I never really knew this, but it seems that the main (and biggest) population for retail WoW is China/Asia.
It makes sense too, judging by all of the things Blizzard have catered towards them (MoP/Pandas) and hidden skulls/skeletons, and how they’re extremely protective over China’s politics.
Hmmm, quite interesting, isn’t it?
My main question here is; Do you think Blizzard/Activision have sold off to Chinese-backed corporations, hence why the direct of the game dramatically changed after Cata?
Ehh pandas have being in w3 as eastern eggs then as a serious addition in w3 ft with chen. Either way samwise didier blizzards art director like drawing pandas and thats how they got in the warcraft universe.
Can’t see it as pandering to the chinese, but rather a good excuse to expand wow lores
Yeah it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more players, but as stated above they have a different payment model over there. I would very much doubt they make more money for Blizz than the Western subscription based model (plus in game purchases).
Really? there’s a lot of Chinese players, so I am leaning more towards believing that Chinese WoW makes more $ than western WoW… don’t they have micro-transactions galore there too? and F2P version of WoW, I don’t know though!
issuing a 1 out of 8 expansions where we get to play as a furry spheres of love isnt really a sick catering tbh…
when was the last time we get to see panda do anything meaningful to story?
by your logic the main clientele of WoW are orcs, casue just look at all of the recent cinematics
It’s really less than 10%. All East Asia is 12%, and Korea and Japan are also part of that, and even though Japan isn’t such a big market for them, Korea definitely is.
From what I remember for a long time the basic makeup of the WoW populance was a third in Europe, a third in the US and a third in China, with the first two paying substantially more than the last one.
There have been hickups (during Wrath WoW was banned for a time for example, and a long time WoW China had Servers that were an Expansion behind to ours; won’t comment on MoP as it might ruffle some feathers )but apparently the main money is still outside China for the most part, though not sure wether Vox ‘News’ 13% revenue from China is accurate (seems awfully low).
Add to this that there have been numerous IP breaches from China (the WoW Theme Park for example, and iirc that moba that used skins ‘inspired’ by Blizz characters a few years back) and in general the whole ‘let’s invest, that way they’ll become more democratic!’ line that was touted for years having by politico’s and their cronies being…rather too optimistic (to put it lightly; note that selling prisoner organs goes back to at least the nineties) I think that there is more than enough reason to reconsider wether China is worth investing if it isn’t following the WTO rules and somehow counts as a ‘developing country’ despite having an increasing amount of monopoly positions.
But to reiterate: I think it would be better to look at what parts of the Blizzard fanbase actually bring in the bacon than get all jittery about ‘China’s potential’ and toss the last shred of ‘tegridy’ away.
Ugh, still seeing the MoP Launch in China pics, with the CCP boothbunny brigade and such.
I don’t see how Pandas come into this, they’ve been there since vanilla ( look for Chens keg ), plus different parts are inspired by different real parts of the world, Pandaria is obviously Asia, Northrend the nordic countries, Uldum Egypt, Gilneas Victorian England, Starnglethorn the amazon or any jungle really, of course a lot of other cultures are mixed in, like the Night elves have whisps which is scottish mythology, clothing named Hanbok which is korean(sold in moonglade), so yeah…And loads of games have their biggest audience in China so, no point proven.
And it changed after Cata cause Activision got involved then if I’m correct.
)but apparently the main money is still outside China for the most part, though not sure wether Vox ‘News’ 13% revenue from China is accurate (seems awfully low).