It looks like
the long saga of World of Warcraft's transfer of operatorship in China is almost finally over -- NetEase has announced that the closed beta period is done with, and that they're just about ready to
open up normal registration and bring the game back to for-pay status. They're still pending government approval there, so they're not quite online and running yet, but they have closed off registration to new players, and will only bring it back online when they're ready to start charging yet again. Of course, their pay scheme there is different from here in the US and EU -- they often charge per hour to play rather than a constant monthly subscription. But however they decide to charge, NetEase seems sure that by the end of the month, things will finally be back to normal in China's version of Azeroth.
Meanwhile, the former operator of the game, The9, has announced that they are extending by a month the option for former players to get refunds for their prepaid game cards. That option was originally planned to end on September 7th, but players of the game who have unused cards will have another 30 days to redeem them back for cash. All of
this back-and-forth originally started back in April of this year, but it seems like, five months later, the game might finally be getting back to normal.
Tags: 30-days, asia, azeroth, china, chinese, closed-beta, credits, month, netease, normal-registration, online, overseas, pay, refunds, subscription, the9, wow
Filed under: Patches, Realm Status, Blizzard, Hardware
Sep 13th 2009 at 2:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
thebrock25 Sep 13th 2009 2:07PM
I am SO glad I don't live in China.
vknong Sep 14th 2009 10:29AM
WoW isn't everything in life.
tonedeff Sep 13th 2009 7:31PM
I hear they have some pretty good chinese food there!
Paris Wright Sep 13th 2009 2:15PM
I don't think I could afford to play if I had to pay by the hour.
Does anyone have an idea of what they pay per hour to play these games?
edgesumaria Sep 13th 2009 2:42PM
"While players can now play the open testing program for free, the game will cost around 0.5 yuan (0.07 dollars) per hour once commercial operation is relaunched, Xinhua reported."
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/281549,wow-game-free-in-china-while-operator-awaits-censors-approval.html
It might seem like a low rate, but you normally do not own the system you play on in China. You used to just register an account with the Pass9 service and then buy pre-paid cards to log in ... which were used at internet cafes. I haven't been to China since Wrath came out, but if I recall correctly Chinese players did not have to buy a copy of the game.
dAnixx Sep 13th 2009 3:52PM
Actually id rather pay 0,07$/hour.
Seaborn Sep 13th 2009 4:20PM
I wouldn't mind paying by the hour if the rate is that low. Although rare, I have played a few 40 hours weeks. Even if I did that every week, which I know I wont, that's only a little under $3. I would be able to have all 4 accounts up for ~$12/month. Count me in.
Ziberious Sep 13th 2009 5:27PM
Does that mean an hour /played, or just how long your subscribed, measured in hours?
IMO, if it's /played, that's pretty good. And this comes from a person who has 28 days played time, and just hit 80 a month ago :P.
jbodar Sep 13th 2009 6:40PM
@Ziberious
Of course it's /played. It makes zero sense to have an ongoing subscription measured in hours. Why would you even think that?
Senjee Sep 13th 2009 11:43PM
i play about 5 hours a day. 35 cents a day...$2.10 a week...about $10.60 a month.
seems better to pay 7 cents an hour in my opinion
cazpar Sep 13th 2009 2:22PM
Looking forward to "Chinese guild clears every hard-mode in the game" a week after it launches.
Tim Sep 13th 2009 2:24PM
So does it mean that everyone will be back to level 1 again?
Would be quite a cool thing to happen tbh.
Warren Sep 13th 2009 3:19PM
Can they own their own Computer and play from home?
daan.leijen Sep 13th 2009 3:25PM
I think they can, but as far as i know only the richest families have a computer. So yeah, most people will play in internet cafés.
lazymangaka Sep 13th 2009 3:45PM
You don't have to be that rich. My wife's family is pretty middle class and small town (her grandmother still bathes outside) an d the teenagers in the family have cell phones and laptops. I can't say the same for reliable innanets, but they've got the requisite hardware.
Sean Sep 13th 2009 7:19PM
Question came up in a recent interview with Stars (Chinese guild now playing on Taiwanese servers and arguably one of the top 3 in raiding). From the interview:
"According to rumors, in China, almost all of the WoW players play from netcafes. Does the members of Stars play from netcafes or from home?
No, not all Chinese WoW players play in the netcafe. More and more are playing at home with their own computer. As for us, I believe we have more members playing at home than at netcafe."
http://wowraid.com/?topic=642.0
RogueJedi86 Sep 13th 2009 6:49PM
Now when will Blizzard start moving all the Chinese Goldfarming Bots over to the Chinese servers? Put them on their native country's servers and get them off ours. I hate running into goldfarmers, especially those who speak a language I don't understand(mostly Chinese).
kia Sep 13th 2009 9:12PM
I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but FYI they won't move. There have always been "chinese farmers" (oh how I loathe that racist terminology, but w/e) on the US and EU game, in fact there was probably more in vanilla WoW than there is now. There definitely was a worse problem on my server than there is now, at any rate.
Hate to burst your bubble, but a lot of botters aren't professional farmers, they're just regular account owners who know they won't get caught if they bot because Warden is seriously lagging behind the bots that are currently out.
RogueJedi86 Sep 13th 2009 9:58PM
Well I've talked to several of the farmers I run into in Sholazar Basin, they're always Chinese. I learned a Chinese phrase from them, "ni shi zhuong guo ren?", which means "do you speak Chinese?". When I say it to farmers I run across, they always respond in Chinese. Maybe the farmers on other servers are French or whatever, but the ones on mine are Chinese speaking.
I just imagine the humor in them being put on a server with their fellow Chinese. I can't say whether it'd be funny or just boring. It's not about being racist. Chinese is a nationality, not a race, so there is no racism to it, at least not for me.
ketsugi Sep 13th 2009 11:40PM
Don't be ridiculous.
1. They farm gold to sell on the realms that demand it. As long as Americans are buying gold on US servers, the "Chinese" gold farmers will be farming gold on US servers. If you want to stamp out the farmers, look at your own playerbase and stamp out the demand for their services.
2. "ni shi zhuong guo ren?" means "Are you from China?" which means most Taiwanese and Hong Kong players will answer no, and given the political tensions, might /spit at you for good measure.
3. Chinese is as much a race as it is a nationality; the two are different though obviously they overlap a great deal in China. I'm Chinese by race but not by nationality.