According to a news story on RedlineChina, The9 -- publisher of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft in China -- is currently in talks with Blizzard to offer WoW as a free-to-play game in China.
This is rather surprising news to hear, especially after The9's Q3 sales report where the company had net revenue of $42.2m -- due almost entirely to World of Warcraft. That said, the company is also barely scraping by on profits because of increasing operating costs for the game. The increased costs are primarily due to the use of high-quality HP server farms to support its popularity in China.
So then, why would The9 consider a free-to-play version of World of Warcraft, possibly further crippling profits? Granted, free-to-play games are becoming increasingly more popular. Jun Zhu -- the company's CEO -- mentioned it during an interview with local media in China, so it will be interesting to hear how Blizzard responds to this.
Comments
You think if Blizzard had more power of their game, they'd take care of these gold farmers wouldn't you?
The farmers are selling their products for real money and all they can do is sit on their hands and not gain a fair profit. And they can't ban them since their IPs constantly reregister or they hacked the game to prevent that, and use the free trial cards they go to stores and online sites and purchase for their own business.
There is pretty much only one person who got the right idea in the whole comment section. Youre him, gratz. Seriously, the other comments are just plain dumb.
@2rbear: I think what Vayne meant was that you cannot use a chinese account on a EU/US server (which is right).
You can however connect to "any" servercluster (EU/US/Oceanic) with "any" client. However, China is a few patches behind, sort of, think they are up to the rest of the world now, dont think they have 2.3 though, meaning the servers would catch them with the wrong gameversion.
actuall is it against the terms and agreement policy you sign after every patch, dont want to go lookit uo but it pretty much says no trading in game objects for real life objects (money cars houses kids) :p
Actually, this isn't quite right...
In the beginning, I played with a US version of WoW (I used a downloaded CD-image of the US version before I bought it for "real", (Ok, I gotta admit I played on private servers a year or so before I went "legal", but enough about that) and with that installed, I both borrowed a friend's acc, AND activated a guest-pass account), and then I connected to the EU servers with no problem. The only exception is when the EU and US servers use different versions (small localization bug fixes etc...)
The only thing being checked with the servers is game version. Errors which may be experienced in-game are in this case language-related (corrupted text etc..)
I don't know about other language versions than US/EU, but I wouldn't be suprised if other combinations work as well. (You're right about that WoW copies bought in the EU can't connect to US servers, but that's because of the activation serials, and not necessarily the software.)
Well, there is actually no law making "RMT" (real money trading, purchase virtual objects for real money) illegal, so technically there's nothing to legalize... *.* (at least not here where I live)
Let's be sensible about this, shall we? The9 is a company, and companies like to make money. Logically, if they're suggesting taking WoW free-to-play it's not being done out of the kindness of their hearts, it's to make them more money. The usual business model for this in China is to charge for high-end items, particularly important skills and ingame cash. In WoW terms, you could expect to see ingame cash for sale from an official store rather than gold farmers, along with various class abilities taught from dropped books, rare recipes and high end weapons/armours and other items all being sold by The9 for real money.
Those of you complaining that it will make gold sellers an even more prevalent problem in US/Oceanic/EU realms aren't thinking this through; the version of WoW being distributed in China only allows connection to Oriental realms, just as US clients can't connect to EU realms and vice-versa. Gold-farmers won't be able to play WoW for free and then sell the gold they make doing that to EU/US/Oceanic players. As to the suggestion that free-play realms will be used for training gold farmers, or to allow them to develop new methods of farming? I think they've pretty much got it down to an art form now, really, and I don't see this making a whole lot of difference.
Of course, all that being said none of this is set-in-stone yet, and it's very likely Blizzard will refuse to allow it, both because of the effect on ill-informed EU/US/Oceanic players who would think that the Chinese are getting the same game as they are for free and because it sets a precedent for Blizzard condoning charging for ingame items, which would undermine their attempts to stamp out gold sellers and the like.
yes I know the system, I played silkroad online, where this was already implemented.
The most fitting description to this is legalized gold selling.
People obviously haven't realized the ideas behind the so called "Free to play" business model of new generation MMORPGs, the current trend in Korean/Chinese MMORPG market is that a lot of games are becoming free to access, however, the in-game items and special privileged items/skills are charged. This enables rich kids and elitist to spend as much as up to 30,000 RMB a week in a game, in fact, I have actually heard from my friends of people that are doing this. A lot of MMORPGs are transitioning to this business model in China, but most of them suck anyway, the only selling point of these MMOs are that they enable you to be uber pwnage, given that you are willing to pay for it, and yes, it's becoming an alternative form of entertainment for rich people who have jobs and need some form of relaxation, they want to cut the leveling, the grinding and enjoy the games on equal levels (if not greater) than the average players.
It's amazing how pride and greed can drive an economy, yes, China is corrupt, and that's why this business model is becoming more prevalent, go to any net-cafes in China and you'll see what I mean, some cafes have arranged agreements with MMORPG distributors to offer demo stations that are free to play, some even give out cash and prizes for the masses to gain popularity.
if china get free wow then i want all chinese ISP banned from joined the US/EU server period they do that and the amount of gold spammers will go through the roof, lousy rice munchers ><
Lothaer
Many games are free in China ,The9 want to make it free so that WOW can get more players.But i hope WOW don't like other free games.
Lethanialist, the only reason anybody would play on their servers is because they aren't being paid to play on American, Oceanic, or European realms. If you are getting a profit to pay for the game elsewhere, why would you want to play for free and make no profit?
If they were to open up free realms in China, it would only make for more Chinese to learn about the game, and how to play it, and it would create a virtual training grounds for the future gold farmers and power levelers. Think of the PTRs. People use PTRs to test different methods and strategies to see which will work. If this is so, then we can compare the PTRs to these free realms. Give them a place to try anything they want, with no risk, and they'll take advantage of it. Anyone would, especially them.
If they get it free we should get a price drp to $10 a month. Keep game cards $30 but tag on an extra month
All the people threatening to quit fail. The whole point of WoW in China is that the servers are Chinese. This means that they'll be more inclined to play their free WoW on their servers than flooding our US, European, and Oceanic servers with gold! This would actually be good for Blizz to approve to clean out the rest of the servers of a majority of gold farmers.
mmm i want free, thatd be nice
As funny as you tried to be, you are so true for 10 cents an hour