Hi chaps, quick question to get WoW up and running here.

I played WoW in the UK since the open beta, and six weeks ago I moved to China. I'm looking to play some WoW again for a little fun (going from 5 level 80s back to burning crusade is going to be interesting ). I've logged my EU account a couple times and quickly realised (as you will all know) the latency makes it unplayable.

So I want to play some WoW on chinese servers, which should hopefully also help with my 中文!

The first hurdle I have run into:

I live in Kunshan just outside Shanghai, and there are no game stores near me. So where do I go to get a copy of WoW (and tBC)? Are there any reliable internet sites where I can buy a couple of retail copies? Or do I just have to wait until next weekend when I can make a trip into central Shanghai and find one at Zhongshan Park or somewhere similar?

Let me say in advance I greatly appreciate any help, and I have saved a copy of the thread on how to get a copy of chinese WoW running in English, this forum is a goldmine

So yeah, Cheers!

hey , and welcome!

in order to spare you some time, i'll direct you to Stixx's guide
--> https://wow-in-chinese.forum2jeux.com/general-f1/how-to-play-chinese-wow-in-your-language-updated-7-dec-2009-t1319.htm

and now, the servers:
the community is separated onto 2 different servers :
马多栏 (PVE) : Now this is where the Cow Eaters guild resides. THey are 100% foreigners and raid with another guild.

山丘之王(PVP) : now this is where i play with other fellows from this forum. We are raiding Sunwell, BT. the guild itself is half foreigner half chinese.

Just /join english on both servers and you'll know more

good luck

That guide is ace, I'd read through it before posting here, kudos to StiXx!

However, I am still left with the hurdle of actually creating a chinese WoW account.

StiXx wrote:

7. and last but not least: A Chinese wow account, Click Here! For the guide or ask a chinese friend to do this for you !

that link seems to only provide a (very useful and well written) link to creating a battle.net account which you already need a chinese WoW account to activate... I don't have a chinese WoW account at all so when I reach the last step and it says "Enter WoW account name to tie it to this account" (in chinese ofc), I have no WoW account name to enter...

In the UK I'm used to needing a unique CD-Key to create a new world of warcraft account and I assume the same is true for China? Meaning I need to buy a retail copy of the game to get this all running I assume?

Thanks for your time, I really appreciate the help. Maybe I could return the favour with wotlk raid tactics/experience if you don't already have some wotlk experience in your guilds ^_^

==

Edit: After double checking the FAQ page I found that CD-Keys don't come with the discs only with recharge cards. So now I'm doubly confused! Surely then I can create an account online, but the battle.net application process in the FAQ still doesn't help me

ah very simple, all u need to do is go on www.battlenet.cn.com,
and click on the big yellow chinese characters on the right.

Alright!

I managed to create a chinese battle.net account and activate a free game trial. Downloading the client at the moment, so looks like all's going well

Thanks for your help Urubaen, community is one of the things I really like about this game (just don't mention barrens chat...)

Oh and by the way, your localisation says Shanghai, you wouldn't happen to know a couple of places I can pick up WoW recharge cards? or chains that regularly stock them?

double cheers

In Shanghai you can buy recharge cards where they sell magazines (small red things on sidewalks) or in Netbars.

try any convenience store. Personally, i buy them at Family Mart

Just to let you know guys its going well, I have a Chinese client up and running. I'm following StiXx guide to get one running in English, but at least my girlfriend can understand, she's taking her first ever steps into the game as a troll priest haha. We rolled on 马多栏 with the carebears since its her first time playing the game.

Long way to go for me yet, 6.4Gb of english client to download, all the patches to 3.1.3, and all that copying and reinstalling... ah well, I have a mission and I know what to do.

So yeah, thanks again for your help, I'll stick around. Maybe when its all up and running I'll come pay my respects on Bronzebeard, to say thanks in person, in game!

oh mate.. i forgot to mention... on maduolan, the guild cow eaters is on ally side... as for the other server we are horde..

sorry~~

Hah, no worries man. For the foreseeable future its only levelling anyway. I work full time, and there's no way I could raid anyway so its no big deal

heh, Thats what I thought when I made my hunter on bronzebeard aswell

BTW, you are Ripley in game?

Nope, my in game character is level 1 and called Murchison. No idea who Ripley is, sorry!

Just finished following the guide - my game is up and running!

I had to delete the zhCN folder to stop it starting in Chinese, I think you mean this to happen when extracting the data folder but I didn't quite understand it then.

Double, Triple, Quadruple thanks

Nice to see another face around WOW China. Not sure which server u choose but ur welcome to join at Cow Eaters.

You can buy the game cards in the Family Mart, Kedi stores or in small Newspaper, Boock stores on the street. If you really dont get any there come over here to Suzhou its only 20 min ride by taxi and you can get some cards here.

Hey, glad to be able to join you guys!

