World of Warcraft to launch in Korea

by Ben Zackheim { Jan 17th 2005 at 3:35PM }

wow

World of Warcraft is going to launch in Korea tomorrow, which should add a tiny bit of cash to Blizzard's bank account. Even with rampant talk of overloaded servers here in North America, the team feels they're prepared to take on the millions of WC fans in Korea. They'll use different server farms, of course, but look for similar overload stories as the Korean audience eats WoW up. Good luck to everyone involved in the launch.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Arsinoe @ Dec 18th 2005 8:45PM

There's massive protest brewing against WoW in Korea because of their expensive subscription plan which is 'normal' compare to massively popular Lineage 2, but nevertheless expensive compare to US price. And they get no package.

The game was already soiled after Vivendi decided to bypass Korean importers and run the game service directly from their sub company few years ago after reviewing importers' proposals given Blizzard's rep in Korea.

Now the game is set to open and still suffering from down servers, huge lags, on top of recently announced expensive subscription price structure that defied all expectations.

The game will be a hit, but it won't command the market like their previous games, simply because the MMORPG market in Korea is the most competitive market in the world. People play free beta games one after another. There are free online games where they make money buy selling virtual goods or extra contents.

I love playing WoW right now, but I don't know if WoW can rise above other games in Korea with this kind of bad rep. This is the country where the same internet proficent people elected the President against all odds.