The Chinese may have been the first to invent gunpowder and delicious pork-filled fried dumplings, but they have not caught up to the rest of the world when it comes to respecting intellectual property rights. Case in point, the recent opening of an entire themepark dedicated to World of Warcraft and Starcraft, two of the most popular online games in the world, in the Changzhou, Jiangsu province. It’s a sprawling $30 million megaplex spanning 600,000 square meters that aspires to compete with Disney and Universal Studios as a global theme park destination. And it’s a total knockoff. They didn’t pay Blizzard, the company behind those two games, a dime.

The folks over at Shanghaist visited the park and took lots of pictures and detailed the experience. The place is massive. There are statues all over the place taller than a grown man with characters from the two video games. The funniest part is how even though they stole all the details and characters from the games, they know they can’t go all out and call it “World of Warcraft Land” (although from the initial schematics that surfaced online a few months ago made it look like that was basically their original intention). They have to come up with their own phraseology. So Warcraft World is called “The Terrain of Magic.” The Starcraft ripoff zone is called “Universe of Starship.” The entire park is called “World Joyland.”

Ripping off Apple stores wholesale is one thing, but it really takes gumption to steal an entire themepark.

World Joyland: The Warcraft/Starcraft-themed amusement park [Shanghaist]

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