World of Warcraft Seeks Reapproval in China Gov't Tangle reports the latest from China, where World of Warcraft has been bouncing around for a while in an attempt to clear local regulatory hurdles. If you think western bureaucracies can be impenetrable, try and make sense out of this: "The China operator of World of Warcraft, one of the world's biggest online games, said Sunday it will seek new government approval for the game, dragging it further into a turf war between two Chinese regulatory agencies. NetEase.com will apply to China's publishing regulator to release The Burning Crusade, an expansion pack for World of Warcraft, it said on the game's official Web site -- even though its players can already play the expansion. NetEase has been operating World of Warcraft with approval from China's culture ministry, but the ministry is locked in a dispute with the country's publishing regulator over who is entitled to regulate online games. The publishing agency has regulated online games in the past and ordered games it did not approve of to shut down."