As of right now, Chinese players have only been able to play The Burning Crusade since it was first launched in China on September 6, 2007 (8 months after the NA/EU release.)

There's been a lot of drama between government regulators, Blizzard, The9, and NetEase but it appears that WOTLK will finally see a release in China sometime within the next few months. (By comparison, NA/EU release date was Nov 13/08).

Here's a summary of the most recent WoW China activity after The9 lost their license to operate World of Warcraft.

Apr 2009 - The9 loses license to operate WoW
May 2009 - The9 sues Blizzard, also creates "World of Fight"
Jun 2009 - Servers offline (The9 -> NetEase)
Jul 2009 - Servers offline (The9 -> NetEase)
Aug 2009 - Servers offline (The9 -> NetEase)
Sep 2009 - Servers offline (The9 -> NetEase)
Oct 2009 - Servers back online
Nov 2009 - NetEase ordered to stop charging players and new registrations (deemed illegal).
Dec 2009 - Servers online
Jan 2010 - Servers online
Feb 7 2010 - NetEase attempts to re-approve TBC
Feb 8 2010 - NetEase ordered to halt new accounts again
Feb 12 2010 - Gave "approval to release" TBC in China (even though it was already out)
Mar 2010 - Subscriptions collected again & new players allowed
Apr 2010 - Business as usual
May 2010 - Business as usual
Jun 2010 - Business as usual
Jul 2010 - Business as usual
Aug 2010 - Announced that WOTLK would finally launch

For 7 months, they were not allowed to accept new players and for 4 months there was no revenue. There was practically no growth for a year. But, let's hope things stabilize for NetEase. (More information if you're interested in this.)

On an interesting note, WOTLK has been available on Taiwan realms (TWOW) for some time and many guilds and players have moved from their CWOW to TWOW servers due to their closer proximity and acceptable latency. Not just because of the WOTLK expansion pack, but also because of their ongoing issues on the CWOW servers (constant up-and-down, servers offline, new accounts being blocked, etc.)

There are also many Chinese players who have tried to make the move to US Realms for some of the same reasons (realm issues, wanting to get into new exp. packs), but they have met with new challenges.. other than bandwidth latency.

There is a very common misconception that if you're Chinese you're automatically a "Chinese Gold Farmer". Fact is, the number of "gold farmers" (under it's classic definition) is actually very low (1-2% of total Active Subscribers) and are actually located in your own realm's geography. But that doesn't stop Blizzard from banning China-based IP addresses without actually investigating the user.

Here's what Blizzard had to say on the matter:

"Chinese IP's are not blocked on the US or Taiwan realms, but sometimes accounts using IPs are banned due to large amounts of exploiters or gold sellers using the network. It's possible for some personal accounts to get blocked as well (highly unlikely) is where this probably stems from."

I think investigations should be based on a user-by-user basis, rather than just banning entire IP ranges because of some bad apples. Because of the amount of money involved too, most of these gold farming businesses in China buy dedicated US VPN servers for maximum bandwidth.

Consider this: If NA/EU realms were constantly crashing, down for maintenance for months at a time, new expansion packs were a year late (but released in China a year early), you never knew if the expansion pack would ever be approved by NA/EU government regulators or when they were going to shutdown the realms "for good this time", and there were ways to correct any latency issues, wouldn't you try to setup a CWOW account just so that you could play the game? And after all is said and done, wouldn't you just want to get your WoW fix and be free from labeling or harassment?

As it stands now, though, you may even want to signup on the CWOW servers right now once I explain some of the other interesting facts about CWOW (however you have to wait for the next parts of this article.) =]

* Update (08/20/10):
Here are direct links to the other parts of the article.

Part 2 - Average game time played by CWOW players.
Part 3 - Subscription model, and total number of CWOW players vs worldwide.
Part 4 - Gold has real value and easy to buy/sell.
Part 5 - Unique in-game services on China realms.
Part 6 - Overview of gameplay, culture, government regulations and censorship.
Part 7 - Census information, ratio of Alliance vs Horde, and PVP is uncommon.

In my earlier post, I had mentioned how Blizzard was raising the bar on graphic quality for their new MMO compared to their previous releases. But I had forgot to mention one other thing I was informed: "be prepared for something spectacular when it is revealed".

