Back in April it was revealed that Chinese operator The9 lost its rights to distribute Blizzard's hugely popular World of Warcraft MMO in the region. The transition to new operator NetEase, however, has been painful because the servers have been down since early June, and there's no clear cut date for the game to "relaunch" in China just yet. An estimated 50% of WoW's nearly 12 million subscriber base is in China, so to say that the market is important would be a huge understatement.
There have been rumors this week that WoW would be shut down in China altogether due to China's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) investigating the joint venture between NetEase and Blizzard, but NetEase has already refuted this. IndustryGamers has contacted Blizzard for additional comment, and the company stressed to us that they're working hard on the transition and are "very far along."
