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.

 

From the looks of it, there's a whole new burning legion forming up over in China's World of Warcraft scene, though it's not of the malevolent demonic sort. We've just picked up word that a week after WoW's The Burning Crusade expansion was released into circulation, Chinese distributor The9 is already recording peak concurrent users (players online) of up to more than a staggering 800,000.

Given that WoW's current world population recently exceeded nine million, we're looking at a little less than a tenth of the game's population in one country alone. The massive influx doesn't appear to be all newcomers to the game, however. WoW gamer Zou Jun from China's Nanjing province states that inactive guild members were coming back come the new expansion.

In relation to this news, The9's buffering its local network with nine server groups. WoW's player population in China is expected to reflect in The9’s Q4 financial results.

China's long wait for more Blizzard-luvin' may be coming to an end soon, as regional distributor The9 finally announced a fixed launch date for World of Warcraft's Burning Crusade.

Burning Crusade will reportedly launch in China on September 10. The report comes in shortly before the company was to present its second quarter 2007 earnings.

And while it's yet to be confirmed, rumors in circulation indicate that one likely reason for the expansion pack's long delay is due to China's General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP).

As previously reported, stringent measures in the region ensure that MMO gamers below the age of 18 are discouraged from playing for more than three hours. Given the marathon sessions that took place shortly after TBC's release in the West, we can imagine the same said Chinese officials getting very worried as well.

What still remains to be seen is what sort of region-specific changes may have taken placer for TBC come release. China's WoW has already gone through considerable "sanitation," including the addition of flesh upon the bones of the world's undead.

China Daily is reporting a curious new incident related to copyrights, fonts, and Blizzard's World of Warcraft. It seems that Beijing-based Founder Electronics has sued Blizzard Entertainment over the copyright of its fonts.

Founder Electronics, a subsidiary of the Founder Group, is one of China's largest supplier of fonts, developing hundreds of multi-language fonts used in China today.

The suit alleges that some of Founder's fonts were used without the company's permission for World of Warcraft, further claiming that the use of those fonts has resulted in a loss of 1 billion yuan (approx US$ 132M). The company is asking for 100 million yuan (approx US$ 13M) in compensation.

There's no word on whether the fonts were for the English or Chinese version of the game, but it's probably safe to assume that Blizzard's Chinese operators, The9 Ltd., are currently handling various aspects of the case for both Blizzard and The9.

Blizzard is happy to announce that its heavily-acclaimed MMO video game World of Warcraft has reached a new milestone as the total number of subscribers worldwide had already surpassed the nine million mark. Blizzard clarified that the tally includes existing subscribers only and not those who were banned or who have stopped playing entirely.

Blizzard Entertainment President and Co-founder Mike Morhaime had this message, "We're thrilled that gamers around the world have continued to embrace World of Warcraft so enthusiastically. We've worked hard to provide a compelling experience for our players, and we plan to continue updating the game with exciting new content for them to enjoy for many years to come".

When the first expansion - The Burning Crusade - was released, the number of sales totalled an unprecedented 3.5 million around the world. One has to take note that 2.4 million of those were sold during the first 24 hours. Currently, Blizzard is planning to launch the expansion in mainland China with the help of The9.

Everyone has to admit that despite the issues and problems being confronted by WoW today, it changed and revolutionized the face of MMORPG gaming. Kudos to Blizzard in its success and we hope that they continue looking out for their user base.

What's an undead scourge without skeleton warriors, right? What seems to be a simple matter of missing content (flesh, in this case) is now stirring up the healthy gaming community in China. We just received word that China has forced World of Warcraft's undead skeletons to be fleshed out and covered with skin.

In an attempt to foster harmony in video games, the Chinese government has forced The9, China's World of Warcraft provider, to cover up skeletons with new skin, essentially turning skeleton undead into zombies in a recent upgrade. The upgrade also removed player corpses (which are basically skeletons) and replaced them with virtual graves.

Said The9 about the incident,

This modification to undead characters is due to the requirements of Chinese national conditions and policies. These small modifications promote a healthy and harmonious online game environment and will not affect players' enjoyment.

Some players are understandably upset about how even the virtual undead are forced to follow Chinese mandate, especially since it focuses only on Blizzard's World of Warcraft and affects no other games. For those of us who live outside China though, it does pose an interesting question: Would having censored content of this sort affect your enjoyment of the game? Let us know in the comments below.

