Blizzard is happy to announce that its heavily-acclaimed MMO video game World of Warcraft has reached a new milestone as the total number of subscribers worldwide had already surpassed the nine million mark. Blizzard clarified that the tally includes existing subscribers only and not those who were banned or who have stopped playing entirely.

Blizzard Entertainment President and Co-founder Mike Morhaime had this message, "We're thrilled that gamers around the world have continued to embrace World of Warcraft so enthusiastically. We've worked hard to provide a compelling experience for our players, and we plan to continue updating the game with exciting new content for them to enjoy for many years to come".

When the first expansion - The Burning Crusade - was released, the number of sales totalled an unprecedented 3.5 million around the world. One has to take note that 2.4 million of those were sold during the first 24 hours. Currently, Blizzard is planning to launch the expansion in mainland China with the help of The9.

Everyone has to admit that despite the issues and problems being confronted by WoW today, it changed and revolutionized the face of MMORPG gaming. Kudos to Blizzard in its success and we hope that they continue looking out for their user base.

What's an undead scourge without skeleton warriors, right? What seems to be a simple matter of missing content (flesh, in this case) is now stirring up the healthy gaming community in China. We just received word that China has forced World of Warcraft's undead skeletons to be fleshed out and covered with skin.

In an attempt to foster harmony in video games, the Chinese government has forced The9, China's World of Warcraft provider, to cover up skeletons with new skin, essentially turning skeleton undead into zombies in a recent upgrade. The upgrade also removed player corpses (which are basically skeletons) and replaced them with virtual graves.

Said The9 about the incident,

This modification to undead characters is due to the requirements of Chinese national conditions and policies. These small modifications promote a healthy and harmonious online game environment and will not affect players' enjoyment.

Some players are understandably upset about how even the virtual undead are forced to follow Chinese mandate, especially since it focuses only on Blizzard's World of Warcraft and affects no other games. For those of us who live outside China though, it does pose an interesting question: Would having censored content of this sort affect your enjoyment of the game? Let us know in the comments below.

The Chinese government is cracking down on online players below 18. They have just passed a regulation that requires online game operators to install an "anti-online game addiction system". China is definitely concerned about the effects of online games on school kids as truancy and petty crime rates rise. The regulation will affect players who are below 18; it doesn't really stop them from playing, it just whittles their gaming hours to an encouraged limit of three hours.

How will it work? The anti-online game addiction system will be installed on MMO games (by the operators, definitely no squeezing out of this one). After which, the under-age player logs in and plays for three hours everything will be normal (full experience points and whatnot). If the player goes on playing for two more hours, he will only get half of the experience points. After five hours, the player gets none at all.

Plus they will be barraged with a message "You have entered unhealthy game time, please go offline immediately to rest. If you do not, your health will be damaged and your points will be cut to zero." at 15 minute intervals. In addition to the system, players will be required to register using their real names and identity card numbers for the system to verify their ages.

The MMO operators aren't exactly worried. The9 (exclusive distributor for the World of Warcraft in mainland China) spokesman Zhao Yurun expressed that the system won't have a great impact on their player base as most of the players are adults. Other operators in China are Shanda, NetEase and Tencent - all agree that the impact will be minimal.

The regulation will be effective on April 15, whereas the operators have until July 16 to have the system installed in their games - or be shut down. According to China Daily, there are 31.12 million online gamers in 2006 but only 10% was below 18. So it's pretty clear that the anti-addiction system is not really a big issue with the MMO operators. But the real identity registration might pose a concern as it might scare off players.

We'll see how this goes in the long run. Would you like to play your favorite MMO on a leash?

Several hours ago, we reported that Electronic Arts had agreed to buy a 19 percent stake in The9 Ltd. for about US$ 200 million. The9 is currently mainland China's exclusive distributor of Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG, with this deal (according to Shanghai Securities News) giving the Shanghai-based company further rights to EA's FIFA Online game.

That is, if this report had been confirmed.

