With the World of Warcraft subscriber base climbing to an impressive 11.5 million just last December, it seems there's no stopping Wrath of the Lich King from conquering everything he sets his eyes on. That is, until the almighty warlord ran into a force much greater than him - the Chinese government. To this day, the extremely popular MMO has yet to receive a license from the Chinese government to operate in mainland China.

If you want to pull up some quick information about your World of Warcraft character (or anyone else's for that matter), why don't you try browsing for it on your iPhone. I'm not talking about the WoW Armory. There's a quicker way for you to do that - on the new and updated version of the Warcraft Characters app for the iPhone.

Chinese video game publisher The9 was happy to announce some very positive sales reports according its recently released second quarter financial statement. A significant portion of these numbers owes its success to the company's flagship title in the country - namely, Blizzard's World of Warcraft. More info in our full article.

Like it or not, gold buying, selling, and powerleveling have become rather lucrative businesses, particularly with the stratospheric rise in popularity of the MMORPG. *cough*WoW*cough*. So what is it? Is it legal? Ethical? Dangerous? Sally forth dear reader, and find out for yourself!

A powerful new Trojan virus has been discovered. While it's been reported that it can steal almost any kind of information from PCs, it seems to be limiting itself to stealing MMO user account passwords for now. The virus was hidden in digital photo frames that were being sold in Best Buy, Target, Sam's Club, and other retailers. Check out the full article for details.

 

From the looks of it, there's a whole new burning legion forming up over in China's World of Warcraft scene, though it's not of the malevolent demonic sort. We've just picked up word that a week after WoW's The Burning Crusade expansion was released into circulation, Chinese distributor The9 is already recording peak concurrent users (players online) of up to more than a staggering 800,000.

Given that WoW's current world population recently exceeded nine million, we're looking at a little less than a tenth of the game's population in one country alone. The massive influx doesn't appear to be all newcomers to the game, however. WoW gamer Zou Jun from China's Nanjing province states that inactive guild members were coming back come the new expansion.

In relation to this news, The9's buffering its local network with nine server groups. WoW's player population in China is expected to reflect in The9’s Q4 financial results.

 

The World of Warcraft expansion: The Burning Crusade has just launched in China. Reports have come in that a hunter, Silver Dragon, on Un'Goro was able to go from 60 to 70 in 23 hours. This feat effectively breaks the previous record of 28 hours set by Gawell on Blizzard's Archimonde server.

The details on how this was done haven't been revealed yet, but the QJ.Net WoW Team all agree that he must have had help from his guild: GreenBase. This is a pretty awesome feat to have under one's belt considering that a significant amount of planning must have gone into this venture.

Well, we can now look forward to Wrath of the Lich King and see how quickly people will be able to crack the level 80 mark. Keep checking back here for more updates on World of Warcraft. If you want to see the complete Time Stamp log, click on our Read Link.

China's long wait for more Blizzard-luvin' may be coming to an end soon, as regional distributor The9 finally announced a fixed launch date for World of Warcraft's Burning Crusade.

Burning Crusade will reportedly launch in China on September 10. The report comes in shortly before the company was to present its second quarter 2007 earnings.

And while it's yet to be confirmed, rumors in circulation indicate that one likely reason for the expansion pack's long delay is due to China's General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP).

As previously reported, stringent measures in the region ensure that MMO gamers below the age of 18 are discouraged from playing for more than three hours. Given the marathon sessions that took place shortly after TBC's release in the West, we can imagine the same said Chinese officials getting very worried as well.

What still remains to be seen is what sort of region-specific changes may have taken placer for TBC come release. China's WoW has already gone through considerable "sanitation," including the addition of flesh upon the bones of the world's undead.

 

After a good Arena bout with MoB *Turtle Power* at World Series of Video Games China to win first prize, Team Pandemic takes a second victory at WSVG Kentucky for the US$ 10,500 prize money of the World of Warcraft PvP competitive leg. Included with their ten grand-prize is a US$ 3,000 travel wallet, which should cover just about everything else.

Next up in the Intel-sponsored WSVG is a classic Texan showdown in Dallas, this coming July 5, sporting another US$ 10,500 grand prize money (exclusive of travel wallet). Will Team Pandemic be up for a repeat performance and bring home the bacon for a third time in a row? Well it all depends on whether second placer Insurrection brings their game up to par or if the collective of MoB could say otherwise.

The World of Warcraft Final Standings at Louisville, Kentucky

1. [US] Team Pandemic - $10,500 + $3,000 travel
2. [US] Insurrection - $6,000 + $3,000 travel
3. [US] MoB Turtle Beach - $4,200 + $3,000 travel
4. [US] MoB TurtleForce - $2,400 + $3,000 travel
5. [US] Check-Six - $2,400
6. [US] 519 - $1,500
7. [US] Cute Baby Elephants - $1,500
8. [US] Evil Geniuses - $1,500

Tied at 9th place:

• [US] Cloak of Shadow word: Death Coil
• [US] Elitist Jerks
• [US] MoB *Turtle Power*
• [US] The One Shots

Tied at 10th place:

• [EU] Fnatic.WoW
• [US] Sapped Girls Can't Say No
• [US] Serenity Now
• [US] The Challenge

Blizzard performed a massive account ban yesterday for behemoth MMO video game World of Warcraft. According to our sources, Blizzard targeted gold farmers but reports claim that regular users were also affected by the purge.

Website NotAddicted.com managed to get hold of one of the gold farmers who got banned yesterday. The farmer claims that he's from Colorado, strengthening previous speculations that gold diggers also abound in first world countries and not only in China and other parts of Asia.

According to the botter, the purge caused him around 100 accounts of characters with levels ranging from 40 to 70. One account, the botter calculated, gives a revenue of US$ 5,000, and that's around US$ 50,000 lost in just one day. The botter lamented that the business isn't quite profitable anymore,

A lot of competition. Add in when you try to make money, takes 3 weeks to lvl an account to 70 and work, it makes an ok amount of gold then you lose the account, paypal reversals, list goes on and on. We don't really get banned for botting very often. I keep it minimal and out of the way of normal traffic where players dont come by very often.

Furthermore, the gold farmer from Colorado shared that aside from profits lost in massive bans, his company needs at least US$ 13,000 just to stay in business. Because of yesterday's incident, he is currently considering to layoff some of his workers. A regular employee earns US$ 10.50 a day plus an hour minimum.