WoW has been offline for a month in China

by Griffin McElroy { Jul 8th 2009 at 4:00PM }

We all know by now that when stripped of their narcotic/online game, World of Warcraft players tend to react ... adversely. Now, imagine that reaction spread over a nation with 1.3 billion inhabitants. For a month. Sadly, that's the gruesome scene over in China, where WoW has been offline for over 30 days, turning the nation into a veritable ocean of flailin' and wailin'.

The culprit for the lengthy disconnect is NetEase, the company who recently took over the game's server maintenance from former web operator The9. Due to "some factors which are out of our control," the game's servers have been offline for a month -- meanwhile, other MMOs are kicking their Chinese ad campaigns into high gear, attempting to sway the jilted masses. Good luck with that.

Tags: blizzard, china, mmo, netease, pc, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Persian @ Jul 8th 2009 4:05PM

{i've been banned}

Danny @ Jul 8th 2009 4:08PM

I do believe those people played on Taiwanese or other foreign servers. WoW has been offline in China proper since The9 went belly up.

Reuben @ Jul 8th 2009 4:48PM

Yeah, those are people playing on foreign servers. There is no WoW in China.

ilovethewaggle @ Jul 8th 2009 4:05PM

And you thought chineese death rates related to gaming were hard to believe before!

Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 8th 2009 4:08PM

It's down! It's down! Conan, go for the legs! LOTR go for the arms! What about about you, D&D? Me? I'm going FREE!!!!

snowleopard233 @ Jul 8th 2009 4:09PM

This is kind of tasteless, but there actually is heavy rioting going on in western China right now. Coincidence?

PSN: John-Paul-Jones @ Jul 8th 2009 4:37PM

AirIntake @ Jul 8th 2009 4:10PM

Now all you have to do if you want China and Korea to go to war is to shut down the Starcraft servers...

Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 8th 2009 4:11PM

Didn't you hear? They're taking away LAN. Shit is going DOWN!

Delirium @ Jul 8th 2009 4:13PM

The anal insertion of the remote gets me every time in that video.

Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 8th 2009 4:21PM

Oh my god! That video...is not safe work.

MystileArmor @ Jul 8th 2009 4:38PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-IcUMLoogk

Check out the remix.

Reader @ Jul 24th 2009 1:12AM

"3 Million people want to know why you stuck a remote in your butt"

bensg @ Jul 8th 2009 4:13PM

Wow joystiq, way to stay on the ball. Kotaku dropped this story on June 25th....

CTC XBL-supapaypamawio PSN-ctclaw @ Jul 8th 2009 4:16PM

Why don't you just get all your news from there then? I'm sure they would love to be graced by your precense.

The Dark Wayne @ Jul 8th 2009 4:19PM

Fuck Kotaku, I can't stand their awful attempts at snark and their dozens of completely irrelevant barely even game related posts, not to mention all their writers seem to be pretentious assholes, who arent even funny like our own assholes here

Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 8th 2009 4:23PM

Yeah, I don't get that. Why do all the Kotaku lovers feel the need to post about who broke the story first? If they're so fucking great then do us all a favor and stay over there. I don't read Kotaku - their website hurts my eyes. I'm thankful that Joystiq posted this at all.

Thank you Joystiq.

ArchiGamer @ Jul 8th 2009 4:28PM

And your point is?

Crazd @ Jul 8th 2009 4:32PM

I can't be the only one who finds merit in reading both Joystiq and Kotaku am I?

Jay Voorhees @ Jul 8th 2009 4:34PM

somewhat unrelated but how can you support a website whose reviewers say things like this (shaun white snowboarding world stage preview which just happens to be a snowboarding game on the wii which features shaun white and the balance board):

"Because I'm a total amateur with Shaun White and not big on the Balance Board..."

"I'm not a fan of the Wii Balance Board, so I wasn't really looking forward to "feet-on time" with the game"

I found that after a search for info about the game that I saw talked about here on joystiq first. After reading journalisim that sounds like it was written by someone in high school, I think I'll avoid that all together and stick with the 'stiq. Go back to the white castle parking lot from whence you came.

bensg @ Jul 8th 2009 4:35PM

Yeah that was really my point. Apparently it was lost in translation.

bensg @ Jul 8th 2009 4:37PM

O_o You actually cared about the review of a snowboarding game...

Sly @ Jul 8th 2009 4:40PM

and their comment system sucks even more than it does here, which really says something.

Radink @ Jul 8th 2009 4:45PM

Agreed, Kotaku royally blows. The writers are elitist nintendo fanboys.

Jay Voorhees @ Jul 8th 2009 4:46PM

I think he was leaning more towards the fact that the "reviewer" doesn't give a damn about 1. Snowboarding 2. The balance board 3. The Wii. so why the hell is he writing an article on three things he doesn't care about only to bring his own bias into the mix and drag the game down just because he's a complete dick muncher. If kotaku wanted to be considered a reputable source of information for gamers they should have gotten someone who actually even remotely had intrest in any of those three. If they don't have someone like that then don't report the news at all and just go back to stories about the PS360, which is fine, but if you let your bias infiltrate part of your "journalism" then nothing is credible.

whylekat @ Jul 8th 2009 5:17PM

I agree with Dark Wayne.. Everytime I'm on kotaco I have to rife thru all this non-gaming garbage to find a hint of useful gaming news. And their mobile website is dreadful! Non of the pics show, half the links don't work, etc.

Joystiq is better by leaps & bounds in every aspect.