 

The 2007 Online Game Development Conference is now in full swing, as the agenda for the conference happening this May is now up, live on the official OGDC website. After the announcement of Speaker Force 8...err...the first eight confirmed speakers for the Online Game Development Conference, an official press release also previewed a few more speakers of the 80 speakers to attend the event:

• Herb Sutter - Software Architect, Microsoft
• Mike Goslin - Vice President, Virtual Reality Studio, Disney Online
• Diana Li - Vice President, Shanda
• Charles Manning - President/CEO, PLAYXPERT
• Robert Mitchell - Senior Programmer, Sony Online Entertainment
• Tony Park - Vice President, The9
• Michael Goodman - Director, Digital Entertainment, Yankee Group
• Christian Force - Director of Engineering, +7 Systems

Organized by Evergreen Events, the conference will be delivering "world-class content" to "everyone in the business of making online games." The work and preparation behind the conference soon brought forward a list of sessions and panels including, but not limited to:

• Automating Online Game Balance
• Xbox LIVE on Windows and 360: Are Your Games Dead or LIVE?
• The Chinese Game Market: Latest Developments and Trends
• Casual Games Go Global
• Dirty Secrets of Episodic Video Games
• User Research for Online Game Development
• Adapting your Online Games to the Mobile Platform
• Designing worlds - future directions of tools and technology in MMOs

Peter Freese, chairman of the OGDC, is proud to have finalized the conference's agenda, stating, "It's been a long and involved road to reach this point, but I am very proud of what we've accomplished to assemble this truly impressive slate of speakers and sessions." The 2007 OGDC will start on May 10, 2007 at the Fairmont Olympic, Seattle and will go on for two days. Click on the "Read" link below to hop over to the Agenda page.

The Chinese government is cracking down on online players below 18. They have just passed a regulation that requires online game operators to install an "anti-online game addiction system". China is definitely concerned about the effects of online games on school kids as truancy and petty crime rates rise. The regulation will affect players who are below 18; it doesn't really stop them from playing, it just whittles their gaming hours to an encouraged limit of three hours.

How will it work? The anti-online game addiction system will be installed on MMO games (by the operators, definitely no squeezing out of this one). After which, the under-age player logs in and plays for three hours everything will be normal (full experience points and whatnot). If the player goes on playing for two more hours, he will only get half of the experience points. After five hours, the player gets none at all.

Plus they will be barraged with a message "You have entered unhealthy game time, please go offline immediately to rest. If you do not, your health will be damaged and your points will be cut to zero." at 15 minute intervals. In addition to the system, players will be required to register using their real names and identity card numbers for the system to verify their ages.

The MMO operators aren't exactly worried. The9 (exclusive distributor for the World of Warcraft in mainland China) spokesman Zhao Yurun expressed that the system won't have a great impact on their player base as most of the players are adults. Other operators in China are Shanda, NetEase and Tencent - all agree that the impact will be minimal.

The regulation will be effective on April 15, whereas the operators have until July 16 to have the system installed in their games - or be shut down. According to China Daily, there are 31.12 million online gamers in 2006 but only 10% was below 18. So it's pretty clear that the anti-addiction system is not really a big issue with the MMO operators. But the real identity registration might pose a concern as it might scare off players.

We'll see how this goes in the long run. Would you like to play your favorite MMO on a leash?

Several hours ago, we reported that Electronic Arts had agreed to buy a 19 percent stake in The9 Ltd. for about US$ 200 million. The9 is currently mainland China's exclusive distributor of Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG, with this deal (according to Shanghai Securities News) giving the Shanghai-based company further rights to EA's FIFA Online game.

That is, if this report had been confirmed.

EA spokesman Jeff Brown has just stepped out into the open to announce that contrary to reports from publications like the Shanghai Securities News, EA had not entered into any business dealings of the sort. "There is no signed agreement with The9," Brown said, further commenting that EA did not comment on rumors and speculation like this. Given that this is all EA has to say at the moment, we'll let the readers know in case we run into more clarifications on this whole matter.

Is Electronic Arts trying to get a piece of the MMO - specifically the World of Warcraft piece of the pie - in China?

The9 is the exclusive distributor of Blizzard's World of Warcraft in mainland China. They reached an agreement with Electronic Arts - selling a 19% stake for about US$ 200 million. Another big purchase for EA is a 25% stake in Neowiz (Korean game developers) for US$ 190 million. What exactly is Electronic Arts planning? They still have Ultima Online and The Sims Online (which, this writer notes only has a fraction of players compared to the giant World of Warcraft.)

Anyway, we'll see where this is going. Stay tuned for more news.