Mike Morhaime
spoke up about World of Warcraft in Activision's earnings conference call last week (strange, since there was almost
no sign of Blizzard at the Activision press conference during E3), and he spoke about Blizzard's plan for
Wrath of the Lich King's release in China. In the past, there's been a signficant delay between releases in the US and Eastern companies (not that it's
hurt the popularity there). And Blizzard says they want to close that delay, but it's up to the government over there to approve the content -- in the past, the government of China has
asked for changes to be made to the game, and Blizzard says the release schedule is dependent on their approval.
Morhaime also said that the game continues to grow -- they've seen big growth around marketing campaigns, the holiday season (when people buy the game for others), and the release of new content. And you don't have to be a
WoW expert to see that
they're going to hit a perfect storm of all three later this year. This could be the biggest winter the
World of Warcraft has ever had.
[via
WorldofWar.net]
Tags: activision, china, date, growth, mike-morhaime, release, us, wrath-of-the-lich-king
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King
Aug 4th 2008 at 5:30PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jay Aug 4th 2008 6:00PM
Released in winter... kinda symbolic, now they HAVE no choice but to release if just before xmas (US version).
Argent Aug 4th 2008 6:56PM
well, the beta feels much further along than the TBC one did at about this time, so who knows, they might just make Q4 '08 this time.
PimpyMicPimp Aug 4th 2008 7:58PM
Oh, Q4 for sure. It'll come out December 31st!
I do agree with you, it does feel more polished than TBC at this time, but I'm still not convinced we'll see it before late December, unfortunatly. I hope I'm wrong, though.
Hilus Aug 4th 2008 10:16PM
And WoW indeed continues to grow: Remember there's now a Latin American WoW, and in two more days the Russian WoW launches...
jurandr Aug 4th 2008 10:31PM
I've heard about a lot of racism with the new internatinal servers. American players transfer to the Latin-America servers and make guilds like 'border patrol' and completely flame anybody who speaks the Spanish Language, which is kind of common among Latin-American citizens. The WoW client ought to check your IP or some other source of information for what country your logging in from, and only allow you to log in to that country's servers. It would cut down on chinese spammers, as well as the American flamers on the Latin servers. With the new Russian servers I can see all sorts of Americans joining those to talk about the world wars, or some other communist-government related things. WoW is an escape from the real world- not a portal into another sector of it.
PeeWee Aug 5th 2008 11:15AM
l2ignore
Hilus Aug 6th 2008 11:30AM
To Peewee: just "ignore" means to tolerate. just "ignore" means to accept. Just "ignore" means to give permission. No, no, and no.
Adorenko Aug 5th 2008 4:35AM
Who Cares!!!!!! I don't live in China.
matrix_dragon Aug 5th 2008 9:10AM
I live in China but I don't play the China version.
Taiwanese WoW is my cup to tea.
Crypt King Aug 5th 2008 4:42PM
Because, you know, it's only Americans who do this or act this way.