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.

"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.

The LYN Lan Party 2005, of which SMM is a sponsor, is still ongoing at time of writing.

Watch this space, and the LYN forums, for more updates.

Source: GameAxis Unwired Malaysia

goodness graciious me!!
At last WoW in Asia!!!!

WAHAHAHA!!! Nice!! nice!!

.wow.a dream comes true.wow.

I guess they did mentioned cheaper, but I guess, it will still cost a bomb....

as they mentioned, higher than normal MMORPG... which i assume > RM38?

maybe around RM50,

btw when is Q3? around sept? cant wait to get my hands on it!!

Update: Payment should be in prepaid format, with optional credit card pyt.

nice, prepaid
how much will the prepaid costs?
just some prediction

RM50?

who want a CE?!..

Even if the monthly charges will be slightly cheaper, I'd rather stay on the US servers now.

Currently the players in the US servers are ALL a nice bunch. High level players helping out others at no cost and all in the name of good gaming. It's a nice environment overall.

I predict that when WoW comes to MY, it's gonna be Ragnarok Online all over again. Half baked players that are kiasu and only care for themselves, bias GM's, stupid names, completely broken english and absolutely no gaming ethics.

You know, the moment I read this, the only thing that came to mind was
KALI COMPTON!!!

But, I agree with you that most probably will happen if it was a Malaysian team behind it, but it isn't. According to the first post, its Singaporeans behind it and its gonna be for the whole of SEA, so corruption won't be that rampant... I hope.

Yea, it's a good thing the servers will be based in SG. But nonetheless, whole of SEA would mean a bucketload of shitty players that only care for themselves.

MY isn't the only country with dipshit players you know...

Thanks, Jenn.. for bringing this great news





i have to agree with Guardian here on this.. after my experiences on Shadowbane Asia, RO and RYL, the community we have in our region differs a lot from our 'western' counterparts. Sad to say, but it's true.. this region is still a bit immature on the MMORPG front.

Maybe World of Warcraft will change all that. Let's hope..

and i thought singaporeans are stingy?

how about

S>train newbies for (insert amount) of gold

agree
Bots, Bots, AND MORE BOTS!
Not to mention bots..
Ah well, if we land in WoW first, then we 0wn those bots
Can't wait till this game is out in SEA!!

Now this is (really) interesting news. Too bad it's only in Q3 though.

- Keimanan tercabar -

sheet
Q3 is a long time away

ahhh at last ... long waitin..... oh man... in asian we can always find unusefull people who use bot's, cheat, make business in game damm make money with game that's Far@!@#@#@ shit. hope this aint happen if it do happen so i can say ill stay where im playing. and hope no small kid playing with bad attitude.

Great news there! Finally SEA get the WoW treatment it deserves. But i do agree with Gurdian's statement. Let's just hope WoW changes the mindset of M'sian MMORPGers. The slightly higher price tag compared to other online games here should help decrease the population of immature school kids.