distribute their new title AION. NCsoft opted not to work with their old partner Sina this time. The decision to change may have been influenced by disappointing Chinese numbers for Lineage and Lineage II, two NCsoft titles which were brought to the Chinese market by Sina.
Rumor: WoW going free-to-play in China
Curse Gaming posted a rumor the other day from a Chinese newspaper named RedlineChina that The9 (the company that runs World of Warcraft in China) is considering switching the game to a "free-to-play" model. As Curse notes, the rumor is just that-- a rumor-- especially considering that The9 is raking in the cash over there. So take this with a nice big cubic block of salt-- odds are that both you and Chinese players will be paying that monthly subscription for years to come.Still, it's an interesting idea. There are a few free-to-play MMOs here in the US, but there are many, many more over in Asian countries like China and Korea. And there's no question that as popular as World of Warcraft is now, it would be even more popular as a free-to-play model. Odds are that The9 would have to come up with some other form of revenue if they did switch it to free-to-play, although as it is, you can play for free on a demo here in the US-- maybe RedlineChina really meant to report that The9 is going to start releasing free demo copies, up to level 20 with a week of free play, or some plan like that, while still charging for the full game.At any rate, this is more likely a miscommunication than a rumor with any substance at all. Especially with subscriptions rising and the next expansion on the way, Blizzard is nowhere near even lowering the price on a WoW subscription.
