{"id":78128,"date":"2010-08-10T15:46:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T19:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/china-finally-gives-the-lich-king-the-thumbs-up\/"},"modified":"2010-08-10T15:46:08","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T19:46:08","slug":"china-finally-gives-the-lich-king-the-thumbs-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/china-finally-gives-the-lich-king-the-thumbs-up\/","title":{"rendered":"China Finally Gives the Lich King the Thumbs-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"v1PageContent\"> <div class=\"inline_right\" style=\"float: right\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.themis-media.com\/media\/global\/images\/galleries\/display\/58\/58966.jpg?resize=350%2C263\" alt=\"image\" width=\"350\" height=\"263\" border=\"0\"\/><\/div> <p><strong>As the rest of the world of <em>Warcraft<\/em> prepares for the <em>Cataclysm<\/em>, Chinese officials have finally approved <em>Wrath of the Lich King<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p> <p>The second expansion to Blizzard&#8217;s mega-MMOG <em>World of Warcraft<\/em> has been out for close to two years at this point, but the journey has been rougher for some players than others &#8211; particularly those in China. Last year, the Chinese government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/90087-China-Blocks-WoW-Lich-King-Release\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">blocked the release<\/a> of <em>Wrath of the Lich King<\/em>, and rumors abounded about a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/93231-Is-World-of-Warcraft-Facing-a-Ban-in-China-UPDATED\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">potential ban on the game<\/a> entirely. The game was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/93334-WoW-to-Partially-Relaunch-in-China\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">finally allowed to relaunch<\/a> last July, but was kept in a hamstrung beta-esque state.<\/p> <p>Of course, none of that stopped the most hardcore <em>WoW<\/em> players, who simply rolled characters on Taiwanese servers &#8211; and would go on to chalk up some world-first raid boss kills. <\/p> <p>Now, China&#8217;s Ministry of Culture (MoC) has finally given its <a href=\"http:\/\/translate.google.com\/translate?js=y&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;layout=1&amp;eotf=1&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fccnt.cstc.org.cn%2Fgamepage.do%3Fgamesign%3Dgameallnumber&amp;sl=zh-CN&amp;tl=en\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">full and official approval<\/a> for Blizzard and its local partner NetEase to wholly resume operations, following a thumbs-up from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) last month. The conflict between these two entities had been at the core of the delay: Blizzard found <em>Lich King<\/em> embroiled in in-fighting between the MoC and the GAPP regarding which of them had the authority to give foreign games the go-ahead.<\/p> <p>Congratulations to the Chinese government for catching up on PC gaming with the rest of the world. May I suggest you get a head start on approving <em>Cataclysm<\/em> this time around?<\/p> <p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/gamepolitics.com\/2010\/08\/10\/china-lich-king-approved-ea-mulling-investment\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GamePolitics<\/a>)<\/p> <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":968690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"article_type":"","gamurs_wordpress_blocks_hide_tags":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7798],"tags":[],"internal-label":[],"invoiceable_action":[],"article_type":[],"coauthors":[{"id":317,"display_name":"John Funk Legacy Author","user_login":"JohnFunk","user_nicename":"johnfunk"}],"class_list":["post-78128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.2 (Yoast SEO v22.7) - 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The second expansion to Blizzard's mega-MMOG World of Warcraft has been out for close to two years at this point, but the journey has been rougher for some players than others - particularly those in China. Last year, the Chinese government blocked the release of Wrath of the Lich King, and rumors abounded about a potential ban on the game entirely. The game was finally allowed to relaunch last July, but was kept in a hamstrung beta-esque state. Of course, none of that stopped the most hardcore WoW players, who simply rolled characters on Taiwanese servers - and would go on to chalk up some world-first raid boss kills. Now, China's Ministry of Culture (MoC) has finally given its full and official approval for Blizzard and its local partner NetEase to wholly resume operations, following a thumbs-up from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) last month. The conflict between these two entities had been at the core of the delay: Blizzard found Lich King embroiled in in-fighting between the MoC and the GAPP regarding which of them had the authority to give foreign games the go-ahead. Congratulations to the Chinese government for catching up on PC gaming with the rest of the world. May I suggest you get a head start on approving Cataclysm this time around? (GamePolitics)","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/escapist-header-logo.png?fit=1200%2C675","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/968690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78128"},{"taxonomy":"internal-label","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal-label?post=78128"},{"taxonomy":"invoiceable_action","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/invoiceable_action?post=78128"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=78128"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=78128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}