Latest sweet rumors...

The9 has been the target of persistent rumors over the last few months that they're on the verge of losing their license from Blizzard to operate World of Warcraft in China. First, we heard about their financial troubles, and then came rumors that Blizzard was going to ditch them. And now we've got WorldofWar.net reporting a rumor that Netease will be the company to take over the reins there. It makes sense -- Netease has been growing a lot during their history, and they successfully operate Fantasy Westward Journey, an MMO with a US value of $761 million, with 400,000 average concurrent users. They're already supposed to take over Blizzard's Warcraft III and Starcraft II in China, so Blizzard will actually be consolidating their properties.

The rumor supposedly comes from a leaked internal memo to The9 employees, which says that an unnamed company (supposedly Netease) is trying to pick up the rights and hardware for the game for a cool $22 million. The9 reportedly paid $73 million for the same capability, so they're losing twice on the deal -- both the license and the money they spent on it.

Not good news for The9 if it all turns out to be true, but maybe this means Chinese players will get their expansions a little sooner. Of course, a lot goes into releasing new content overseas (translation is definitely not a small part of it), but having a more capable operator probably won't hurt.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/15/rumor-the9-loses-license-in-china-to-netease/

i saw this on china news website.

not sure true or not.


http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-04/16/content_7685851.htm

Netease is recruiting!
For what? Game Master, GM Leader, Customer Service Commissioner, Commissioner Training, Customer Service Manager and Quality Commissioner

On there website, curiosity is a deadly sin, but also a great quality!
Original page: http://hr.163.com/gmshanghai/
Translated page: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fhr.163.com%2Fgmshanghai%2F&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

well, as per german community news netease is going to take over the biz from the9.

what i find much more interesting is the news that the9 is about to release their own mmorpg, named "World of Fight" and uses a pretty close font style to the WoW Font.....

---> http://www.wofchina.com/

Is that a joke?

Greetz from Hamburg,
Salino

From WoW Insider: http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/05/03/the9-prepping-wow-clone-world-of-fight/

You have to give Chinese company The9 a bit of credit. The loss of such the publishing rights to World of Warcraft would have destroyed lesser companies, it just made them teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. Now they're back -- with World of Fight.

The teaser site went up earlier in the week and reeks of WoW in a way that only Chinese knock-offs can. At the moment we know next to nothing about the game but we can certainly guess. The domain name (www.wofchina.com) is suspiciously similar to the one for World of Warcraft (www.wowchina.com) but with one letter changed. Just look at that font, remind you of anything?

It's not a stretch to bet that The9 are hoping to attract people who associated them with WoW, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard won't be too happy to see their former publisher in Asia trying to promote a game so similar. We'll certainly keep you updated as I'm quite keen to see what World of Fight looks like.