It has barely been a week since Blizzard Entertainment struck a deal with NetEase and the Chinese WoW community has come out in troves.
In January of 2023, the Blizzard Entertainment licensing agreement with NetEase fell apart, as negotiations between the two companies turned sour – leaving World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 players in the region serverless. During that time, Blizzard has gone through the wringer, moving into the Microsoft domain, losing some vital staff members, but ultimately coming out on top with the departure of Bobby Kotick. All that aside, the company has managed to strike a new deal with NetEase, returning Blizzard’s games to the Chinese community – and it has reignited the region's passion for the games.
As reported officially by Blizzard China, the want for Blizzard games, especially World of Warcraft, in the region is extremely high, with 2,000,000 players preregistering within only two days. These were not the only numbers revealed, with comments flowing in on the Weibo account about rebuilding the Gorehowl statue, nearly 100,000 previous accounts recovered, and thousands of resumes flying in for the open positions within the newly formed company in China.
According to an article on Wowhead, Warcraft Logs estimates that 60% of all Classic WoW players hail from China, which indicates just how big the game is in the region. While retail is in a bit of a lull at the moment as the game teeters on the edge of its final season in Dragonflight and a new expansion, this new deal is sure to bring back the joy of Blizzard’s games to the region very soon.
At the current time of writing, there is no official announcement of when the new servers will be up and running, but it bodes well for the Chinese WoW community, and those simply wanting to play Blizzard games in the long run.
