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- 30/8/04
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Blizzard's World of Warcraft (WoW) Multiplayer Massively Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) will see its official launch in Malaysia, Singapore and a host of other Southeast Asian countries come Q3 of this year.
A runaway success since its US launch November 2004, WoW sold over 240,000 copies within 24 hours on the day it was released, and hit 200,000 concurrent players over the holiday season.
Last month, Blizzard announced that WoW raked in sales of 600,000 units across North America, Australia, and New Zealand during the same period.
WoW is believed to be the first AAA MMORPG from the US to be officially launched in Malaysia.
read inside for more info.
"We are working with iGamesAsia Pte Ltd of Singapore to bring in and operate WoW in Southeast Asia," said Ricky Lim, President and CEO of Sendi Mutiara Multimedia Sdn Bhd (SMM), which is the exclusive distributor of Vivendi Universal's bestselling titles such as Diablo, Warcraft III, Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike in Malaysia.
Lim was speaking at the Lowyat.net LAN Party 2005 at Inferno Cyber cafe in Subang Jaya today, which saw over 100 participants who brought in some 70 modded PCs to compete in a PC modding competition, which ran alongside a games tournament.
With servers hosted in Singapore, WoW SEA will be marketed to SEA countries including Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Thailand. According to Lim, investment in this venture, which includes the licence to operate the title's servers, as well as hardware, bandwidth and hosting costs, will run into 'millions of ringgit', although the exact figures were not divulged.
WoW's introduction to the SEA market will come after similar launches in other regions starting with Korea, Europe and then China.
Already seeing a larger-than-usual following of Malaysian players on Blizzard's American servers, selling WoW to local gamers, according to Lim, will not be a problem. How will SMM entice these existing players to relocate their accounts to the local server?
"What Blizzard has mentioned is that for its European launch, European players already playing in American servers can opt to jump to the European servers," says an SMM spokesperson for WoW, IT Systems Manager Chuah Seong Chin. However, the mechanics of how this will be done have not been confirmed.
Chuah also mentioned that the pricing structure for SEA may be different from what is being offered in the US.
"Pricing may be cheaper (than the US rate) but it will be higher (compared to other online games available in Malaysia) because WoW is a premium title," adds Chuah. This, says Chuah, will ensure that a fair amount of Malaysian gamers will want to play in the SEA servers instead of sticking with the US servers. Latency issues will also be a factor in bringing Southeast Asian gamers home to the local version.
Lim ensures that there will be no difference in content when the title arrives in Q3.
Source: GameAxis Unwired Malaysia
Note:
This was an article from "GameAxis Unwired Malaysia", a magazine publication date-issue January 2005.
Reposted here for your information but does not mean to be real or legit or official statement from Blizzard and Vivendi Universal Games.
A runaway success since its US launch November 2004, WoW sold over 240,000 copies within 24 hours on the day it was released, and hit 200,000 concurrent players over the holiday season.
Last month, Blizzard announced that WoW raked in sales of 600,000 units across North America, Australia, and New Zealand during the same period.
WoW is believed to be the first AAA MMORPG from the US to be officially launched in Malaysia.
read inside for more info.
"We are working with iGamesAsia Pte Ltd of Singapore to bring in and operate WoW in Southeast Asia," said Ricky Lim, President and CEO of Sendi Mutiara Multimedia Sdn Bhd (SMM), which is the exclusive distributor of Vivendi Universal's bestselling titles such as Diablo, Warcraft III, Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike in Malaysia.
Lim was speaking at the Lowyat.net LAN Party 2005 at Inferno Cyber cafe in Subang Jaya today, which saw over 100 participants who brought in some 70 modded PCs to compete in a PC modding competition, which ran alongside a games tournament.
With servers hosted in Singapore, WoW SEA will be marketed to SEA countries including Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Thailand. According to Lim, investment in this venture, which includes the licence to operate the title's servers, as well as hardware, bandwidth and hosting costs, will run into 'millions of ringgit', although the exact figures were not divulged.
WoW's introduction to the SEA market will come after similar launches in other regions starting with Korea, Europe and then China.
Already seeing a larger-than-usual following of Malaysian players on Blizzard's American servers, selling WoW to local gamers, according to Lim, will not be a problem. How will SMM entice these existing players to relocate their accounts to the local server?
"What Blizzard has mentioned is that for its European launch, European players already playing in American servers can opt to jump to the European servers," says an SMM spokesperson for WoW, IT Systems Manager Chuah Seong Chin. However, the mechanics of how this will be done have not been confirmed.
Chuah also mentioned that the pricing structure for SEA may be different from what is being offered in the US.
"Pricing may be cheaper (than the US rate) but it will be higher (compared to other online games available in Malaysia) because WoW is a premium title," adds Chuah. This, says Chuah, will ensure that a fair amount of Malaysian gamers will want to play in the SEA servers instead of sticking with the US servers. Latency issues will also be a factor in bringing Southeast Asian gamers home to the local version.
Lim ensures that there will be no difference in content when the title arrives in Q3.
Source: GameAxis Unwired Malaysia
Note:
This was an article from "GameAxis Unwired Malaysia", a magazine publication date-issue January 2005.
Reposted here for your information but does not mean to be real or legit or official statement from Blizzard and Vivendi Universal Games.
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