Logos of NetEase and Blizzard Photo: VCG

At the just-ended ChinaJoy 2024 in Shanghai, the US giant Blizzard Entertainment appeared together with its Chinese partner NetEase to bring a series of Blizzard games back to the Chinese mainland after a 500 plus-day "breakup," including the highly anticipated World of Warcraft (WoW).

Blizzard and its WoW team are "very joyful and excited to come back," said Ion Hazzikostas, senior game director of WoW, during his stay in Shanghai for ChinaJoy. "Now our main focus is earning back the trust of Chinese mainland players," Hazzikostas told the Global Times on Saturday.

Chinese players are perhaps the most passionate in the world, said Hazzikostas, who shared that over 2 million players in the Chinese mainland pre-registered within a day back in April, after NetEase announced a renewal of their partnership at that time. 

"We've been humbled time and time again by seeing their excitement and enthusiasm about the game, and by the second chance they give us here today," he said.

As scheduled, the official Chinese mainland server of WoW will return and go online on Thursday, while the game's new expansion pack will be released globally on August 27, including in the Chinese mainland. The WoW team prepared some rewards for exclusively Chinese mainland server players, according to Hazzikostas.  

In fact, the "breakup" has kept both Blizzard and Chinese players waiting for too long. Blizzard and NetEase's "breakup" began in late 2022 when their licensing agreement ended. After over 500 days without Blizzard games in the Chinese mainland, they recently announced a renewed distribution agreement, restoring their long-standing partnership.

Holly Langdale, executive producer of WoW, expressed at a press conference that when Blizzard left the Chinese mainland, they were very sad. She also noted that Blizzard was deeply moved by the reaction of the Chinese community, and they saw the players were very sad as well. 

2024 marks the 20th anniversary of WoW. How to win the long-term love of players and adapt to the Chinese market is a challenge Blizzard needs to face.

In this return, Blizzard set up experience areas for their games, as well as eSports competition areas at their ChinaJoy booth. 

"Esports culture is diverse and vibrant; it is not just an extension of gaming but an important platform for young people to express themselves and exchange ideas, playing a significant role in cultural exchange," Mario Ho, from the controlling shareholder of China's biggest esports organization NIP Group, told the Global Times.

Ho said that Esports focuses on uniting people from diverse cultural backgrounds, fostering friendships and excitement through shared experiences, and experiencing the power of unity in intense competition. 

This is particularly true with games like World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. These games not only bridge cultural gaps but also create communities where players from different regions come together, collaborate, and compete.

In Hearthstone, international competitions highlight the game's ability to bring together players from different cultural backgrounds. These global tournaments showcase the strategic depth and excitement of the game, as players from various regions face off, demonstrating not only their skill but also the unifying power of esports.

In fact, with the rise of Chinese games, the dialogue between foreign games and domestic games further reflects cultural exchanges in an international context.

Today, China's domestic games are making breakthroughs with new technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital-physical integration, achieving advances in voice and art generation, motion capture, and model creation.

In June, the domestic game Black Myth: Wukong topped the weekly sales chart on the global video game distribution platform Steam. 

Similarly, a Three Kingdoms game called Ashes of the Kingdom has become popular in Southeast Asian countries, with young local people eagerly downloading this Chinese historical-themed game. Other examples of domestic games going global are numerous.

"Foreign games coming in and domestic games going out will be a consistent trend in the future. The Chinese voice in games is increasingly gaining international discourse power," a game player posted on social media.