Recently, a Redditor by the name of u/tanyu1993 took to social media to call on Blizzard and the World of Warcraft community to help save the MMORPG title in China.
For those who may not know, World of Warcraft – like many games – is drastically different in China than they are in the rest of the world. This is often due to government regulations and censorship, as well as laws that require developers to use a Chinese business partner.
Because of this, the title isn’t handled or managed by Blizzard as it is in other parts of the world. instead, a company called NetEase runs the title almost from the top down, which can have some strikingly negative consequences.
In their recent post, u/tanyu1993 discussed a massive issue with the hyper-focus of RMT (real money transactions) and advertisements that take place on the Chinese servers. The user included screenshots, gifs, and translated images in their extremely thorough post.
“The gaming environment of WoW Chinese Realm has been deeply damaged in the past years,” Tanyu writes. “NetEase, the operator of WoW in China, is conniving, cheating, botting, RMT, and intrusive advertisement of the boosting service sellers. We cannot enjoy the game in peace anymore, and many of us are being forced to AFK.”
With the images provided, the severity of the issue is impossible to ignore. One screenshot shows the premade party finder tool filled solely with botting companies selling runs through endgame content at the price of 40 CNY or some other similar title.
Moreover, if the ruining of the premade party tool wasn’t enough, players can’t even solo content in peace. Tanyu provides multiple screenshots of whispers from bots spamming players with constant advertisements.
This forces players to shut off their chat to have even a semblance of hope to play without being bothered and spammed to. Of course, that would be acceptable if it had to be, but shutting off chat doesn’t fix the issue.
In an included gif, Tanyu showed the state of areas where bots farm, which happens to take up important areas for players to complete endgame content such as Mechagon rares and the like. Here, bots spam every possible ability to take the kill, rendering the area completely uninhabitable by human players.
So far, Blizzard hasn’t responded – and again, Blizzard isn’t even in control here. Unfortunately, while we can obviously give the problem our much-needed attention and hope to move from there, there is little that an average fan or player can do to stop this current issue.
