Slashdot Mirror
How World of Warcraft Operates In China
Danny writes "Gaming Steve has taken a detailed look at a little known aspect of the online gaming world -- how World of Warcraft and MMORPGs in general function in Communist China. Topics covered include the WOW China financial arrangement, censorship of WOW and other MMORPGs in general, different methods of payment for Chinese customers, and even how SARS affected online play." From the article: "Although private sector Internet service providers currently exist in China, almost all access to the Internet is maintained through stateowned telecommunication operators under the administrative control and regulatory supervision of China's Ministry of Information Industry. In addition, the national networks in China connect to the Internet through government controlled international gateways. These government controlled international gateways are the only channel through which a domestic Chinese user can connect to the international Internet network."
So China never saw release of The Frozen Throne? Sounds a bit fishy to me.
It's not just the Chinese servers that are region limited. I'm pretty sure you need a local CD key to play on the European or Korean servers as well. However, the list of servers you see is literally just a text file sitting on your hard drive. So realistically you can connect to any WoW server you want (including the illegal emulated ones), but I'd be surprised if a European WoW server accepted your US login credentials (or vice-versa). YMMV.
I think the segregation of servers is more for cultural and language reasons than anything technical. Managing a 40-man MC raid (or even just partying with 5 people for the Deadmines) would be pretty difficult if only half the players spoke English!