Project Lore

And We Think It's Bad In Dalaran Most of ProjectLore's bloggers have been following the whole "WoW in China" escapades pretty closely.  I'm not exactly sure what draws us to the topic, but various voices have touched upon almost every aspect of the struggle to keep our favorite MMORPG up and running in the world's most populated nation.  We've got you covered from the originating factor of the partnership switch, the following lawsuits and outages, all the way to everyone's favorite pastime, gold farming.  And now for the latest installment, WoW's return to China. Seeing as you clicked on the loaded title I will just hit you with the details straight away.  For starters, according to MMOSite.com World of Warcraft saw a one week relaunch in late July (v3.1.3) with millions of players participating, or attempting to.  To get Wrath of the Lich King, and WoW in general, back online the title has been censored in various ways.  Nearly all of the changes have to do with the prevalence of dead bodies (read Undead/Scourge) that are everywhere in WotLK.

• Undead mobs have had their models redrawn to patch up the bare bones (this was done for vanilla WoW and TBC as well).
• Piles of bones, and other items, in the world have been modified to sandbags, sacks of grain and the like.
• Bleed effects now cause black goo to spew from the target.  Many players are joking that it's oil.  It also appears that blood of non-humanoid targets may have been turned green, as seen on this wolf.
• Various spell and talent icons have been modified to remove bones.  Most of these have been replaced with "generic boxes."

Where The Bones At? To me the modifications remove a lot of the sinister, nefarious, and downright disturbing aspects of the Scourge, and even the freed members of the Forsaken.  I do wonder how the Government in question can justify adding a patch of skin to an Undead knee, but allow an Abomination to exist in the title.  Better yet, Thaddius.  The electric monstrosity is "built from the flesh of women and children" for C'Thun's sake. It's unfortunate that the Chinese players can't experience the content as it is meant to be played.  At least they get to play a slightly modified vision, instead of nothing at all. For those of you interested in the finances the 50+ days down may have on Activision Blizzard's stock, it appears that there is little to worry about.  According to the excellent Gamasutra, the company only makes 6% of its worldwide WoW revenue from China.  This is largely due to lopsided contract Blizzard had with The9.  The old contract granted the developer a low revenue stream of only 20%, according to some insiders.  By restructuring to a much friendlier agreement with NetEase Blizzard should begin to pocket far more cash from China.  Enabling the company to make up for the 50+ days of losses rather quickly.  Of course, it remains to be seen how many hourly users Blizzard may have lost due to the down time. The saga continues.

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Mmm People. /Nomnomnomnom Blizzard Entertainment's legal team has been on a bit of a rampage lately.  After crossing some t's and dotting some i's the team, one that I can only imagine lives in the recesses of Blizzard's HQ, was able to finish off the MMO-Glider lawsuit in their favor.  Hungry for more, not enough food falls through the ventilation system and into their cages, the team began sending out cease and desist orders to nearly ever facet of the greater World of Warcraft community. The C&D barrage started off in the appropriate realm of private servers before moving towards legally grey demands.   More recently, the group of iPhone apps dedicated to our favorite MMORPG has seen their ranks thinned to endangerment.  Warcraft Characters, Warcraft Chest and WoW Realm Status, have all received a puff from Blizzard's pack of wolves.  A puff that has other authors fearful of their mailbox.  Lucky for them, the sights were moved to other properties, including the popular Shakes & Fidget comic and WarcraftPets.com's store.  It's still unknown exactly what Blizzard's intentions are.  Are they just protecting Warcraft's copyright from material that is deemed too alike, or is the company targeting these projects for some other reason, like plans to produce an official comic, store and apps? Just as few of the people in charge of the aforementioned projects saw the impossible-to-decipher letters coming, I doubt Blizzard expected not one, but two full blown lawsuits to be launched by The9.  The9 was formally in charge of WoW's distribution in China, but lost the renewal in April after a bout of financial troubles and the inability to get Wrath of the Lich King launched.  Losing a hot property, meaning one that prints money, like WoW would piss anyone off.  In true American fashion, The9 is suing Blizzard for the immediate property loss, as well as commercial defamation.  In severe laymen's terms, this means that The9 is trying to have property returned to them, possibly the servers, and they want Blizzard to stop dissing the company.  Of course, The9 will let this all go if Blizzard just lines the distributor's pockets with millions of dollars. We haven't heard a response from Blizzard yet, but I would be surprised if World of Fight (almost a worse title than Warrior Epic) isn't a little too close to WoW for the legal team's liking.  Countersuit for Copyright Infringement anyone?  The country in question is China, a land known for cheap knock-offs, piracy and a wall that is totally compensating, so I don't see Blizzard's chances of a successful lawsuit being all that great.  That doesn't mean the sharks won't try it. *Note: Signed on this morning to see that World of Fight is now World of Figher and seems to have something to do with Street Fighter... Come June, NetEase, the new kid on the block, will take over distribution and finally get WotLK out to the hungry Chinese market. What do you guys think of all this suing?  Has anyone lost their favorite iPhone app to one of the C&D letters?  I don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch, so for the moment all I have lost is my favorite WoW comic.  Dark Legacy is a suitably hilarious, but poorly drawn, stand in.  I hope they don't sue me for blogging defamation.

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In press release earlier today, Blizzard announced that, in China, World of Warcraft will be licensed to NetEase.com, who already has the rights to operate both Starcraft II and Diablo III. Once Blizzard's current deal with The9 expires in June, NetEase will take over the operation of WoW in China, with further details to be announced on their website. According to a VentureBeat article, that means Blizzard's cut of revenue from WoW in China will increase from about $50 million per year over $140 million per year, almost purely profit. It will be interesting to see if this means that Wrath of the Lich King will be coming soon for China, because they still have yet to see it released. This is a reminder of how, although WoW is a huge and global game, we aren't even able to interact in game with nearly everyone due to restrictions like different regions, languages, and servers that the game is played on. In the Totally Rad Guild, we have people from all over the United States, Canada, Australia, and probably more that I don't even know about. So how about you guys - where are you gaming from?

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