Asia Makes UO2, You Can't Have It, But They Can Have WoW Again

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Scott Jennings| 24 Comments

Apparently, EA isn’t just bringing a simple localized version of UO to the Chinese market, but making a new MMO using the UO “license”.

Hong Kong-based NetDragon Websoft will develop the massively multiplayer online game — where thousands or millions of players play simultaneously in a virtual world — in conjunction with EA’s Mythic Entertainment division. NetDragon Websoft will have the exclusive license to operate the game in China, Hong Kong, Macau and India.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has approved the release of Wrath of the Lich King and provisionally allowed NetEase to relaunch the game after a long downtime which caused some discontent!

Thousands of anxious gamers who have been missing the game are expected to gather at today’s opening of Chinajoy, an online game carnival in Shanghai, to demand the game be made available again, the Southern Weekly reported last Saturday.

“As a large consumption group, we at least have the right to know when will the game be re-opened or will it be re-booted,” the newspaper quoted a WoW fan, named Laode, as saying.

WoW fans vented their anger by logging on to servers belonging to Netease on July 11. After 5,000 signed on at the same time, they succeeded in paralyzing seven servers.

WoW players also left nearly 3,000 complaints on the official website of China Consumers’ Association and some players said they planned to sue.

So, for those keeping track: protesting racial inequality in Xinjiang is bad, protesting talent spec inequality in Wintergrasp is fine.

However, everything seems to be back on track now, thus showing that the appropriate palms were greased that Blizzard and NetEase showed the appropriate awareness of socialist norms and morals.

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  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    Suuure, an Ultima Online sequel, we heard that one before. Fool us three times…

    Interesting to hear that one of the changes they made to World of Warcraft was to change the skeletons into humans. Clashing with ancestor worship, perhaps?

  • Freakazoid

    Isn’t Websoft the same group that also got the dungeon keeper license? It seems they’re pretty keen on picking up dead licenses in america for some reason. I wonder how cheap licenses get for old pc games?

  • Longasc

    I think a new MMO based on some ideas of the old Ultima Online would be very good for the genre. And hopefully a good game of its own, too.

    I still like the isometric pseudo 3d view, and the skill system with skill and stat caps could maybe combat the problem that “zones” in contemporary EQ/WoW style, well… “zone” style become totally uninteresting once you “levelled out” of them.

    NetDragon Websoft does not sound very promising as a developer, on the other hand.

  • Njal

    As long as it has bikini babe all will be well :)

  • Gx1080

    About old licenses…maybe its for having a safe bet for pirating recent games? Who knows. And China, like any market place without a united, official law, its all about greasing palms.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Paying to play a MMRPG? in 2010? Those poor Chinese people… Oh, wait…

  • http://azaroth.org Azaroth

    Am I the only one that thinks it sounds like there isn’t actually going to be an entirely new game developed?

  • Gx1080

    No, you arent the only one. At most i expect a bad copycat ala Evony.

  • http://www.mobhunter.com Moorgard

    I can’t wait to read the blog of the Chinese Lum. It will feature articles with titles like “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (And Also, the Government Takes Them Away From Us).”

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    I can’t wait to read the blog of the Chinese Lum

    Fertile grounds for the imagination indeed.

    Whose vehicles will Chinese Lum parody humor about, I wonder. It would be, like, Bizzaro-Lum.

  • Recursion

    “Bizzaro Lum” — Scary Thought indeed….. LOL — In Bizzaro world… EVERYTHING IS BACKWARDS!!

  • Danavbaldwin

    Playing in China is all about greasing palms. It’s akin to running up the ranks.
    The first round is the hardest. You need a facilitator to even get your voice heard let alone approved. Then there are four levels of approval needed to finally get the sign off from the cultural chairmans office.

    Best of luck.

  • http://blog.weflyspitfires.com We Fly Spitfires

    Everyone must be happy that WoW is coming back to China. Must’ve been pretty tough for the players. Imagine if suddenly the US had a WoW outage for a few months – all hell would break loose.

  • dartwick

    If WOW was suddenly turned off basically nothing would happen except a bunch of forum bitching on the internet and other game developers would see their stock go up.

  • EpicSquirt

    I thought EA Mythic is no more.

  • Tremayne

    @EpicSquirt
    Nope, EA Mythic is still there – it’s just minus Mr Jacobs.
    Presumably, if “New UO” flops then EA will take another person out and shoot them [i]pour encourager les autres[/i]

  • Gx1080

    If WoW was suddently turn-off i dont think that the Internet would support the ammount of bitching without crashing. But the Internet its tough, its an interesting experiment.

    @We Fly Spitfires
    The chinese didnt have many problem, they just rerolled in the taiwanese servers:

    http://www.wow.com/2009/06/26/with-the-game-offline-in-china-others-aim-to-step-in/

    And they had success in there:

    http://www.wow.com/2009/05/16/chinese-guild-heads-to-taiwan-kills-mimiron-on-hard-mode/

    I bet that right now some taiwanese must be saying:
    “Thank god, we dont have to stand anymore all the chinese noobs”

  • http://www.zolohouse.com/wow/phpBB2 wowpanda

    @Gx1080 rerolled on taiwanese server? and they have to grind from level 1??!!

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    I suspect more people have moved on from WoW than subscription numbers suggest. But then, I’ve always been a bit pessimistic when it comes to WoW’s apparent success.

  • Gx1080

    The secret of WoW its that, yes they have a high suscription number but MANY OF THOSE ARE NEW TO THE GAME. Seriously. WoW has a constant influx of new players because WoW its the first MMOG of many, many people.

    That its helped because Blizzard always have make reaching the end-game easy. Or at least keeping the time that takes getting to max level constant (A few months, less if you are twinked).

    Oh and another thing, in WoW the quests never feel repetitive, mainly because Azeroth its huge (meaning that you can level in several places), it isnt a random mission generator(which gets repetitive and boring easily) and the quests are actually varied (its never kill A, return for next quest, kill B in the same place, etc).

    Yes theres a lot of kill quests, but you never have all the quests in the same area, and despite respawn times in a random, only for you, generated dungeon like many other games you dont see other people.

    That, at least, they nailed right.

    TL, DR: WoW its easy and fun to people new to the game. Many other games are not fun to the same people. That and many, many publicity gives WoW a constant influx of players.

    And gear its, frankly, only the half of the equation in raids, the rest its knowledge of your class and the fights. That and theres several options for gear.

    I would have make the answers separately, but both points are connected to each other.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

  • Vetarnias

    @geldonyetich
    And I really, really hope you’re right.

  • Mordur

    —–
    I can’t wait to read the blog of the Chinese Lum. It will feature articles with titles like “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (And Also, the Government Takes Them Away From Us).”
    —–

    He will rickshaw to victory?

  • TPRJones

    “Gaming is the opium of the masses.”