Blizzard has announced that the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft has gone live in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. The expansion's launch in mainland China is still being prepared, and localization of the MMORPG into Simplified Chinese is currently.

The Blizzard Online Store also has a couple of new items this month. First is BradyGames' official strategy guide for Burning Crusade. The strategy guide includes a lot of info on the new races and weapons found in the expansion. It also has a pretty in-depth look at the Hellfire Citadel and the Outland itself.

Those looking for some tips about the new PvP system in World of Warcraft will also get the lowdown on each of the new PvP zones. The strategy guide also covers every single recipe for every crafting profession. From 1 to 400, it's all in the guide. If that's not enough for you, there are also exclusive new World of Warcraft comics from Penny Arcade included in the guide.

The second new item is the Onyxia's Lair Raid Deck for the World of Warcraft TCG. The new deck comes with everything a player needs to control the iconic dragon and incinerate others into oblivion. In addition to a full Onyxia monster deck, each Raid Deck comes with Whelp tokens, oversize Onyxia hero cards, and a treasure pack with foil cards exclusive to this raid - not to mention a higher frequency of Loot cards.

World of Warcraft has hordes of followers, recently ticked at a whopping eight million subscribers. This is the most popular MMO we're talking about and it's bent on conquering the world. They have a following in several countries and it won't be a surprise if they rake in more players after the launch of the Burning Crusade.

Now that I think about it, why IS WoW non-existent in Japan? We've heard of the following speculations:

Korean MMOs are the overlords of Asia. Hmm, this is partly true but then anything would struggle to get a piece of the market share when a new competitor crops up every week. It is the downside of the MMOs success and everybody has to live with it. One should think that a giant like Blizzard has nothing to fear since it has already captured substantial markets in China, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Japan isn't worth conquering. Is the Japanese MMO market too small to bother with? Well, a whole can of worms would be opened for that discussion, especially when there is a large fanbase that backs up FFXI. Some say that the Japanese market is a casual gamer's market. WoW is designed for both the hardcore gamer and the casual gamer (read: rested state) so this really isn't a major problem.

WoW is not on the DS. Right. (squints) Is PC gaming really that small in Japan? Not really insignificant enough to be ignored. Japanese players have discovered the word "Import" and are playing WoW on the U.S. servers in Pacific Standard Time. This would require prepaid game card or a credit card. They even found a way around the language problem by using a mod that lets them type and view Japanese characters. But what they've been waiting for is a translated version.

The theories above are plausible but then we came up with our own set of speculations:

The Japanese culture. The Japanese have a tendency to support their homegrown products resulting in a great economy considering it's size. Maybe Blizzard's trying to find a way around that and that's what's taking them so long.

Blizzard IS planning a Japanese release. After the launch of Burning Crusade, who knows what else is up Blizzard's sleeves? Hints of new Starcraft and Diablo have been received quite openly. Let's hope a truly worldwide WoW is also in the works.

Whatever their reasons are, Blizzard has been tight lipped regarding the issue and we're left to wonder. What's next for WoW after Burning Crusade? Is WoW ever going to see Japanese shores? Hopefully, we'll find out soon enough.

It's a region with a really dense and strong MMORPG fanbase - how could Blizzard have left the Orient out of the picture? Well, players in the Far East will now have something to look forward to; it's just been confirmed that the WoWThe Burning Crusade expansion will also be blazing its way to the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Blizzard recently announced on the WoW site that a deal to this end has already been sealed with their local partner, Soft-World, who will also be handling the operation and distribution of the expansion. Soft-World will also be providing community and customer support for that region. What's more, localization of the game into Traditional Chinese is already underway, and they're planning to make it available to the public shortly after TBC's launch in January.

In the meantime, talks are still ongoing with The9 who may or may not be handling TBC in mainland China, so stay tuned.