November 8th, 2008
Playing Warcraft in Taiwan - 17
Summary
- Play World of Warcraft in English on the Taiwan server
- Read (Write) Chinese characters
- Ping times < 50ms if you are playing in Taiwan
Last week I finally managed to download the US version of World of Warcraft with a 10 day trial account (I must have been about the last person in the world) and got myself into some skirmishes with my new warrior alter ego. When the 10 days were over and I was having fun, I didn’t mind paying for it.
From Taiwan to the US the ping times aren’t great (>400ms) , but the game is pretty addictive.
So when Blizzard didn’t accept my credit card, that kind of well,.. made me delete the whole thing and had me sign up for a rehab clinic instead. This being Taiwan, rehab is frowned upon — so I figured there had to be “another way”.
I can forget about playing the game in Chinese — I can bubble a nice conversation, but having to read pages of quests — well lets not go there.
It IS however possible to use the English client, and login to the Taiwanese server instead. If that is what you are interested in , follow the steps below. This is current as of Nov-2008.
Step 1. Download World of Warcraft (English)
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/wowclient-download.html
- Reserve a day for this — after downloading 3.5Gb of game it will start patching from version 2.4 all the way until 3.02 (or whatever is current).
- Make sure you have opened ports 3724 and 6112 in your firewall.
Step 2. Sign up for a free trial account in Taiwan
Then click the button conveniently labeled [Trail Account] in the main menu.
Applying for a WOW account in Taiwan
Click on the picture to see the full sized version. You need to enter:
- Skip this field — this is a CD key, which you don’t have — its optional
- Your new WOW username (a-z), so fill in “jaapaap” or whatever makes you happy
- Your password
- Again your password
- Your full name “Jaap Aap”
- Your e-mail account (jaap_aap@gmail.com)
- The “I am not a robot” security code
Step 3 Modify the client to login to the Taiwan server
On your hard disk find the following file:
c:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Data\enUS\realmlist.wtf
Then change the contents to:
set realmlist tw.logon.worldofwarcraft.com
set patchlist us.version.worldofwarcraft.com
set portal tw
This same information is also stored in another file (c:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\config.wtf) but as of v3.0 the above file overrides any realm settings in here.
Make sure you leave the “set patchlist” pointing to the US server — the Taiwanese server is unable to upgrade the English version you are using !
Step 4 Try logging in
The game should now work — just login. The GUI and all the quests are in English. There is however one remaining drawback, the game shows a “?” whenever it encounters a Chinese character (chat, player names).
Step 5 Adding Chinese fonts
- Download the following fonts file: fonts.rar (source: Wow in Chinese)
- Create a directory: c:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Fonts
- Unrar the file and copy the downloaded font files into this directory.
Start Warcraft — it should now use Chinese fonts everywhere in game. If you configured XP to type in Chinese that should now also work.
Step 6 – Upgrading your account
Just walk to the nearest 7-11 and ask for a World of Warcraft time card. They come in NT$ 150 time cards and NT$ 450 unlimited monthly play kinds. You then need to go back to the World of Warcraft (www.wowtaiwan.com.tw) to upgrade your account.
It should be possible to buy time codes online — but I haven’t tried that yet.
Step 7 – Bonus: Do all the above under Linux
If you would like to do this all under Linux (which I did) it is actually just as simple as installing under Windows XP. Download the installer, and run it from Wine.
The only problem is that DirectX support isn’t great (with some fiddling it works for me, but the framerate is less than 15). OpenGL is however not a problem, and my aging NVidia 7600GS manages a framerate of about 60.
wine launcher.exe -opengl
Tags: chinese, taiwan, world of warcraft
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
November 20th, 2008 at 8:20 am
[...] I had mostly overlooked the Lich King upgrade until I tried to enter the game tonight. My English version of Word of Warcraft, playing on the Taiwan server cheerfully reported that my account had been upgraded for Lich King but that it couldn’t find [...]
