Tag Archives: the9

Yesterday, we reported that Red 5 Studios had cast a number of its employees back into the choppy seas of unemployment, and today, the developer released a statement that more or less amounts to “Yeah, we laid-off some people, but look! There’s a butterfly – over there, right behind that giant stack of normalcy and never-been-better!”

According to Kotaku‘s ever-useful sources, however, something’s amiss.

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Shanghai-based MMO operator, The9, has reported that Q3 sales dropped 94 percent after loosing World of Warcraft to NetEase in China.

However, the company remains optimistic, as revenues for Soul of the Ultimate Nation, Jiu Zhou Zhan Ji, Granado Espada, and FIFA Online 2 increased 55 percent compared to the previous quarter, while attracting 3.4 million active users when compared to last quarter’s 3.2 million active users.

While that is good news for the company, it just goes to just how massive the WoW beast really is no matter where you go.

More through Gamasutra.

WoW’s now fully up and running in China again after over two months downtime, as you can see here.

Local operator NetEase has also confirmed that the Chinese language version of Wrath of the Lich King is complete and is about to be submitted to the Chinese government for approval.

There more on Gama about the amount of money Blizzard and NetEase have burned through the transition period from previous operator The9. In short – “a lot”.

It’s Saturday again, and time for your dose of MMO news.

This one has been branded the “trouble” edition, because certain MMOS were either in trouble, or getting out of it this week.

First off, Stargate Worlds is rumored to be in massive trouble, Age of Conan isn’t in as much any more, and China has ungrounded World of Warcraft but only a tiny bit. It can still go out on dates, but not whore about the countryside like it had been doing. What a tart.

Other than those bits, the week in MMOs was a bit uneventful. Yeah sure, the major news hit the front page as usual, but there are a few things you may want to know about that didn’t. For that, and the rest of it, along with a song devoted to Second Life, read on below.

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The Chinese version of World of Warcraft is still offline, according to this Yahoo! report, having been taken off the air on June 7 when Blizzard’s contract with The9 expired.

As the piece notes, new operator NetEase wasn’t ready to have the game up and running at the time, and clearly still isn’t. No one appears to have a set date for play to recommence.

Whoops. Full details through there.

The9 may have lost the World of Warcraft license in China, but it’s undeterred: it’s launching World of Fight instead.

There’s an official site here. You may notice some similarities between this and the Blizzard MMO.

More on Gama.

Blizzard didn’t specifically say this morning why it’s dropped The9 in favour of NetEase to run its Chinese WoW operation, but Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter’s claimed the answer’s simple: it’s going to make a mother-trucking boatload more money from the new deal.

“The company had previously contracted with The9, but the current arrangement will expire in June 2009,” said Pachter in a note this afternoon.

“Under the terms of its contract with The9, Activision Blizzard received a royalty of 22% on revenues generated in China. We estimate that the current arrangement generated revenues of around $50 – 55 million annually (using most recent subscriber figures), at close to 100% margin. Although the terms of the new arrangement were not disclosed, we estimate that the royalty rate will increase to at least 55%, and that the new arrangement will generate revenues of over $140 million annually.”

$90 million is probably a good reason to kick a partner into touch. But don’t shit the bed just yet, share-buyers: Pachter said he believed the upside – approximately $0.04 per share – has already been factored into forecasts.

The Chinese government has rejected two applications to launch Wrath of the Lich King in the country, as the WoW expansion’s content did not “meet requirements” thanks to a city raid and skeleton characters — the submitted version left out the Death Knight class.

Blizzard has now deleted the link to the Chinese version on WoW’s North American site.

China apparently has issues with skeletons – for some reason – and undead in the game have had to be “beefed” up in the past so they showed less bone.

More through the link.