14 DAY TRIAL // NetEase has officially announced that World of Warcraft, the most popular subscription-based MMO in the gaming world, has been relaunched on the Chinese market and both old and new players can now enjoy the experience of raiding and playing PvP without any restrictions.
The operations of the MMO in China have been impaired for quite some time. On June 7, the company operating World of Warcraft in China became NetEase, which took them over from The9. The move on the part of Blizzard was prompted by the bigger royalties that NetEase pledged to pay. But the switch brought the video game under the scrutiny of Chinese government regulators, who refused to let it go live until they again checked the content that it offered to players.
Apparently, undead appearances in the MMO are not very welcomed, especially as young players can quickly access such content. So, NetEase and Blizzard had to work together to eliminate some of the things considered unsuitable, like the skulls and bones that appear at some point and the outlines of skeletons. The game entered a closed beta during which players who already had accounts were able to log in and enjoy it, while no new players could register. Only since Monday can those interested in World of Warcraft also create new accounts, design characters and enter the MMO world.
The impact has been pretty significant on NetEase, which is estimated by the media to have paid about 150,000 dollars for each day during which the game was unplayable, just to cover the costs for the servers it operated. Some estimates say that more than half of the player base for World of Warcraft is based in China, but analysts are estimating that Blizzard was not affected by the downtime, as it received royalties from NetEase and was not directly running operations in China.