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Gamasutra has a very interesting article up on the shape of World of Warcraft in China. Some of the more interesting bits indicate that China still does not have the Burning Crusade expansion, the game has been loosing players for the past couple of quarters. The total number lost during the past quarter is around 10-15%. There also appears to be a great deal of state enforced censorship going on in the game. You may have heard some time ago that Blizzard was required to remove all skeletons from the game and replace them with a fleshier model. In addition word is leaking out of possible mismanagement of the product by Chinese game operator The9 which has resulted in a player organized boycott among other things. There has also been increased censorship within the Chinese version of World of Warcaft as 10,000 words were filtered out to be replaced with blanks, including the symbols for Shada, The9's chief competitor in China.
More information about the state of The9's business.
