CEO of NetEase.com William Ding and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment Mike Morhaime have jointly issued a public letter to the Chinese users of Blizzard Entertainment's online game World of Warcraft, saying that the game's new operator in Chinese mainland, NetEase.com, will open the first batch of its servers in late June 2009 and the remaining servers will all be opened in the subsequent weeks.

The public letter shows that NetEase.com and Blizzard Entertainment have decided to give a certain period of playing time for free to World of Warcraft's users who created their accounts before 23:59 on May 27, 2009, except for accounts that have been terminated. The compensated period will be determined by how long the server closure lasts.

NetEase.com emphasizes in the letter that the setting up of the system of World of Warcraft is a complicated project, including hardware installation in different areas of China, testing, and transfer and management of mass data. Engineers from NetEase.com and Blizzard Entertainment are working day and night to make sure that everything will be smooth.

In addition, the former mainland operator of World of Warcraft, The9, has confirmed that it will terminate its operation of World of Warcraft from June 7, 2009. At the same time, the company will refund the balance in the accounts of users, and for users who had booked the sixth batch of security tokens of World of Warcraft and did not receive the goods, The9 will return the money to them.