Sunday 3 May 2009

World of... Fight? / Warhammer: Age of... Fight?

Over on the Asian continent a major event happened with Blizzard stopping partnership with The9, its Chinese operators of Warcraft and moving it to someone else. By the looks of it, The9 aren't going down without a fight and could be trying to launch their own version of WoW with this recently launched website apparently promoting "World of Fight", which has a very familiar looking font *cough* Warcraft *cough*...


http://www.wofchina.com/


Now this is where it gets really interesting. Take a step back, re look at the picture in the background. Does it look familiar to anyone? Might do for say.. Chosen, Marauders, Zealots and Magi... Still unsure?


Co-incidence? Well WAR already has it's Chinese operators in GigaMedia, so we know it's nothing to do with a change of operators, but the second interesting part of this story comes now. Electronic Arts (Owner of Mythic Entertainment) actually own substantial shares in The9 apparently (couldn't find the exact details but you can see on the website they also operate Fifa Online (an EA license) ).

So what does this all mean? Possibly a bait and switch coming as the place holder website leads onto Warhammer Online China.. Possibly just art theft.. Maybe The9 will be ripping the WoW code, mixing it with Warhammer and making one hell of a mess?

Could be interesting to see what happens...