‘World of Warcraft’ Resumes Operations in China, Minus the Undead

There has been a blanket World of Warcraft blackout in China for the last two months, after Activision decided to switch its Chinese operator in order to earn higher royalties from the game. Well, this move brought down the wrath of the Chinese government upon them, who ordered a ton of content edits, one of the most prominent the removal of “undead” enemies which is apparently quite offensive in Chinese culture.

So what exactly has this blackout cost?

“The transition and the downtime have been costly to both Activision Blizzard and NetEase. According to media claims, NetEase has spent an estimated 1 million yuan ($146,455.77) per day maintaining game servers for the closed beta it’s been running since July 30 as a test period.

Harder to quantify is potential player loss as a result of the downtime. Close to half of World of Warcraft’s 11.5 million users are Chinese — but analysts such as Lazard’s Colin Sebastian have estimated that, due to the Chinese business model and licensing structure, the region accounts for just 6 percent of WoW revenues.”

Wow, I had no idea that half of WoW users were Chinese. Though I do have to wonder what percent of that are gold-farming operations. It’s the new sweatshops!

Something does seem amiss here that 50% of the players reside in China yet that’s only 6% of the game’s revenues. I feel like this is the beginnings of some secret Chinese plot to orchestrate a complete takeover of the world’s most popular MMO. All I can say is this, when the Chinese Alliance (or Horde) does come a calling, throw some undead skeletons at them and they’ll be running for the hills.

[via Gamasutra]