14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier in the year, World of Warcraft was announced by Blizzard to be changing operator on the Chinese market. The9 was to cease offering the MMO to gamers, while NetEase was set to pick up the publishing duties as soon as possible.
The problem is that the game, almost one month after the handover, it is still not playable by Chinese gamers and it seems that a government agency is now involved, advising both NetEase and Blizzard on some changes that need to be made to the content of the MMO before it is allowed to go back online. Blizzard is not directly affected by these delays but NetEase, the new operator, is probably losing more money with each passing day.
These pieces of news are coming courtesy of analysts at Stern Agee and are part of a report that aims to measure Internet use in China. Apparently, gaming is the sixth most popular use of the Internet with about 200 million people playing online, which represents some 64% of the total registered users in China. It seems that most of the Internet users are aged between 10 and 30.
Also, World of Warcraft might be set to get a closed beta, which should be launched on July 30, that will test some changes made to the game at the behest of the GAPP government agency. NetEase will not allow new players to register before the closed beta is taken down, and the beta period will be free.
It's not clear what changes are being made to the game, but with the Chinese communist government being involved, it probably has something to do with censoring communication between players so that they are not able to talk about sensitive subjects like democracy or the Tibet.
It would be interesting to measure how much practices like gold farming and real money trading have decreased during the period in which World of Warcraft has been down and out in China.