I'm sure I'll be able to find a recharge card. A friend of mine from the office suggested buying them on taobao.com. It seems quite a legit site ('The Chinese Ebay' he called it), so I was thinking of maybe doing it there, what do you guys think?

No rush, I got an 1800 minute free trial going at the moment, so I can still play while I work this one out hehe.

StiXx wrote:

heh, Thats what I thought when I made my hunter on bronzebeard aswell

BTW, you are Ripley in game?

name from Ripleys, also known a Zeel... He was banned recently

Taobao is OK if you have some friends help you.
But i still suggest the supermarket as u get the cards in your hands u can still bring them back in case of problems, which i actually never had.

Ah ok, thanks for the advice. I'll have a search and let you know what I've come up with.

Since you guys have been so helpful can I bug you with one more question?

I use the default windows simplified chinese IME (4.0 i think?) to write Chinese characters. However, this doesn't seem to work in WoW (the chinese characters show as "?"). Is there any way I can write in Chinese in game? What do you guys use to write characters?

Thanks \o/

hi Jbags,

there are 2 things you need to do:
1) download special fonts and put them in your wow folder (see link for guide below)
2) change the settings of your windows XP, Vista (see link for guide below)

here is the link for those fonts. you can also find the guide on how to write in chinese for windows xp, when you scroll up 2 questions above where it says"I cannot write characters. What to do?"
http://wow-in-chinese.clanfree.net/faq.html#question12

here is a link on how to write chinese with windows vista:
https://wow-in-chinese.forum2jeux.com/technical-support-f2/guide-to-writing-chinese-in-wow-with-windows-vista-t843.htm


hope this will saulve your problems. let us know the outcome

Great guides, easy to follow.

I wasn't sure if it would work because since I followed StiXx's guide, I launch WoW through Skeleton.exe and not through its own exe. However, I gave it a go anyway and bingo it works.

So thanks Muhan, you're a champ.

happy to hear, and as Urubaen mentioned join one of the guilds here. They are both friendly and helpful. It's much more fun than doing stuff alone

For PVP Horde go to Bronzebeard (山丘之王)

For PVE Alliance go to Maduolan (马多兰)

You're right of course, its always much more fun to have a guild to hang with

Here's my next question!

Addons! Can you get any that work? Do you know of somewhere I can get a version of Carbonite that will work with my chinese/english client? what about other standards like unit frame / action bar addons, recount / atlasloot etc?

Thanks in advance ^_^

any addons can work..
bartender all that stuff.

Which versions do you use? Most current ones on curse? I only tried carbonite at home, which was broken, and now i'm at work and so can't test any!

I was ideally looking for an addon in the carbonite/quest helper mold, do you know of one that works?

Do not forget to quote : 'Launch out dated add-on' during the wow launcher.

Some add-on also needs an activation in game. Arc-hud for an example.

Jbags wrote:

Which versions do you use? Most current ones on curse? I only tried carbonite at home, which was broken, and now i'm at work and so can't test any!

I was ideally looking for an addon in the carbonite/quest helper mold, do you know of one that works?

some of the latest versions dont work, cause they are updated for 3.3, just keep in mind that we are still on version 3.1.. so you might need to download an older version of the addon you wana use.
I guess carbonite should work with old version, I dont use this addon so cant say for sure

Update lads,

Got my account activated and everything's going pretty sweet gradually sorting out addons too. I abandonned carbonite, I think it gets confused by some lingering language issues and just refuses to work at all, but I'm currently trying out questhelper, which seems to do the same stuff although i've never used it before. The questing addons are particularly useful for my gf who is seeing all of these for the first time, whereas I could probably do the majority in my sleep! My friends back on EU servers don't hold back on gloating about the fact that its been patched in to the default UI in 3.3... grrrrr

Speaking of patches, i see 3.2.2 in the background downloader, are we heading for a patch? any ETA?

One last thing, I'm on CN1Maduolan马多兰 server, but hordeside looks _completely deserted_... only a single person has any auctions up on the entire AH and its some leather. This evening at around 8pm I did a quick /who 70 and found 17 level 70s online at peak time?? I assume I've just picked a server with absolutely zero horde pop, pretty much abandonned all hope of getting low level instance groups.

Are there servers out there in region 1 with decent horde side populations? With low level instance groups forming, auctions up etc? What's the population like on 山丘之王? I'd consider a pvp server pver a carebear server if there's a decent population, playing on an empty server kind of defeats the point of the MM in MMO!

As always lads, thanks for your on-going support

edit: what are the queue times like on BGs? Are the battlegroups well populated? ^_^ cheers

hi mate horde sucks in china severs, friendly speaking. At least with people speaking english ; P

Change to alliance and come to Maduolan u will not regret it !!!
I also prever to roll horde but china is slight diffrent, if u want to have good pals around

haha, I've got horde in my veins, but if there's no servers with decent horde population (or friendly horde!) I'll be rerolling alliance quicksmart!