WoW Trouble In Little China

Posted by Stropp on November 4, 2009

Blizzard is certainly having a rough time lately with the operation of World of Warcraft in China.

The transfer of the licence to a new operator didn’t go smoothly at all. The transfer of what must have been many terabytes of data kept Chinese players from the game for a long time. It must have seemed like an eternity for dedicated World of Warcraft players.

The servers haven’t really been back in operation for long, and there is another problem. A bunfight between the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has broken out and World of Warcraft is caught in the middle like Kurt Russell. It seems that the MoC has recently taken over responsibility for the administration of all things foreign MMORPG related in China from the GAPP, and the GAPP is more than a little pissed off. So while the Ministry of Culture is treading lightly and has given the all clear for World of Warcraft to go ahead, the GAPP has tightened the rules and has demanded the WoW severs to go dark.

It does make me wonder who is actually overseeing these two Chinese government departments. Surely, there is the equivalent of a Congress or Cabinet (or even the Chinese Premier himself) who could tell one or the other to pull their heads in.

It does seem a little anarchic for such a tightly controlled governance system.

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