The9 sent out a short press release announcing that World of Warcraft in China, as well as the rest of The9's other MMO games, would go offline for three days following the earthquake that occurred in the country last week. More on this news after the jump.

Thanks to revenue from Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Shanghai-based online game operator The9 Limited has reported a 54% rise in its net income for the fourth quarter. The company reported net revenues of US$ 36.2 million in the fourth quarter, a 21% increase from the third quarter of 2006 and a 54% increase from the previous fiscal year.

Of its net Q4 revenues, The9 attributed US$ 36.1 million to its operation of WoW, which recorded peak and average concurrent user numbers of 680,000 and 340,000, respectively, in the fourth quarter. This includes revenue from game-playing time, merchandise and installation package sales. The9 began operating the game in mainland China two years ago.

It has been reported several times before that businesses conducting gold farming in World of Warcraft are being done in China. Blizzard and other devs have always maintained that this practice disrupts the in-game economy. Because of this reason alone, it is logical to think that WoW would never go to that country, but apparently, that is not the case.

Local online game operator The9 Limited announced today that they have revised their original license agreement with Vivendi Games and Blizzard. Why did they do that? Well, because they're bringing over The Burning Crusade there as well. Being the exclusive operator of the game in China, this is actually big given the expansion's success in other markets.

Aside from WoW, The9 Limited has also obtained exclusive licenses for important games such as Guild Wars and Hellgate: London. They also hold the reins for bigshot Asian MMOs like Granado Espada, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, Ragnarok Online 2, and Emil Chronicle Online. Aside from distributing the said titles, the company is also developing a local fantasy MMO called Fantasy Melody Online.

Given The9 Limited's roster of titles, it looks like our beloved WoW is in good hands after all. Now we wonder when it will come out in other markets like Japan and Korea.