The9 prepping WOW knockoff in China?
By Activision Blizzard's most recent accounting, World of Warcraft's subscriber population numbers some 11.5 million people, a significant number of which hail from the Internet cafes of China. As such, the publisher dealt The9 a serious blow in April, when it announced that it would drop the...
By Activision Blizzard's most recent accounting, World of Warcraft's subscriber population numbers some 11.5 million people, a significant number of which hail from the Internet cafes of China. As such, the publisher dealt The9 a serious blow in April, when it announced that it would drop the partially EA-owned company in favor of a new Chinese-region WOW operations partner.
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Unsurprisingly, it appears as if The9 is none too pleased with the recent turn of events. The Wall Street Journal reports that The9 may be planning to launch a World of Warcraft "shanzhai," or knockoff, with which it hopes to retain a number of players who currently subscribe to Blizzard's highly prized massively multiplayer online game.
Namely, The9 recently launched a promotional site for World of Fight, a "new" MMOG whose Web site bears art with more than a passing resemblance to WOW. The Journal also notes that the site's URL, wofchina.com, is just one letter different than WOW's Chinese Web site URL, wowchina.com.
Blizzard Entertainment had not responded to requests for comment as of press time.
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