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Frozen Throne CD-Key extreme weirdness
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Posted by: ackackadack
Hi, I stumbled upon this site by accident, and I have a WEIRD problem. It's going to take some explaining.
I'm from the U.S., but I currently live in China. Although it may be hard-to-impossible to find legit movies and music here, games aren't so hard. If the game costs 8 yuan ($1) and comes folded in a little piece of cardboard, it's bootleg. If it costs 40 to 80 yuan ($5 to $10) and comes in a box, with manuals and information about the company, it's probably legit. There are plenty of Chinese companies putting out software, too, and new Chinese games are 40 yuan+. They're also rarely bootlegged. To the locals, 40 yuan is like an American paying $20.
That said, there are plenty of legit copies of Blizzard stuff here. You can find copies of Starcraft, with manuals and strategy guides (in Chinese, of course), all over for 40 yuan. The Chinese are picking up the craze from the South Koreans.
Having prefaced that, my husband and I picked up two copies of Warcraft III: Frozen Throne from the local Carrefour -- a large French chain superstore that's all over here, competing with Super Wal-Mart and China's Home World.
My Mandarin is awful, but I can read and speak some. The box said it had both English and Chinese, and I confirmed that with a friend of mine who's fluent in Chinese and English. It's from Aomeisoft (aomeisoft.com), which appears to have all the Chinese licensing for the Warcraft III and Diablo II games -- EVERY boxed copy of those two that I've ever seen here have been from that company.
Anyway, the problem is simple. The CD-Key doesn't work. The installer is IN Chinese, so I had to switch my non-Unicode language settings to get it to work (Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Advanced/Default for Non-Unicode Programs). That let me read what the installer was saying -- which was that the key was invalid.
The other possibility I thought of is that my Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos copy is American. All copies of Reign of Chaos here are in Chinese exclusively, so I've never bothered picking one up. (It's possible there's a way to change the settings, but considering the problems I'm having with Frozen Throne, I don't want to throw away money and time on a long trip to the Carrefour and back home to find out.) Is it possible the two clash somehow? Or is it simply my English version of WinXP clashing with a Chinese installer program? Or could be something else all together? Oh, yes, I did try installing it before and after I got Service Pack 2.
I've e-mailed aomeisoft, but they're either not getting my e-mail because of spam filters (possible, the Chinese are now getting fed up) or are possibly intimidated with my bad Mandarin mixed with English. They may literally not know HOW to reply. I don't know if there's any point in contacting Blizzard, since I bought it through a licensee. Is there any easy solution for this situation? Should I contact Blizzard? (I mean, 80 yuan is a lot of money here, so by golly it'd better be a legit copy.) Any ideas?
Thanks!
Posted by: NegotiatorSmith
Yes, if your copies of Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne are in different languages, the expansion won't install, although I can't remember if it says "CD-key invalid" or something else.
Here is what Blizzard says about the error I think you're getting:
http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=awr0639p
As the page says, if you need more help, you can't contact Blizzard directly, you have to contact your local distributor (Aoemisoft in this case). If you can't get in touch with them, then I'm not sure what else you can do besides getting a new copy.
It's very likely that either you're putting the CD-key in incorrectly or it's not a Frozen Throne one. Good luck and let us know if you find a solution.
Posted by: to6ana_mars
I totally understand what you're saying. I live in China too. And cuz of that, I like to bring games in from my own home country =) Of course fakes, but still much better than the Chinese ones.
Now about the Legit games. Aomeisoft really is legit for the Blizzard games, but I have to inform you that even if you do buy a legal Warcraft game, the CDkey on the manual won't work on Battle.net. You need to send it thru email to the aomei guys and they'll send you a CDkey which is BN-valid. And I have Carrefour here too, and I don't think they sell illegal games.
About the install problem. I never bought any game from China except for some chosen ones who are REALLY in english, I mean installation and all... but I think if you get the Reign of chaos in Chinese it may work... Again, I have no idea. There is always the possibility of typos which is really tiny... then the Cdkey may be fake, cuz in China you never know, even carrefour...
The best way to get a really good copy is to get some friends Mail it to you from overseas... :P
P.S. Are you in Qingdao?
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