NetEase to make a mobile version of wow?

Community General Discussion
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  • NetEase’s Leihuo may pursue securing the IP rights for World of Warcraft in order to develop a new mobile version.

Saw this on mmo-champion and wondering what everyone thinks the chances are of this actually happening.

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Lol yea, right. They would literally have to buy out Blizzard from Microsoft.

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I dont think they mean buying out the WoW IP outright, but more like licensing like they did with diablo immortal.

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Since when did China care about IP rights?

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I honestly don’t think this would ever happen. Blizzard still catches flack for Diablo Immortal. I don’t think they want to tank another IP.

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I could imagine them licensing WoW with the right agreement but they won’t develop a mobile app for it. They’ll only offer it as a desktop app

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Any chance it might be a garbled translation of talking about securing the rights to distribute Rumble?

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Now THAT might make sense. I don’t see them licensing all of WoW to NetEase in a way that gives NetEase any control. Esp given how badly negotiations on the contract to distribute it went in 2022/2023. NetEase was really angry that Blizz would not renew and their exclusive distribution (and cut) of WoW and all other Blizzard games* was ended.

Has there been any movement on a new contract with a China based and govt approved distributor in China for Blizz games again? Something Microsoft wants to do? I was not following so am a bit behind on any updates since the MS sale finalized.

*The exception being Diablo Immortal which was developed with NetEase and on a separate contract.

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Please look up

Crusaders of light, mobile game release in 2016. netease produced with some help from a blizzard team (not sure which department)

Either way they were able to have 40 player raids run smooth, dungeons questing open world and some PvP that came later with arena modes and better BGs. The tech is there and the know how - only problem was the obvious gatcha that would come with the game and eventually led to new classes being super OP. Time to spend more cash for skips

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Did you’ll forget about Tarisland :dracthyr_hehe_animated:

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By pursue securing the rights you mean steal wows intellectual property as China always does?

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Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal surpasses the $300 million revenue mark in global earnings, despite controversy over the game’s monetization.
This was in Nov of 2022.
So between all the lawsuits, the poor PR, the abandoning of customer service, and millions believing that Blizzard games are the best game in the world while buying every product from them. Pretty sure Blizzard doesn’t care about “people’s flak”.

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That’s a fair take. But the thing is, ‘people’s flak’ can go a long way if ignored for too long. Eventually those numbers drop. Eventually people leave IPs and move on to other games. Ignoring your playerbase to cater to a few whales will only get you so far. Time will tell if Blizzard has learned this lesson.

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Hope not.

Dealing with China is starting to be like dealing with Vader in Empire Strikes Back, pray they don’t alter the deal further.

And giving a CCP controlled company the blue prints on how their entire system is laid out as well as inside connections to the company seems like a security risk.