Is Asia-Inspired WoW Expansion Mists of Pandaria Coming Soon to China?

According to an official Netease announcment, China’s World of Warcraft servers are rolling out a new patch right now. That wouldn’t be big news, but many Chinese players believe this will be the last patch before Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard’s China-inspired WoW expansion, is officially released in China. Based on previous patch and expansion releases as well as some rumored September ad buys, some are saying that the expansion could be released here within the next couple months, possibly even this month.

The expansion will see its official worldwide release on September 25, but generally speaking, “worldwide” doesn’t include China. Chinese players are usually forced to suffer long waits between a WoW expansion’s official release and its China debut, so even a delay of a month or two would seem particularly reasonable at this point. But some gamers are seeing this most recent patch rollout as an indication that Mists of Pandaria might come out for China the same time it comes out for everyone else. That would be unprecedented, but it would also be a smart move for Netease and for Blizzard, who is quite obviously targeting the China market with this expansion.

The prediction that the game could see a Chinese release sooner than later is based primarily on Netease’s past history of patch releases and unconfirmed rumors the company has purchased ads in September. It all seems a bit speculative to me, so if I were a Chinese WoW fan, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on September 25. But it’s worth noting that previous expansions have been delayed so they can go undergo content censorship for “objectionable” features like skeletons. Mists of Pandaria, from what I’ve seen of it, doesn’t seem to feature any gore or monsters, so it is possible this expansion was able to sail through a quick inspection and really will be ready for release in China later this month.

[via QQ Games]