Despite having an audience here in China that makes up half of its international player base, Blizzard Inc. has had little luck getting its popular expansion of the World of Warcraft franchise onto Chinese shores... until now! That's right, Chinese WoW players, you can now FINALLY play the Wrath of the Lich King expansion - almost two years after it first came out everywhere else. The delays stem from the difficulty Chinese distributor Netease has had retaining operating rights to the massively popular online game. The company had previously gone to the Ministry of Culture for approval of the game, only to be slapped hard with a ban from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), the organization they apparently should have appealed to instead.

Unfortunately, the wait's not quite over. The company still needs to allow one week for the expansion's game number to be released and half a month for the operation permit from the Ministry of Culture (yep, they're not quite out of the equation yet) - which means that the earliest WoW players here can start leveling up to 80 and playing as Death Knights... or something... is August 18. The Great Firewall of China, the wide-ranging system of controls which the government uses to stop the spread of pornography and dissent online, has been effective in shutting down access to sites the government considers politically incorrect or smutty, and it has also stopped the video-sharing site YouTube, as well as Facebook and other online chat sites.