Blizzard Being Suspected of Illegal Joint Venture, WOW Facing Suspension Forever in China

According to a source, the General Administration of Press and Publication of PRC has assigned Shanghai News and Publication Bureau to make a thorough investigation into the issue relating to the joint venture established by Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase. If it is proved that this joint venture is established to operate games, NetEase and Blizzard will be punished for violating the relevant regulations of China.

[Gun_Senshi]

Due to Chinese Servers are currently offline, and Blizzard said China had 60% of user base. Its safe to assume the current Userbase of WoW is 5mil and less.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com...

[dktxx2]

a lot of Chinese players are playing on Taiwan servers, or other Asian servers. I don't know how many people exactly, but it is being done.

[Gun_Senshi]

How many of the "11mil" subs where multi boxers and unused subs?

Most Chinese are going to Aion.

Idc how many people play wow. its stil lthe 2nd worse pay to play mmo ever :P

[Montrealien]

In other words, all Gun cares to do is say WoW is bads. Bottom line, even if 60% of the userbase evaporates, its still many times more then any other mmo out there.

And lets not forget kids, its cool to hate the popular stuff.

[JsonHenry]

Sucks for them. But I can't stand WoW. So no love lost for me.

[free2game365]

Most of those 6 million people are pay by hour people paying 6 cents an hour on top of it, most of which goes to the company who's licensed out for China's servers.

[Montrealien]

@free2game365

Really? that`s crazy! I had no idea.

[gamesR4fun]

lol but really this whole NetEase thing does seem to b a way for em to get around some laws wonder if they'll get sued. Also explains why the china servers r down.

ps im sure some of em are playing on other servers but this is still a big hit to their user base.

[Dizko]

"according to a source" what source? Great journalism right there, this thing should be shot down.

[Gun_Senshi]

currently china wow servers are down due to issues with goverments. think before you speak

[RememberThe357]

Journalists don't always reveal their sources.

[Montrealien]

(currently china wow servers are down due to issues with goverments. think before you speak)

Oh! I get it, millions of people cant play wow cause they can`t log on...slow news day?