China threatens mass boycott of WoW

11 Comments by James Ransom-Wiley Mar 6th 2006 12:30PM
Filed under: Culture, Online, MMO

Unstable servers have prompted Chinese World of Warcraft players to take action. Game unions have threatened to quit playing WoW, as players continue to post their complaints on Internet forums and make personal calls to fellow members to join the cause.

In China, WoW's servers are maintained by The9, which charges gamers by the hour to play WoW. The9 is incapable of solving technical issues related to the game without Blizzard's help, but is currently investigating the server issues. Gamers have cited "severe time delays, long-queue times, and frozen servers" as the primary causes of concern. In the fourth quarter of 2005, WoW's concurrent user count in China peaked at 530,000 players.

Tags: Blizzard, China, MMORPG, server, The9, World of Warcraft, WorldOfWarcraft, WoW

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(Page 1) Reader Comments

boneyard: Mar 6th 2006; 1:26PM

doesn't sound much different from the us and eu servers :)

Armin: Mar 6th 2006; 1:35PM

Hmm. Like the gamers and Internet users of China didn't have enough problems in the first place (with all the censorship)

the deaf guy: Mar 6th 2006; 1:49PM

pfft let them quit.. less goldfarmers that way

Sitexplode: Mar 6th 2006; 3:05PM

This post explains a lot. Now I see a reason for the goldfarming that many chinese players are known for. THey are only trying to make some money back for the money they spend for playing the game.

I think everyone's playing habits would change quite a bit if they had to pay for evey hour they were logged into the servers.

Red: Mar 6th 2006; 4:29PM

Chinese are way to obessed with WOW a little time out would do them good. Though i feel them, nobody likes time delays, long-queue and bad pings. :(

obo: Mar 6th 2006; 4:39PM

Chinese players threaten a boycott, not China. Big difference, especially when referring to a country known for both MMO regulation and Internet censorship.

If you go back and read the interview Joysitq did with The9's boss, and do the math on the game card pay-per-hour system, it costs considerably less to pay by their system, even for hardcore players. A few hours a week undercuts Blizz's subscription model by between half and a third, or more if you're really casual.

Their problems don't sound much different than the US/EU servers, either.

TAD: Mar 6th 2006; 6:01PM

What do they say on the US Server forums?

Oh yeah...

Cry more noobs!

ss: Mar 6th 2006; 8:19PM

deaf guy, I don't think you understand the article. They are complaining about The9's servers, which are the chinese servers. This means anyone boycotting those servers are not affecting the NA WoW servers. They are just trying to play the game like everyone else.

mike: Mar 8th 2006; 3:47AM

this is typical for blizzard really, they allow others such as telia (in europe) and The9 in china run their game servers with little support and usually little expansion it would seem. Diablo2 is a classic game which suffers mainly from server problems, I can see WoW going the same way too, people will lose interest in the game and that = lost revenues for blizzard.
its about time someone did something to make the greedy game makers (blizzard et al) and server providers (telia and the9)sit up and provide the level of service they are expecting people to pay for!

Thorsten: Mar 8th 2006; 8:53AM

So they pay by hour to play Sitexplode... we pay by month to play. Just because you have to pay-to-play doesn't mean you have the right to be a goldfarmer and profit by selling someone elses property. And last time I checked all virtual items are owned by Blizz. Oh well, if they want to quit, let em. I've quit a couple times now myself... it's not that big of a deal.

Lupin: Mar 9th 2006; 11:34PM

The posters going on about gold farming don't understand the article.
Players are complaining about the server stability of servers maintained in China for Chinese to play. You can not farm gold on one of these servers and sell it on a NA or Euro server.
People in the far east farming gold subscribe to NA and Euro servers. These are not "pay by the hour" accounts.

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