EA spokesman Jeff Brown has just stepped out into the open to announce that contrary to reports from publications like the Shanghai Securities News, EA had not entered into any business dealings of the sort. "There is no signed agreement with The9," Brown said, further commenting that EA did not comment on rumors and speculation like this. Given that this is all EA has to say at the moment, we'll let the readers know in case we run into more clarifications on this whole matter.

Is Electronic Arts trying to get a piece of the MMO - specifically the World of Warcraft piece of the pie - in China?

The9 is the exclusive distributor of Blizzard's World of Warcraft in mainland China. They reached an agreement with Electronic Arts - selling a 19% stake for about US$ 200 million. Another big purchase for EA is a 25% stake in Neowiz (Korean game developers) for US$ 190 million. What exactly is Electronic Arts planning? They still have Ultima Online and The Sims Online (which, this writer notes only has a fraction of players compared to the giant World of Warcraft.)

Anyway, we'll see where this is going. Stay tuned for more news.

Thanks to revenue from Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Shanghai-based online game operator The9 Limited has reported a 54% rise in its net income for the fourth quarter. The company reported net revenues of US$ 36.2 million in the fourth quarter, a 21% increase from the third quarter of 2006 and a 54% increase from the previous fiscal year.

Of its net Q4 revenues, The9 attributed US$ 36.1 million to its operation of WoW, which recorded peak and average concurrent user numbers of 680,000 and 340,000, respectively, in the fourth quarter. This includes revenue from game-playing time, merchandise and installation package sales. The9 began operating the game in mainland China two years ago.

Online game operator for World of Warcraft in China, The9 Ltd., will announce their quarterly earnings on Wednesday, February 14. Analysts expect The9 to earn about US$ 34.1 million in revenues, a definite increase from US$29.5 million last quarter.

Having tracked utilization levels of their WoW servers, The9's Daniel Vlad estimates a 35% increase on average concurrent user count from 280,000 last quarter to 380,000 this quarter. The peak concurrent user count is expected to increase by about a slight 15% from 595,000 to 686,000.

They have reason to believe that the increase is mainly due to the opening of a new server area and the launching of the cross-server battlegrounds upgrade last October. Because of the upgrade, inactive gamers were invited to come back and existing gamers found reason to stay online longer.

Minimal unscheduled server downtime and longer average playing times assured The9 that their operations have seen significant improvement. With the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade China launching around the corner, they hope the next quarters will be just as favorable.

 

After the successful launch of The Burning Crusade in western territories, investors in China's online game operators are now keeping a close eye on The9 Limited this week for confirmation of a rumored deal to extend its massively multiplayer World of Warcraft franchise with the Burning Crusade expansion pack. The9 presently handles the distribution of WoW in the Chinese region

Industry watchers have been wondering whether Vivendi's Blizzard Entertainment unit might try to go around The9 to launch the expansion pack with a new partner since The9's original license contract in February 2004. Blizzard has stated in the past that they are actively exploring and discussing cooperation opportunities and further expansion of its business with local potential partners for mainland China.

The9's stock is notching all-time highs lately, as investors look at China's strongest pipeline of future games, as well as the most sophisticated population of gamers playing WoW. With their release of Hellgate: London still in the works, nearly all of the company's revenue is currently coming from WoW.

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.

Hmmm, it seems that over in China, there are MMO Cola wars instead of a next gen console war. You see, China's local online game company The9 said that they have a tie-up with Pepsi for their Guild Wars promo, which will start closed beta testing on the 29th.

The more popular Coke also had its share of MMO tie-ups in the form of gaming giant World of Warcraft. Recently, Coke had a WoW- themed commercial which featured Taiwanese all-girl pop band, S.H.E.

Pepsi also signed a deal with Shanda, another company and The9's competitor, which opted to launch its latest MMO, Magical Land at around the same time. Unfortunately, Magical Land wasn't much of a success, and Pepsi didn't renew its partnership with Shanda after that.

Now, Guild Wars is another thing. Although it's not as massive as WoW, the MMO's quite successful in its own right. Will this partnership give Pepsi an edge in the MMO/Cola wars? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, check out the S.H.E./WoW commercials we found in Youtube, thanks to 477605598 and miaming, respectively.

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