Well, guess it's time for me to exercise some blogger's rights.

I am a wow noob, never reached level 60. I have an account in US realm and one in mainland China, I'm not a farmer :)

I'm not sure what blizzard did to explore the Chinese market, but it seems that blizzard delegate the entire game from distribution to website / forums, financing and service managing to a Chinese company called the 9th city or something. It's one of the largest online game distributer and service provider in China, focus mainly on MMORPG, from US, Asia and some local companies.

WoW does not have a subscription plan as it does in US, gamers buy time to play.

So what's it like? From a service point of view, it's a nightmare.

Imagine an online game where you are still in "word prison". (I don't know how to translate that, an expression from ancient China, Qin dynasty in particular, when the King burned all the books, killed all the elites and made a law that forbid sensitive topics to be spoken, studied or shared). It's ironic that students are still learning that part of history, while the current political atmosphere is no better.

Anyway, you are not free to speak many many words, as they will show as line noise, and this feature can't be turned off. For example, the word "network operator", names of current political leaders, Mao, Tibet, the communist party, porn stars... Sometimes quest info don't even make sense because the filter makes too many ***s in the text.

Well that's a bit exaggerating, but you get the idea.

There are still quite a lot wow players, since people still get bored. I won't praise blizzard for what they did to enter Chinese market, since their game has been ruined and they know it.