WCG 2009 looks tasty in this hot promo

Netease? More like NetPlease!

Women say I have a terrible sense of humor. I tell women they lack fortitude and more than a few mind grapes.

Netease, however, possesses a feature that are inherent in most men and women. Laziness. No sign that the new WOW servers will be up and running on time? Maybe that's just typical Chinese fear of making public announcements about complicated and possibly controversial issues, and everything is actually fine. Or maybe things are a mess, in which case I would still bet the farm that they're up and running as scheduled simply because Chinese are good like that.

The real kicker, according to the article, is that

A poll of some of the subscribers points to some interesting information, 53 percent of players said they would return, 26 percent wanted to observe the handover of the servers and then make a decision while 21 percent said they wouldn’t return to the game.

So the delay, however intentional, could have serious repercussions to that 11.5 million players figure, quite a few of those players are in China

WCG 2009 Asian Championship coming to Singapore

On July 4-5 an invite-only WCG 2009 Asian Championship will be held for 112 2008 and 2009 National Final champions from fourteen Asian countries, including China. Four years in the running too! Games include DOTA All Stars, FIFA Soccer 2009, and Guitar Hero World Tour.

So who will make it from Team China? Will it be Slick Willy Wong or Charlie Chaplin Chan? Fu ManJew or LuvULongThyme? Stay tuned to not find out!

China's National WCG Finals Kick(ed) Off in Shanghai! (a long ass time ago)

I'm so behind the times. So last month the first round of finals were held in Shanghai to see who would make the team that would represent China in the World Championships to be held in Chengdu, China later this year. 3,000 spectators watched 450 contestants battle it out over three days, and as far as the official WCG tells me, no results are available yet. I guess they'll be waitin till the rest of the results are in from the competitions yet to be held in other parts of China.

(WCG National Finals in Shanghai)

UPDATE: The players who have moved on to the next round can be found here:

Or just read this:

WCG2009三星电子杯中国区锦标赛预选赛已晋级名单 (winners)：

魔兽男子 Warcraft (men)

上海赛区：历生辉（Future），唐涌辰RyH.Darken，曾文睿（WE.09.kenshin）

北京赛区：武麟（Wulin），张芦Sayno

杭州赛区：徐真（Hopestar）

魔兽女子 Warcraft (women)

上海赛区：吴婧（Eva），张丽君（KK_Wind_mm）

北京赛区：竺励（Colagirl），米彤（Moonfish）

星际争霸 Starcraft

上海赛区：刘玻豪（Fnatic.Lbh）,陈昊（SC_Eva），孙一峰（Fnatic.F91），刘寅（Lovett）

北京赛区：黄慧明（SC_Toodming），王恩平（WYW），沈鹏（Onlycc）

CS：Counterstrike

上海赛区：Tyloo，fst

北京赛区：Excellent.Luckyday

DOTA

上海赛区：CD

北京赛区：TTi

WCG2009三星电子杯中国区锦标赛外卡赛晋级选手名单 (wildcards)：

魔兽男子 Warcraft (men)

外卡赛：黄翔（Mouz.Th000），李晓峰（WE.Pepsi.Sky），周成龙（Sai）

星际争霸 Starcraft

外卡赛：沙俊春（SC_Pj），罗贤（=PNZ=Legendary），叶荣龙（Fnatic.Never）

China wants us to protect us from ourselves

China is now requiring that all PCs sold as of July 1st must come shipped with filtering software that can block access to certain websites. I haven't come across any details on how the software works, but it's safe to say this is the most boneheaded and backwards move China has ever taken regarding Internet development. People will be annoyed at having government controlling their PC ever so literally, but more importantly hackers will break it, computer vendors will get tons of negative feedback for complying and lose a lot of customers if they don't.

The silver lining to this dark cloud of misery is

The head of a software developer involved in devising the program confirmed the report to AFP, saying it was aimed at protecting people from pornography.

"The software will be provided to consumers in new PCs and they have the option to install or not to install it," said Bryan Zhang, chief executive of Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co.

Actually it does make me wonder why this is even necessary? Doesn't the Great Firewall of China work well enough? Or is China worried that it can't handle the rising growth in Internet connectivity? It could be a sign of things actually changing for the better, in a weird way--giving customers the option to control their own level of censorship. Maybe China plans on passing the censorship buck in a few years, putting the GFW out of its miserable existence. One can hope...


http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/china-pc-filter-has-trade-implications-20090609-c1bp.html

E3-It's ON!

E3 is live and beautiful. I have no time to keep up on it all, but here's some links you probably already have to track updates:

Joystiq

Kotaku

Magic Box

Infinity Ward (live twitting!)

World of Fight becomes World of Fighter becomes WTF?

On May 6 I wrote about The 9, a Chinese gaming company that was the WOW distributor for China until this month, and its teaser page for a new MMO in the wake of losing the WOW account. The page used fonts and images eerily but not surprisingly reminiscent of WOW and perhaps other games as well. Needless to say, I was pleased (I bathe in pleasure bubbles every time I get a chance to knock a Chinese company for creating knock-offs).

And my pleasure deepened, because the title of this yet to be released MMO was World of Fight--you see, Chinglish is another veritable source of profound joy in my life. Just today I walked past a young man wearing a t-shirt emblazoned boldly with the words, "Are you ready to Ruck?" And yes, I knew at that moment, I was ready. Ready to Ruck.

*ahem* so World of Fight is kind of a Chinglishy name, but I find it kind of catchy as well--three monosyllabic words that get straight to the point: this is a world, and in it there be fighting. I decided to check up on this site today, and what do I find? They've CHANGED the name to World of Fighter, no "s". So close, China, yet this is terrible, making no sense at all. At least World of Fight meant something, stirred my cranium in some way to think, "ah, this is an interesting title!"

And the screw turns further. The name is changed; but so is the page itself. While the WOWish font remains, the black background is adorned only with two pillars guarded by what I can only assume to be dwarves and a classical Chinese building in the distance. Suddenly the title appears, and then Chun Li, Ryu, Ken and several other characters I presume to be from various Japanime fighting games.

WTF? Capcom? A partner? Perhaps. But seeing as The 9 is partly owned by EA, wouldn't that be some sort of conflict of interest? Or maybe not? I don't know. It does seem odd to me that The 9 would so brazenly use what are certainly trademarked images to promote an as yet unexplained gaming concept.

One other note--World of Fighter might just be a tagline. At the end of the Flash intro you see the Chinese characters "名将三国", and I think this could be the Chinese title, but 三国 or "Sānguó" refers to a period in China long ago known as the Three Kingdoms, and is a popular source of stories for contemporary creative works in China. So it could be some sort of fighting game set in that period, but that still doesn't explain the appearances of SF characters--If anything, it only confuses the issue. Most likely, as is often the case, The Nine thought, "hey, those are fighters! And we're creating the world of fighter! They will communicate a sense of fight that we wish to convey and attract many audiences and mad money in no time!" Most likely.

Pictures (click for full size):

(World of Fighter)