The biggest ban ever: no more World of Warcraft in China
Did you know that four million Chinese play World of Warcraft?You probably knew that a lot played it -- and that WoW has 13 million subscribers or so -- but four million? That's almost the population of Denmark or Scotland. And they're all having to go without their Warcraft fix... again!
After a relaunch in September, the operators NetEase have been forced to shut down the realm of Azeroth yet again. Now, this isn't Blizzard being indecisive or something: no, it's two wings of the Chinese government getting their panties in a knot. Y'see, there's a department that deals with PR -- the General Administration of Press and Publication... comrade!! -- and the more-sensibly named Ministry of Culture. Neither of them seem to be able to decide whose jurisdiction WoW actually falls under -- and until they stop swaggering around and one actually backs down, we may not see WoW return to China.
Meanwhile, Activision Blizzard are losing the subscription fees provided by one third of its player base. But not to worry... Modern Warfare 2 is out this week! A lot of people point to the 13 million subscribers and marvel at the amount of money that WoW must make for Activision Blizzard -- but their MMO revenues only account for 35% of their total takings. The rest come from their huge COD and Guitar Hero brands.
Thanks to the magnificent, circumventable behemoth of the Internet, WoW players in China are just logging into the servers over in Taiwan anyway. Hooray!
[via VentureBeat]
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jayshah1012 said 3:45PM on 11-06-2009
y??? dat not necessary at all!! instead fight global warming.........
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Eric J. said 9:52AM on 11-04-2009
I'm guessing this is pretty much just blatant extortion.
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Sebastian Anthony said 9:54AM on 11-04-2009
Probably. It's a bit silly though, considering Taiwan is part of China's jurisdiction... so not behind the great firewall of China (I assume) -- so they can just go and play on those servers.
This is probably just two wings of the government that like bickering. With a population of 1 billion, you can begin to imagine how big their civil service force must be...
Eric said 6:11PM on 11-04-2009
Well, the reason Taiwan servers are still up is because China and Taiwan are separate countries and China has no jurisdiction over Taiwan. These ministries only have jurisdiction over their own country. It just happens that China and Taiwan use mutually intelligible variations of Chinese. It's like if servers are shut down in Canada and I log onto servesr in US.
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Sebastian Anthony said 6:19PM on 11-04-2009
Hm, I thought Taiwan was 'inducted' as a member of China?
Like... the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, or something?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan
It seems it's a bit questionable :)
Eric said 8:26PM on 11-04-2009
Inducted as a member of China into what? I understand if there is some confusion as to the official name of Taiwan, but it is pretty obvious that Taiwan and China are separate countries. Taiwan has never been part of China. Perhaps you are thinking of the Republic of China, which is the official name of Taiwan, as the government of Taiwan is the direct descendent of the one that overthrew the last Chinese Dynasty in 1911. The People's Republic of China was formed in 1949, when the Republic of China relocated to the island of Taiwan. Nowadays you often see Republic of China (Taiwan) because the Taiwanese government doesn't want people confusing Republic of China with People's Republic of China, which I think might be the case here.
Sebastian Anthony said 8:29PM on 11-04-2009
Ah-hah!
That clarifies things. Thanks :)
mikeamitrano said 1:45AM on 11-05-2009
Right now I live in Taiwan, and lived in Beijing for a year, so let me clear this up in the shortest way possible:
After Qing Dynasty ended, the Republic of China (future Taiwan) was set up to rule all of Mainland including Taiwan. Then there was a war with Japan. Chiang Kai-Shek (future Taiwan) and Mao Zedong (future China), both leaders of two separate political factions, co-operated with each other to get rid of the Japanese. After the Japanese left, they resumed their civil war. Mao "won" and Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan, which was recently given back to China after 50 some-odd years rule by the Japanese. Fast-forward.
First off: Taiwan is an island, not a country or official title for anything. People just say Taiwan because the Republic of China is located on Taiwan (also including small islands), and it's more convenient.
Taiwan believes all of Mainland is part of the Republic of China, Mainland China believes Taiwan (Province) is a part of People's Republic of China. They have reached a status-quo now where, I believe, nothing will change for a while. Too much Taiwanese investment in Mainland, and the Taiwanese have not declared independence, technically, so no real reason to attack (also, US defense treaty with Taiwan). However, they always have missiles aimed at Taiwan from Fujian Province, and randomly conduct "missile testing".
Mainland believes Taiwan is part of China because they lost the civil war.
Taiwan believes they are not China because they have a separate economy, passport, immigration system, and choose to use the traditional set of Chinese characters, as opposed to the newer, simplified character set that the Mainland government created to increase literacy.
Taiwan's official name is 中華民國, or "Chinese people's nation", referencing the ethnic group as opposed to the country of China, where-as China's official short name is 中國, or "Nation of China", actually referencing the country, as China has many many ethnic groups that are not ethnically Chinese, including Korean, Turkish Muslim groups, etc.
Also, interestingly, about 90% of the Taiwanese population came from China pretty recently, so, they are still ethnically Chinese people, speak Mandarin (or local dialects from southern China), and follow Chinese customs. The first language here is Mandarin, also, in my experience, most Han Chinese are very racist towards the aboriginal groups in Taiwan.
Most countries in the world do not recognize Taiwan as being a separate country, however, can get away with not recognizing it as part of China, either. We can thank Nixon for that. He changed the US's official recognition of "China" from Taiwanese China to Mainland China back in the 70's, and the rest of the world followed suit. The US still, however, has a protection treaty with Taiwan in case China ever attacks.
My younger Chinese friends view Taiwan as part of China, but more like Hong Kong rather than a separate country; it's still Chinese, but it's not really the same as China. The major problem here is that the Chinese cannot separate ethnicity from nationality, which has been their problem all throughout history.
The history here is really too complicated..., so really, there is no answer as to whether or not Republic of China (Taiwan) is a "country" or not, they haven't even decided yet.
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NyaR said 3:46AM on 11-05-2009
Thank you for sharing, what you wrote is very informative
Eric said 1:52AM on 11-18-2009
Where would I buy wow gold now? Hehe. Well, I found this site that caters to buying wow gold from real players outside of China: http://www.pusada.com
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