January 13th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Thanks a lot for the info! I am going to try and get this booted up tonight. Do you know any good servers that have any English guilds, or at least a lot of English players?
January 14th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Hi Nathan,
I wander around various parts of 天空之牆, but that is a PvE server and I still have to meet the first English speaker there.
Cheers,
Martijn
(the full list: http://www.wowtaiwan.com.tw/index/realmstatus.asp)
March 12th, 2009 at 3:30 am
Do you actually need a CD key in addition to the monthly subscription fee to play on Taiwan servers?
March 12th, 2009 at 10:12 am
No, just downloading the game is sufficient to play. You do not need a CD-Key.
You can pay your way by buying time cards from the local 7-11 store. NT$ 450 for a month unlimited, or NT$ 150 if you just want to buy several hours.
As soon as your trial expires you need to register a telephone number. You will need to call their 0800 number to unlock your account every time you want to log in.
[Edit] You don’t need a telephone number. After having upgraded the account, just don’t go into the telephone lock section. If your Chinese isn’t great, cutting and pasting things into Google Translate does wonders[/edit]
April 7th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
anyone interested to move/transfer or even re-rolled your toon to realm: 暗影之月 PVE? Currently I am having a alliance 70 paladin there. I really would LOVE to create a english speaking guild. gathering all into one place under WoTLK
April 15th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Hey Martin,
first off I wanna say thanks for the info you posted! I was able to enjoy the US client on the TW realms without any problems for months, after originally trying the TW client and deciding my Chinese is not yet good enough.
Yesterday I patched to 3.1 and now every time I wanna log in to the game it says “Unable to validate game version”. Looking at wowtaiwan it says all realms are online. I also ran the repair utility without success.
I am on 奧妮克希亞 btw, have not met any foreigners there but some Taiwanese and Chinese in my guild speak English.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Sorry for misspelling your name there.
Seems like the TW servers are still on 3.0.9 hence you cannot log in with a 3.1 client…at least that is my guess.
April 18th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Hi Stefan,
The trick is to start Warcraft directly from wow.exe instead of going through the laucher. This way you don’t get locked out if the US servers are updated first (usually 1-2 days before the Taiwan servers). If your copy is out of date it will refuse to login anyway, then its time to fire up the launcher and download the patches.
Cheers,
Martijn
May 1st, 2009 at 1:00 am
Thanks for the info. I play extensively on Oceanic realms and want to switch over for a bit of playing on TW servers. Do they have anything like the Refer A Friend that the US servers have?
That would be great
September 7th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Really Thanks for the info my ms to the eu and usa servers are high and really wanted to see how it is in the tiwan version but couldnt because of the language am sure it will be easier now
best regards .
September 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
This guide is pretty old. Does anyone know if you can still do this as of patch 3.2.0?
I’ve been playing WoW on US servers for abot 2 years now but for the past 8 months I’ve been living in Beijing. The lag has to be better in Taiwan I would think. I’m just a little confused about the how to create a trial account, it doesn’t seem to give that option anymore.
Anyhow with some help if I can log in I’d love to join someones english speaking guild!
Thanks
October 5th, 2009 at 1:45 am
i want to play with a taiwanese client on eu server, would that be possible?.. just want everything written in that language
November 9th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Thanks for the information. I am also interested in trying the client from Taiwan on an european server. It would make sense to have the Taiwanese version here just because of the language issue with my cousin. I will have to look further and perhaps satisfy this kids Warcraft additiction. Lol.
December 17th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
hey i was wondering if the taiwan time card works on the wow US servers? cause im stuck in hong kong right now and all that is available to me is the tw time cards.
December 30th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
any english speaking playing on a taiwanese server?
January 8th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
i am currently playing taiwanese server wow in 奈辛瓦里(PVP) and i would like to realm transfer to somewhere there are more english players. I speak chinese, but i dont type fast, so it would be more fun for me to play with english speakers. could anyone recommend a server?