Knowing the casual gameplay style in combination with the huge variety of environments, I think I've nailed down what the game is going to be like - except for the actual "storyline" or "lore". That can take many possible paths.

But if you're interested in the types of environments you'll probably see in the game, here's some work by one of the (Cinematic) Environmental Artists working on the Next Gen MMO who specializes in high poly art.

(Read below for some interesting notes on the artist and how it relates to the oft-whispered "Codename Titan".)

His most recent work (August 2010) and then 13 others since he started working for Blizzard:

May 2010 - Mar 2010 - Feb 2010
Feb 2010 - Jan 2010 - Dec 2009
Nov 2009 - Nov 2009 - Nov 2009
Nov 2009 - Nov 2009 - Sep 2009
Aug 2009

He was hired by Blizzard in August 2009. His comments indicate that he's been very busy at work, but that he's been creating this art as part of his studies and research for projects that he is currently working on.

A lot of his previous CG work prior to being hired to Blizzard was mostly for fun and learning, however his environment work suddenly changed after being hired by Blizzard. If you look at his pictures, you'll see what I mean. At first, it was about research - then it became about testing and experimentation.

If you ever wanted to learn about some secret project someone is working on, you can either ask them, ask someone related to them, do some dumpster diving, or find out what they're researching and studying. If suddenly a lot of storyline developers are researching World War 2 history (analyze web traffic trends), chances are they're working on a WW2 game. =]

Here's his demo reel from before he was hired by Blizzard by the way: Link

This was probably the one Blizzard recruiting and management saw before making their decision to hire him. They liked his stuff. =]

You may start seeing some automating scripting software (paid or free) for Blizzard's web-based and mobile Auction House (Link) sometime in the near future.

Apparently, there's really no security protection in place other than Blizzard limiting the number of transactions per day (200). Blizzard is probably analyzing basic utilization trends to try and find automated activities but it won't be very successful. It can easily be defeated, however, by properly scheduling the script and using multiple accounts on different proxy servers.

A couple of my contacts in the "gold-exploitation" communities are saying that it's an excellent way to make gold, particularly Neutral AH sniping. They have been experimenting with a custom made AutoIT script and since there are no measures in place to detect scripting software, they're not too worried about getting caught. They've been stretching their search schedules to see how far they can push the bots without being detected, while also trying to emulate "real player" interactions (e.g. checking the AH, refreshing prices at random intervals, posting fake auctions, buying cheap stuff, etc.) They've been making about 50-100k gold per day, and they don't even have to be sitting at the PC. Far more efficient then boring grinding and other farming strategies. =]

It's pretty easy to create an AutoIT script too and at $3 per month for the Remote AH, it's definitely worth the investment considering that these guys alone are selling $150-$300 per day in gold (their estimates for the past week.) That amount is equivalent to a well-paying full time job ($50-100k per year) and that's only on two realms.. imagine if they expanded to multiple servers? They just wanted to say, "Thank you Blizzard for making gold exploitation so easy and safe!"

Of course, as competition increases their (the exploiters) profits will go down - but even then, there are still very few people even now that use automated scripts within the game to manipulate the AH system.

With the AH system now accessible through a web interface (rather than inside a moving/changing 3D world), it's so much easier to create scripts and bots with faster reaction time and without worry of detection.

In an earlier post, it was discovered that Blizzard was making quite a significant profit from banned players (botting & exploits). It looks like they have just introduced another new service that makes cheating activities even more accessible and allows them to make even MORE profit from cheaters.

Even if they get discovered and banned, even better! Their game subscription and Remote AH subscription expires at the end of the month - so they get to keep that revenue plus the amount made when they purchase a new account during that same time frame.

(Note: Depending on the response rate of the web-based AH versus the in-game AH, there might be opportunity for some interesting exploitation. So you might start seeing some new AH strategies popping up..)

If you're a honest player, though, here a couple tips that can keep you from being cheated by this new system:

• When you post auctions, set the price correctly the first time. Double-check before submitting! If you enter the wrong price, it can be sniped before you can retract it.
• If you're using the Neutral AH to transfer items from account-to-account, buy them out IMMEDIATELY. Do not wait for more than 20 seconds otherwise you're at risk of having your items taken. Even 20 seconds is a generous time frame.