According to multiple sources, it seems The9, official publisher of World of Warcraft in China, has not been given the ok to release WoW's latest expansion "Wrath of the Lich King". Even with multiple changes including the removal of the well known Death Knight, the governing body which was in charge of assessing WLK still rejected the newest proposal. This latest denial was possibly due to additional content which was not removed, as quoted here,
"The applications were rejected due to content that didn't meet requirements, including a city raid and skeleton characters;"
Rumors detailing problems between The9 and Blizzard regarding contractual issues and a possible meeting between The9's President Chen Xiaowei and top executives at Electronic Arts to discuss Warhammer now seem to have greater validity; as with this latest delay and the supposed removal of a link which connected WoW's simplified Chinese website with the North American one it seems as there may indeed be a fracture in these two companies relations.
If The9 continues to bring forth proposals on Blizzards behalf, it will be interesting to see what other things Blizzard must delete from the official version to get approval, and how much of their IP they are willing to butcher to comply.
What do you think is acceptable for a company to do when appeasing the government of a country in which they desire to do business?
http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-03-11/20090311185015572.shtml
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