World Of Warcraft: WoW Goes Russian

The phenomenon that is World of Warcraft is poised to conquer yet another international territory in 2008: Russia. According to this press release the members of the WoW Europe offices are busy assembling a Russian-speaking team to support their latest localization.

Release is planned for sometime in 2008 and there's no word whether or not they'll get The Burning Crusade right away, but since it seems Blizzard will be directly handling the port (rather than having an outside company do it like with the Chinese version) there may be a smaller gap in getting things rolling.

PARIS, France -- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning, subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is to be fully localised in Russian for release in 2008. The Russian version will be the fifth officially supported European language, complementing the existing English, French, German and Spanish versions.

A dedicated Russian-speaking team is currently being assembled at the Blizzard Europe offices in France and Ireland to ensure Russian World of Warcraft players will benefit from the same quality of 24/7 native-language support as other European players. Roles will include in-game support, offline technical and customer support, localisation and quality assurance, community relations, and creation and maintenance of a new official Russian World of Warcraft website.

"Considering the scale and enthusiasm of the Russian community, we recognized that offering a dedicated Russian-language version of World of Warcraft was the next important step for the game in Europe," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We're looking forward to providing an even more accessible gameplay experience to current and future players."

Further details on language pack downloads and migration plans for existing Russian players will be available closer to the release. To keep pace with the multi-lingual European growth of World of Warcraft and development of other games, Blizzard is currently hiring for numerous open positions. More information on available career opportunities at Blizzard Europe, including positions on the Russian team, can be found at http://www.blizzard.co.uk/jobopp.