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WoW to Latin America

26th Mar 2008 10:55 PM GMT | Leord | 7 comments

WoW to Latin America

Blizzard are continuing to expand the localisation of WoW to more cultures and languages. Russian servers has been promised, and now also localisation for the Latin America. This is a press release from Blizzard:

Blizzard Quote: (Source)
IRVINE, Calif. – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning, subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is being prepared for release in Latin America. The Latin American localization will be based on the existing European Spanish version but will feature entirely re-recorded in-game speech. This new version of the game will be rolled out in select markets throughout Latin America starting in the first half of 2008 and will also be available to Spanish-speaking players in the US and Canada at that time.

A dedicated Spanish-speaking team is being assembled at the Blizzard Entertainment offices in Irvine, California and Austin, Texas to ensure that Spanish-speaking World of Warcraft players based in North and South America will receive high-quality 24/7 support in Spanish. Positions are currently open on the company's customer service, quality assurance, community relations, and web teams, and a new official website for the game's North and South America-based Spanish-speaking players is in development.

"Making World of Warcraft more accessible to gamers around the world has been a longstanding goal for us," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Spanish-speaking players on our North American realms have already shown a great deal of enthusiasm for the game, and we're pleased to be able to offer them a fully localized version."

Further details on pricing in local currencies for Latin American players, as well as country-specific availability, will be announced closer to release. Also closer to release, Blizzard will provide details on language-pack downloads and character-transfer options for existing Spanish-speaking players on the game's North American realms.

Since World of Warcraft launched in November 2004, it has quickly become the world's most popular MMORPG, with more than 10 million players worldwide. The game is currently available in English, French, German, Korean, European Spanish, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. In addition to the forthcoming Latin American Spanish version, a Russian version is in development for Europe.

To keep pace with the continued growth of World of Warcraft and development of other games, Blizzard Entertainment is currently hiring for numerous open positions. More information on available career opportunities at the company, including positions on the US-based Spanish team, can be found at www.blizzard.com/jobopp.



Comments

44 days ago
people have been asking for this ever since the EU spanish localisation was announced over a year ago, I guess they took so long because they were aware spanish speaking americans may open accounts in latin america and pay 1/3rd the subscription, maybe the dollar crash made any foreign currency exchange worthwhile, who knows.

Now if your localising for the diffrences in Spanish dialaect, how about an english localisation? You know, for the UK, Australia and the rest of the world that knows Armor is spelt Armour, Gray is Grey, Color is Colour, Defense is Defence etc

All words which can appear on your charachter sheet and are integral to the game mechanics :P
44 days ago
Y'all jus' need to learn 'ow t'spell.

44 days ago
good place to practice my spanish.
44 days ago
Keep in mind that folks in Brazil speak Portuguese as opposed to Spanish, and the latter is the most populated nation within Latin America. The rest does speak Spanish though. Although, I seem to recall a former colleague of mine, who is of Portuguese birth mention, that the folks from Latin America sound drastically different from the kinfolk he has in Spain and that trying to communicate with them, does present certain problems.

Do think it goes a bit beyond the accent/dialect issue found within the English speaking world. Though, I must point out that those with a heavy brogue can also be somewhat difficult to understand, especially if they're speaking rather swiftly.
44 days ago
hehe, over 500 accents and dialects in this country, I believe in america its only 1-200. Your right that the diffrence between the spanish speakers is more extreme, but its not quite at the Cantonese-Mandarin level (Both identical spelling and words but pronounced completley diffrent so as to be a un-intelligible seperate spoken language)
43 days ago
Well, I can see how it is in the best interest of Blizzard to actually do make an effort to cater to as many linguistic minorities (well, compared to English//Chinese, everyone is).

OTOH, I don't think a Swedish localization would be worth the effort. I have a hard time believing that would be popular among Swedish players, at all.
43 days ago
It would be popular for non swedes!
on joing a 5 man party:
Svensk???
Svensk???
Svensk???
Svensk???
Go play on your own servers, these are english!!!