According to rumours, a leaked letter from the president of The9, Xiaowei Chen, to The9 employees apparently states that an unnamed domestic operator, who is already running a joint venture with Blizzard, has requested through Blizzard that The9 transfer WoW servers and hardware over to them at a reduced price of $22 million USD, for which The9 paid $73 million USD. An extra $1 million USD will be paid for the transfer of staff who work on WoW.
Rumours over who the unnamed company is all point to one place; NetEase. NetEase already works with Blizzard, last August it was announced that the company was to take over the operation of other Blizzard games in China including Warcraft III and Starcraft II.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced the opening of beta registrations for “World of Warcraft: The War Within,” inviting players to explore new subterranean worlds beneath Azeroth.
Danish from eXputer: "Despite Blizzard's attempt to give a fresh new spin to World of Warcraft, some fans still seem to be stuck in the past."
HG writes: "Blizzard is usually pretty bad at keeping secrets, but the company somehow managed to keep this one under wraps until now. Plunderstorm is a special limited-time event that’s basically World of Warcraft’s take on the Battle Royale genre."
Oh dear, goodbye The9!
Oh, this is big news actually. That makes sense with the new games they were making and such...
Wow, this is big. It was a matter of time. Specially with the9 pursuing to develop their own MMO in-house. And hosting Blizzard's competitors.
Sounds like this has probably been on the cards for a while.
The9 messed up on this one!