Blizzard is annoying Non-North American, Aust, NZ players.Follow

It is too bad that you feel this way, but I feel it has to be done like this.

It isn't just about "polluting" a server. Its a regional thing where I feel that as a North American English speaker, in a game made in North America, I should be able to be on a server which mostly all speaks English (as well as some of the instant message kids today can ;) )

They are also likely very aware of the throngs of Eastern people who farm complaints from north American players in games like lineage 2. There is actually a Chinese company that does this which I guess is coming to WoW as well.

I can't honestly think of a way to solve those two problems without doing what they are doing. The huge Chinese farming company is something you won't see as much in the USA since really you don't make that much "real money" off selling piddly little things in an mmorpg. It is the fact that its US dollars being made by a company in China that allows them to pay those people working for them WELL, by Chinese standards. So it could not even happen here, in the same way.

I don't care for posts which talk about discrimination when it comes to this subject. They are doing it for reasons and they are sound reasons which make sense.

Even if you take away regional farm company problems, I rememeber back when I played Everquest on the old Solusek Ro server. It was a server which was based in North America. My original guild outleveled me and I had no reason to basically be in that guild anymore, so I looked for a new one. Everyone that I grouped with or bumped into, who was in a guild, was in a German or French guild and had a requirement that I either was a native German or French speaker. This was a problem for me. It made me angry. I was on a North American server, in a North American made game, where the unofficial "official" language of the country that I and those servers reside in was English and yet every guild I tried to join had a German or French requirement. At that time in the life of Solusek Ro, those populations were just so dang large.

So I started a new character on the Tribunal server and never looked back, spending most of my 5 years in Everquest there. On that server everyone spoke English.

I think it boils down to what most of the average users want and what is best for the game at this time. Granted for some people its a bad deal, but that is the way it goes with that whole "needs of the many" thing.

Kithpine actually posts what are likely some very solid "real" reasons they are doing this. Those reasons make sense. I don't think that a company like Blizzard makes these decisions lightly or that they do so just to be "teh mean" to certain users.

I would have liked if the servers had been open from the start to whoever that wanted to play on them. Im sure Blizz has its reasons, some here talked about legal problems. I dont know and to some degree i dont care why they do it. It is their right and thats all we have to deal with. Im not much in favour for it. But we cant do alot about it sadly.

If it has anything at all to do with customer support (the european servers having GMs speaking german/french/english .. then i think it should be an option to void native speaking support and then still get to play).

However .. coming from Denmark and now living in Houston, then i of course have alot of friends that i would have liked to be able to spend some time with ingame. I will very likely still do that with some, but some of them of course dont wanna go through the problems of starting the account before release in Europe. I will however if they decide so, relay accounts to friends in DK if they can find some ways around the IP issue.

I also think it is sad from the point of view that i think it is important to broaden ones horisonts abit. And both europeans and americans can sometimes be pretty singleminded and to be able to talk to new friends from other parts in the world can open up our minds.

Then lastly .. If AO had been using localiced servers then i guess i wouldnt have met my wife in Omni Entertainment and actually lived in the US now .. And get the opportunity to play WoW from nov. 23th :) Guess that there is something called fate.

Another thing about the farming companies they do have a Hq here but most of their work is done in asia and russia. The reason its not done here is because then the companies could actually sue the company or get an injunction to stop them. In other countries its harder to bring a case against them due to differing laws, countries, etc. .

I've never looked at it as racism. What I see is there are many differnt types of people in the world. Some are short. Some are tall. Some are quick. Some are slow. Some are smart. Some are dumb. All Tolkien did was take the differnt traits of the human race and split them up into differnt races which in turn led to roleplaying.

I live in Singapore. I speak English as my primary language and have only rudimentary skills in Mandarin and Japanese. If Blizzard ever decides to release a localised WoW in Asia (not very likely), I'll be forced to play on servers almost completely populated by Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans.

I guess I'm totally screwed. Thanks a lot, Blizzard. I love your game to death, but I'm not going to move to Canada just to play it. =(

Just ludicrous, so many American friends I now cannot play with.

The delayed euro release is stupid as well, Hollywood does that with films which is why we download at US release instead of waiting and paying.

Just a question: where is the official word from Blizzard on this? It seems strange that someone brought this up, and I've never heard of this before, and everyone's just talking about it as if it were gospel truth. What has Blizzard said on the matter? How exactly was their statement phrased? Did they explicitly mention locking out non-NA/AU/NZ IPs, or other measures they might take?

I'd just like some confirmation from an official source.

BTW, Blizzard (although residing in NA) is owned by an European company.....

*sharpens his 2h axe* Soooo, which EB store is this?

As a soon to be ex-FFXIer, I'm pleased as punch that the asians are getting segregated servers, if any at all. While I have met some nice JP players, there was a real problem with the JP community refusing to play with NA players. Add to that the problems caused by Hong Kong and mainland China based gil selling companies, I think Blizzard is making the right choice. If they can't connect to my server, they can't ruin the game.

As for the EU players, I think that kind of sucks. I have a bunch of friends from England that I'd love to play WoW with.

ok.thats being extremely selfish.. You are ruling the rest out just because of some. And my country is part of Asia, but hell we are not involve in all this farming crap..we also speak english,but Blizzard still wont give a damn about us..

I like your spirit and character..Very good
*Unlike so many others here*

Edited, Fri Nov 19 21:20:09 2004 by Seiferseph