Although the financial results came out higher than expectation, the share price of Netease plummeted in the last two days of last week. On last Thursday, Netease shares were down 10.31%. On Friday, it continued to fall by 0.81%. In the meantime, World of Warcraft (WOW), the online game expected to contribute greatly to Netease revenue, is still hopelessly waiting for the government approval. Last week, Netease released the second quarter result that shows a total revenue of $127.7 million. The figure is higher than last year and exceeds analysts’ estimates. From any angle, this is supposed to be a good financial result. However, Wallace Cheung, the Credit Suisse analyst, pointed out that the revenue included a number of one-time items such as the foreign exchange gains, without which Netease’s net profit per share would be lower than expectation.

Since Credit Suisse downgraded its rating of Netease from Outperform to Neutral, Netease shares fell sharply by 10.31%. Another investment bank J.P Morgan also worried that despite its other profit-winning business, Netease still has to face the fierce competition and aging lifecycle of online games.

Analysts’ forward-looking worries, actually, all originate from a hot MMOPRG that has been in dystocia. Four months have passed since Netease gained the operating license, and until last Friday, WOW, the highly profitable online game which Netease counts on, still hasn’t got approval from government.

As a matter of fact, Netease has already obtained operating license from Blizzard on April 16th. But unfortunately relative authorities haven’t approved its operation so far, which triggered a riot-like pushing campaign waged by almost 5 million Chinese players. Afterwards, Netease was finally approved to commence closed beta on July 30 after a few seesaw stages such as “Documents submitted”, and “Approval in progress”, but it doesn’t mean everything will go well.

Last Friday afternoon, Netease WOW team released an announcement in which official service date still hasn’t been confirmed, saying that “Netease is thinking about prolonging WOW free gaming until commercial launch”. This is, however, an expensive promise. Some media speculated that according to WOW’s seasonal earnings, Netease loses RMB 4.22 million every day for postponing official operation.

Players, too, are beginning to beat the air. Any news related to Netease online games can stir their minds. On August 12, it was said that GAPP had accepted the approval of WLK, the latest expansion pack of WOW, judged by which, players inferred that application of previous version had been approved. Some anxious players even noticed that Fantasy Westward Journey appeared in a news about China’s success in exporting online games on CCTV, according to which, some players speculated that this could be signaling that WOW is about to open service very soon.