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

That last post was ugly, but this...

I admit, looking at my last post in a browser window, that it's damn ugly. The AO2 photo on the right and the embedded video below with some weird gap between them. Horrific. Don't ever hire me to be a web designer, I have no eye for aesthetics unless they're blonde.

But there's something uglier out there, it's called piracy! No actually piracy's kinda cool, but what's not cool is something I like to call 山寨*. I invented this term all by myself, honest! I DID. Shut it. 

Okay, so no I didn't. But I'm jealous that someone else did and is probably making millions off of it. So I'm going to create my own, phonetically similar term, 删窄. I'm sure it means something similar and not "delete narrow" or other such nonsense. 

Why do I feel I can get away with this? Probably for whatever the reason The Nine, a Chinese gaming company thinks it can. Until recently The Nine was responsible for bringing WOW to China, but then for reasons never given out loud Blizzard decided to change partners and go with Netease. This was bad news for The Nine, since most of their revenue depended on the cash cow that WOW is. So like any good Chinese business that lacks any idea about what innovation means other than "COPY THE THING THAT MAKES THE MONEY", The Nine, moving with surprising agility, already has a page up for their own game, presumably an MMORPG, called "World of Fight". No I didn't mistype that. 

Actually it's an awesome name for a game. Sounds like the best boxing/wrestling/mma game ever right? WoF!

http://www.wofchina.com/

Did you just click on that and think what I think? Yeah, that font looks similar, color scheme kinda familiar... nope, doesn't ring a bell. Well good luck to ya, The Nine. The game's not out yet, so there's a sliver of a chance that you're taking your game in a very different direction, but personally I hope you can 删窄 your way to success.

*山寨, shan zhai, a term made recently popular in China, literally translates as "fortified mountain village", but refers to locally-made knock-off goods that rip off famous product designs in an attempt to make them their own. For several great examples, check out this slide show from Auto Shanghai: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/picturegalleries/5208546/Chinas-copycars-familiar-looking-vehicles-at-Shanghai-Auto-2009.html

(thanks Bad Power via Wall Street Journal,  VG247 via Gamasutra!)

just a little UPDATE: according to Kotaku's post on the same subject, The 9's website could be referring to an upcoming MMO from EA, who has some shares in the distributor. But World of Fight? Really?

There's a gold rush on in China

For virtual gold, that is! Yes, people who play WOW in the West apparently prove that China is correct in instituting restrictions to online gaming to curb addiction, but China should also extend that to include curbing the spread of total stupidity that virtual gold actually has value. It's electrons, people. 1s and 0s. Blizzard's servers go down, your life's true meaninglessness will be exposed, and then you'll have to go play Everquest or whatever it was you played before you lost yourself in the macabre void of WOW. WOW is really such an appropriate acronym for that game. WOW people that play it as if their life depends on it like nothing else are dumb. WOW people have virtual funerals in-game and WOW for the sake of opening my mouth once more.

But as I was saying, virtual gold farming is big business in China. There are, according the report linked here anyway, 1,000,000 people in China engaged in gold farming. Their work earns $2 billion US mind you in revenue. Holy cow patties that's no chump change. And that's just the conservative estimate. As Nicholas Deleon on Crunchgear writes, and he can write it better than I, having never played the game,

In all my days of playing World of Warcraft, though, to be fair, I haven’t played since Christmastime, I never even thought about buying gold; it’s just dumb. You either have a guild that hooks you up with gear, or have a friend who’s 60 levels higher than you who is willing to waste two hours killing mobs and running you though instances. That’s how the game is meant to be played, not by buying success off some kid in Asia who’s half-starving and mining all day. ::shakes head::

(Thanks Gamesindustry.biz via crunchgear.com via technews.am!)

Sorry I was busy playing online games and didn't notice that

The Anti-online game addiction system proves to be effective in China! Or so Xinhua says, stating that:

The number of Chinese online game players under the age of 18 has declined to 15 percent of total respondents in 2008 -- a 7 percent drop from the 2007's figure of 183 million -- according to a nationwide survey by the China Youth Social Service Center release on Wednesday.

Yes, online gaming addiction, a distinctly Chinese and Korean phenomenon thanks I think to their love of Internet cafes, is being crushed. That's good for humanity probably, not so good for Blizzard as it tries to bring WOTLK into China, whom it must convince is, although extremely popular, not habit-forming whatsoever. Haha sure, Blizzard. Good luck with that.

(thanks Xinhua via Gamesindustry.biz via Joystiq!)

GAPP Fears Foreign MMOGs (most likely because of our huge skeletons)

Bill Vaughn, not to sound like a bigot, but you sure are a sexy dude! Or chick! I don't care! (note: photo at right is NOT of Bill Vaughn)

Aside from that, Bill relates a story from JLM Pacific Epoch stating that China's General Administration of Press and Publication

will look at the approval criteria of online games to ensure that the gaming youth of China is not overly exposed to foreign cultures, especially in the case of highly popular games such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Looks like I was at least partially right. (I haven't given up on believing it's because they fear mass demonstrations and raping and pillaging in an online world, though!)

(thanks JLM Pacific Epoch via IncGamers!)