The CJK Bloc (China-Japan-Korea) is well known for their patriotism, love of each other as well as hatred of each other for countless of reasons. Even in-game, wars errupts based on their nationalities and patriotism and nationlism are so strong. Richard Garriott himself mentioned this years ago during an interview when he studied the Asian MMOG market, then only Lineage 1.
Follow up:
Now it is still happening, though we don’t hear of it much, the sentiments are still strong. Luckily, for South-East Asian MMOGamers, ASEAN helped mold the mind of the SEAsians. We enter into a friendly competition and we unite when there is a need and when we have a common enemy. There are also times when we different SEAsian players, guilds, alliances come together to compete with another SEAsian player, guilds, or alliances. In the CJK Bloc, it’s a totally different story.
What I don’t understand though is why the Chinese players only noticed it recently when I first played the game, I already saw the supposedly flag of the “Empire of the Rising Sun” (aka Japanese Empire). Personally, I didn’t like it either, that’s why I stopped playing the said MMOG. No, it has nothing to do with the WWII issues – past is past, but it’s a Chinese government in-game and with a “similar” if-not-exact design of the flag of the Japanese Empire.
Read more about the latest incident at Terra Nova.