Chinese govt. rejects WOW: Lich King? News
MMO PC News by Oli Welsh
World of Warcraft's second expansion Wrath of the Lich King has been twice refused release by the Chinese government for censorship reasons, say reports.
That's according to Chinese web portal Sohu, as reported by JLM Pacific Epoch and spotted by Massively.
Sohu quoted an unnamed insider, saying that "content that didn't meet requirements" was the issue. "Skeleton characters" (already largely removed from the existing Chinese version of WOW) and "a city raid" were singled out for censors' opprobrium.
It's said that the new Death Knight hero class, one of the main selling points of the expansion, wasn't even included in the version submitted for approval by the game's Chinese operator, The9.
The Chinese censor's problem with undead imagery presents quite a hurdle for Wrath of the Lich King. The expansion is largely concerned with a crusade against the Scourge, a vast army of the undead.
Roughly a third of World of Warcraft's 11 million players are in Asia, and naturally a sizeable proportion of those are to be found in China, one of the world's biggest markets for online gaming.
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Comments: 1-15 of 15 in total
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Kazzahdrane
11/03/09 @ 11:44
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Shirley the problem is that the Chinese government sees the army of the undead as standing for everything Communism stands against? I too would have thought an army of the undead was the ultimate society of equals, but I guess they see things differently over there.
I love zombies, me. |
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kangarootoo
11/03/09 @ 11:51
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Surely a hive-mind army of animated corpses is a poster boy for any communist state worth its salt. One for all and all for one, etc.
Edit: Ah, wot Kazzahdrane said.
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 11/03/09 @ 11:52
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kangarootoo
11/03/09 @ 12:06
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"So... what do the undead race look like in the chinese version then? :P"
Like this apparently. http://pro.corbis.com/images/BE063842.jp... Quite smartly dressed if you ask me. |
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@kangarootoo
Like this apparently. http://pro.corbis.com/images/BE063842.jp... Quite smartly dressed if you ask me. That's a damn fine hat there, sir. |
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0
"So... what do the undead race look like in the chinese version then? :P"
Like someone has used polyfilla on them: http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/07/03/the...
Edited 4 times,
most recently on 11/03/09 @ 12:29
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Snakehips76
11/03/09 @ 15:35
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'Chinese Gold Farmers in Necrophilia Clampdown Shock'
Ni hao pewpewlazors etc etc |
Comments: 1-15 of 15 in total
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