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PC Games (Games)

How World of Warcraft Operates In China 56

Posted by Zonk from the our-gaming-brethren dept.
Danny writes "Gaming Steve has taken a detailed look at a little known aspect of the online gaming world -- how World of Warcraft and MMORPGs in general function in Communist China. Topics covered include the WOW China financial arrangement, censorship of WOW and other MMORPGs in general, different methods of payment for Chinese customers, and even how SARS affected online play." From the article: "Although private sector Internet service providers currently exist in China, almost all access to the Internet is maintained through stateowned telecommunication operators under the administrative control and regulatory supervision of China's Ministry of Information Industry. In addition, the national networks in China connect to the Internet through government controlled international gateways. These government controlled international gateways are the only channel through which a domestic Chinese user can connect to the international Internet network."
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How World of Warcraft Operates In China More

How World of Warcraft Operates In China

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  • Satellite Internet? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday November 03, 2005 @07:55PM (#13946718) Homepage Journal
    Can't you use StarBand or some other high speed satellite internet provider in China? Do they have a dome over China I'm not aware of or what?
  • Only old people play MMORPGs..

    Seriously though, isnt there some sort of limit on how much kids can play?

    I scanned the article, didn't see much on it.
    • That is a korea joke... but anyway.

      If you had read the article, It states that most kids get their internet through cafe's, and most cafe's have limited open hours and minimum ages for entry. But these limits are decided by provincial governments so it is different in every area.

  • The summary is incorrect (Score:4, Informative)

    by the_unknown_soldier ( 675161 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:10PM (#13946803)
    The internet can be accessed without going through China's censors. First off, you can use a satellite phone. Second off you can use an encrypted phone line, and lastly you can use ssh and a European provider to ensure your communications are not monitored by the government.

  • Communist China? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Ummu ( 830131 )
    Is there really any need to remind us all that china is supposingly "communist"? We all know it's not.
  • Currently in China the government limits the access, and forces third party companies to host servers for chinese players. The only differnece is that you cannot access the chinese servers if you are not in china. My friend currently in the US, has said that he needed to purchase a new WoW and create a new account to play. IS this really the way that *BLizzard* should get more players? HAving the governemnt restrict the access of the servers so that only people in that country have access to them. Bliz
    • It's not just the Chinese servers that are region limited. I'm pretty sure you need a local CD key to play on the European or Korean servers as well. However, the list of servers you see is literally just a text file sitting on your hard drive. So realistically you can connect to any WoW server you want (including the illegal emulated ones), but I'd be surprised if a European WoW server accepted your US login credentials (or vice-versa). YMMV.

      I think the segregation of servers is more for cultural and la
    • One of the people I work with plays WoW on the same server he used in Canada, just with awful ping times.

      One reason you can't play the Chinese one in the west is probably how REALLY cheap it is. You pay by the hour, and I think it's some number of pennies. I remember .3 RMB/hour (1RMB= .12USD) but I could be wrong... of course you have to play in Chinese, but there are enough bilingual people in North America to ensue they'd lose customers.

  • SARS did not affect WOW (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 7-Vodka ( 195504 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @09:21AM (#13949581) Journal
    SARS was gone way before world of warcraft even existed. Missleading headline.
  • I'd love to move all of my software development to China. One small American company alone could double or triple the collective income of a smallish Chinese city. But the network connectivity to the U.S. and Europe is too poor yet.
  • I spent last summer in shanghai, and have a couple observations. WOW seemed to be one of the most common games you'd see people playing in the internet cafes, and the coca-cola ads for it were everywhere. Not only were all of the bottles printed with WOW characters on them, but the print advertising was astonishing. payment wise, there were a couple interesting things. I was tallking to a friend about the game, and when he wanted to start it up, he called a friend to get the account information, it seem

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