Posted by
Gamers, start saving now: China has opened a completely unauthorized Starcraft and World of Warcraft-ripping theme park. Intrepid reporters from Shanghaiist visited and came back with buku photos of the statues, signs, and rides.
Now, the rides are located within a larger theme park: World Joyland. “Terrain of Magic” (WoW world) and “Universe of Starship” (Starcraft land) are filled with huger-than-huge statues which seem pretty carefully created. Let’s voyeur!
Your wall of glass blocks is screaming to become a Tetris homage
A glass black partial wall becomes a eight foot tall video game art piece.
This is a completely unlicensed park and it still cost $30 million to build. Were Blizzard to bring it to your country, would you plan a trip?
Read the entire trip report from Shanghaiist and start planning your getaway to magical Joyland.
Oh yea, I would go just because its so over the top and I love themeparks.
Ha, I just heard a major ‘NICE’ from my husband (he loooves starcraft).
OMG, that’s so awesomesauce D:
I would totally go to a sanctioned Blizzard theme park, but I wouldn’t go one that was unauthorized like this one. I mean, why on earth didn’t blizzard stop them in advance?
My impression is that China is the wild west when it comes to this kind of thing. Copyright, patent infringements, all that. Here’s a New York Times bit about the World Trade Organization taking issue with China’s copyright enforcement.
I actually was reading about how China even has pirated Apple stores (link below) or I may have been surprised.
http://birdabroad.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/are-you-listening-steve-jobs/
It’s not like *China* does it – it’s particular Chinese *people*. I think that’s an important distinction…
and yet the government body of China doesn’t stop them. I think it’s fair to say “China” does it because of the inaction on behalf of the government. If we were saying “all those Chinese people steal ideas”, then I would totally call that out! It’s not as if China (the government body) doesn’t have enough resources to prevent this from happening. They’re the world’s current super power and are still running a pretty tight ship of control.
🙂
That particular shop is licensed to trade and sells genuine Apple products, so the authorities didn’t close it down. Several others have been closed down for being fake shops though.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14273444
Even I recognise a lot of that stuff as clearly WoW themed and I don’t even play (got as far as WC3 and lost interest). Even knowing what China is like when it comes to copyright I find it hard to believe they get away with things like this.
I have to admit as much as I know I shouldn’t if I was near by I’d want to go. I might not like WoW but Warcraft 2 is still my favourite RTS and I don’t think I could resist the temptation.
If it was liscenced then definately. Although I can’t help thinking it’d cost an arm and a leg to get in.
Just the other week my husband and I were talking about how cool it would be if there were a WoW resort sorta like Disneyland. I’d pay to spend a night in Ironforge and drink with ‘dwarves’. But I’m not sure I’d pay for the unlicensed version.
my FH is asleep so i just sent him this link for the morning and a message saying, “ive never *really* wanted to go to china before but now…. please honey?! please please please??” i <3 <3 <3 starcraft!