In Russia, World of Warcraft page visits you!
by Adam Holisky 
Mar 23rd 2008 at 5:00PM
A couple interesting things. First, they'll be releasing the fully localized version of Russian WoW in a few months. The second interesting thing is that they're actually looking for some people fluent in Russian to work for them, and this is a good thing since the Russian version of the site isn't nearly as complete as other language's versions of the site. Finally, ignore the translator error given by Google: "Our list of frequently asked questions concerning the withdrawal of Russian version of World of Warcraft." There is no withdrawal, there will be a Russian WoW.
The Russian version of WoW was announced back on December 10th, 2007. It's good to see that Blizzard is continuing the localization of the game. Many international users are forced to either play on the plethora of European servers or come play on the United States servers. This can be a difficult thing, in that the distance between the realm server and the player's computer is so great that very large and unruly ping times often result. This is not a good thing if you're trying to have any sort of skillful game playing.
All and all a nice little present for our Russian friends.
Filed under: News items, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alittan Mar 23rd 2008 5:21PM
Well, i brought my laptop with me to Canada (i plan on migrating there) on vacation, to see how high my ping would be (I play on european servers), and surprisingly enough, it was great! I had like, 20 ms, and for some weird reason, even my fps was higher, lol! So, when I do migrate, I plan on staying on the European server. Only problem is the time difference, no more raiding for me :(, unless I can find a guild that only raids at 3 in the morning (european time) :P.
But overall, good for the russians!
imparush Mar 23rd 2008 6:26PM
maybe the network is better since it was better in Canada, but it is true, you don't get that higher ping when you play on a server far away in wow
Elmo Mar 23rd 2008 5:28PM
Good for the russians AND the PUG's AND the trade channel.
n/o
Rauten Mar 23rd 2008 6:16PM
We have a -ton ammount of Russian players in DeathWing-EU and this is certainly welcome news for the non-Russian community. And I suppose it's also welcome bu the Russian community, since they'll finally be able to speak in their mother tongue without being bashed by
Omacron Mar 23rd 2008 6:11PM
Now, I don't play on the EU realms, so I don't know how many Russian players there are, but I go to an international WoW forum, and about half of the members are from Norway, Sweden, Denmark or Finland. I know there aren't any servers in those languages, but why not?
imparush Mar 23rd 2008 6:32PM
dunno I wish there were for I'm from Denmark and even if I have to share sever with Norway and Sweden it would be fine, but for some reason we don't even get one server, maybe because we know to write in English so people understand us
PeeWee Mar 23rd 2008 10:04PM
Because there are less than 10 million people speaking swedish as a first language. Compare that to the other language groups. There are cities with more people than Sweden.
Omacron Mar 23rd 2008 10:24PM
Ah, but Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are all mutually intelligible, so making a Swedish server would also allow you to have Norwegian and Danish players.
matthewreingold Mar 24th 2008 12:03AM
On US warsong there are a ton of worldwide russian players, I remember there being a few Russky guilds on there... I don't know about the rest of the servers though.
Brian Mar 24th 2008 3:41AM
I think because by the time they're 14, they speak better English than Americans, which is probably why there are so many of them able to play an English version.
Saithir Mar 23rd 2008 6:41PM
Oh, at last.
I also come from Deathwing-EU, and it may seem a bit rash, but the Russians are really annoying. Most I've met couldn't speak english at all, so grouping with them or doing an instance is just a fail. I know, i tried BRD with Russians just a few days ago and we failed miserably.
bsides Mar 24th 2008 1:07AM
I totally agree with the annoying thing - I'm brazilian and most of the Warsong-US server population are too. When we happen to find someone from outside (US american for example) there's really no communication (except with me) and to be honest, most of the time they are just stupid. Why it happens? No brazilian server? I don't know, but Blizzard should investigate more overpopulated servers and their users.
Minnow Mar 23rd 2008 7:24PM
I believe the Warsong (EU) server is mostly russian but I'm not sure. My friend checked it out and he says it is mostly russian so Warsong, free transfers in the future?
Minnow Mar 23rd 2008 7:25PM
... and in Russian WoW, gnome kills you!
Kryptonls Mar 23rd 2008 9:15PM
And I think that the EU Molten Core realm hosts many Russian players too.
Kryptonls Mar 23rd 2008 9:14PM
Excellent topic title :)
bsides Mar 24th 2008 1:07AM
Way to go, Blizzard. It's really nice to see their efforts.
I SO with they could look at Brazilians as a good place to put their investments too. Warsong and Gurubashi servers have plenty of them and as a brazilian myself, I just can't handle the "SHUT UP MEXICAN!" all the time in all chats I go thru. And of course, the tickets don't do much.
Congratulations Russians. I'm not taking out your credits! But Blizzard, please, some brazilian love wouldn't hurt either :)
crapton Mar 24th 2008 4:39AM
the english seem worse effected by this.
I've been playing wow since the beta and apart from my original guild which was formed out of wow and in another game, I've very rarely seen other english people. for the most part if I'm in a raiding guild of 40-60 active accounts 1,2 maybe 3 at the most will be other english folk and this is on the english servers.
in fairness, it's not all bad. the majority of what you'd call western/northern european countries speak better english than english poeple do, it's all the greeks, russians, saudis etc that speak very little english and stick to their closed communities.
it isn't to generalise and say they're all like that, because they're not. you do meet nice people from all sorts of places but the language barrier forces a lot of them to stick to their own. I mean even if they didn't localise any more servers, how hard would it be to just throw up a few servers and name them [Saudi]Whatever and [Greek]Whatever even if it's all in english for them still, at least the chat channels and interaction can be native.
Kraynor Mar 24th 2008 7:14AM
The way some people act it sounds like they want Blizz to make a server for every spoken language in the world. What would this do to the quantity of players on the servers that we play on now, eh? Massive emigration to other servers resulting in economic collapse, poor bg action (as the new servers would be split among the existing battlegroups or dumped into a new one), increased difficulty finding groups/raids/pugs/whatever, tbh doesn't sound like that fair a trade off... I can understand the need for a few more servers but nothing over the top. Russian is a good start though.
That said... bring on an Irish server!
CCMCornell Apr 28th 2008 3:21PM
I'm surprised with how well the machine translator works. It's been a while since I've tried one and they seem really good. Even the word order differences seem to be working well.
Anyway, выход may mean exit, leaving, withdrawal, but about things related to publishing like books and games, it means publication or release. Also, it keeps translating русскоязычный as English instead of Russian(-language.)
It was interesting to see that there will be a new account type for Russian speakers. The new account will allow access to Russian servers which will allow Cyrillic everywhere, including character names and guild names. They'll also get access to the Russian forums and Russian web support. However, they will not be able to play on European servers.
People with European accounts will be able to play on Russian servers but will not have access to the Russian forums or the Russian web support.
Lastly, the pricing for subscriptions will not be the same, though it is not stated what the price will be. Perhaps, they are price discriminating given how poorly Russian wages and currency compare with the West.