World of Warcraft will go offline in China, leaving millions of gamers bereft | China

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Millions of Chinese gamers will bid farewell to the World of Warcraft (WoW) epic woefully underwhelming land of Azeroth, where the game is set to go on hiatus following a dispute between US developer Blizzard and its local partner NetEase.

Very popular all over the world, especially in the 2000s, WoW is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in a medieval fantasy world. Known for its immersive and addictive gameplay, players can spend hundreds of hours playing it.

Blizzard games have been available in China since 2008 through a collaboration with NetEase. By local law, foreign developers are required to partner with Chinese companies to enter the market.

But after 14 years and millions of gamers in China, the two companies announced in November that talks about renewing their operating contracts had failed to reach an agreement. As a result, the Chinese WoW servers will go offline at midnight local time on Tuesday.

Other popular titles by the Californian developer – one of the largest in the world – will also suffer the same fate, including Overwatch, Diablo III and Hearthstone.

“It’s the end,” one Weibo user wrote, accompanied by a crying emoji.

“It wasn’t just a game. It was also the memories of a whole generation” of young Chinese, wrote another.

“The two companies have held the players hostage,” said Wu, a 30-year-old PhD student and longtime fan.

Last week, Blizzard China said it had requested an exceptional six-month contract extension, which NetEase refused.

“One day, when what happened behind the scenes can be told, developers and gamers will have a whole new level of understanding of how damaging any jerk can be,” NetEase president Simon Zhu wrote on LinkedIn late last year.

Blizzard said it is in discussions with “many potential partners who share our values” to continue offering its titles in China.

Blizzard China said that the disruption of its Chinese servers was not “the end” but merely an “unhappy temporary suspension”. User data could be saved for use should the games return to China, according to Blizzard.

But Wu, who said he played WoW for up to three hours a day, saw the good side of the story. “I didn’t give my wife enough time. Now that World of Warcraft is gone, I want to make amends,” he said.

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