Almost storming ‘The Gate of Ahn’Qiraj’

Imagine you and 500 members of your alliance have just spent 4 and a half hours organizing yourselves, going on the long journey to the Gate of Ahn’Qiraj in World of Warcraft (WoW), and undertaking a quest.  Just before you kill the final boss and get the loot, you’re all disconnected from the server.

Frustrated?  If you’re Chinese, you send off an email to the game operator AND to the Chinese Consumer Association AND you threaten a mass protest on March 15–Chinese Consumer Day, according to a recent Interfax China article.  And people listen, because MMORPGs (massively multi-player online role-playing games) are big business and mainstream entertainment in China. WoW is one of the biggest–Interfax reports approx. 530,000 peak and 270,000 average concurrent players in Q4 2005.