Spurned Chinese Publisher May Create WoW Knockoff

Earlier this year, Chinese game publisher The9 lost the rights to operate World of Warcraft in China. Now, it appears they are trying to solve their financial troubles by making World of Fight, which bears a suspicious resemblance to World of Warcraft. Others have noted similarities between World of Fight and Warhammer Online. Quoting Eurogamer: "According to the China Journal report, Chinese industry observers 'wonder whether The9 is launching a "shanzhai," or knock-off, World of Warcraft in hopes of keeping WOW players,' with iResearch analyst Zhao Xufeng noting that 'with the topic staying in the centre of attention, The9 can easily attract attention by doing this.'"

Re:Poor ripoffs are nothing new

[Renraku]

I bet they have some kind of actual code from Blizzard, be it server software, client software, whatever. And they likely have the source to compile on their machines. So whatever game they use will probably be a direct clone of WoW.

I bet their first expansion will be Flaming Crusades, and their second will be Wrath of the Zombie king.

Re:Dethroning WoW

[cheetah]

Mainly because you wouldn't need any source code to do any of the localization. Not to say they wouldn't have access to development tools built for WoW or that they wouldn't have a very good idea how the game was put together internally.

They might even be able to take the WoW engine and mod it heavily into a new game... but the core would still but the same under all of those changes. I doubt they could even change game mechanics. But maybe they don't want to... It would look like a new game but have the feel of WoW. Which might be just what they are looking to do.

Re:Dethroning WoW

[Yvanhoe]

If the Chinese company is willing to completely disregard IP laws, a good reverse engineering, a good hooking of the various needed libs, even if only in binary form, could provide them with enough tools to make such a game. They probably already have the tools to modify every graphical part, every text part and every story from the game. All they have to do is change some menu screens, some IP addresses and to make "different but oh so similar" models and textures in the inimitable Chinese style.

Re:Poor ripoffs are nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet their first expansion will be Flaming Crusades, and their second will be Wrath of the Zombie king.

You should have done some research [slashdot.org] before coming up with the names.

OpenOffice.org vs. KC Munchkin

[tepples]

How is cloning software a violation of copyright? or should OO.o developers be sued for violating ms copyright on producing an office suite that works with ms docs?

At least under United States law, there's a difference. Functional software like OpenOffice.org appears to fall cleanly under Lotus v. Borland. For entertainment works, on the other hand, U.S. precedents are mixed: KC Munchkin for Odyssey 2 [wikipedia.org] (clone of Namco's Pac-Man) was ruled infringing, but Data East's Fighter's History (clone of Capcom's Street Fighter II) wasn't. And I expect U.S. law to come into play once The9 tries to attract U.S. customers.

Re:A terrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"the AI is non-existent"

How about you try programming pathfinding around multiple corners (it's many orders of magnitude harder than simple homing), a threat system capable of handling hundreds of enemies and a half dozen boss abilities? Just because it's not the strategic thinking chess-playing type of AI does not mean it's anywhere near easy.