Region lock yes or no?

[spychi]

So lately I saw an article on the internet, a reviewer said that he is happy with the region lock because it will improve the battle.net latency
how many people here like the idea

Region lock in StarCraft 2 will allow people from Europe to play against people only from Europe, people from America only against people from America and so on
Rob Pardo said (in a joke tone) that if we want to play with guys from other continents we need to buy their version of the game

[n00bonicPlague]

It's probably a good thing for ladder, but I don't see any reason for us not to be able to play a non-ladder game with people from other regions. If I choose to play a game with another person knowing full well that there is going to be latency issues, how is it any of Blizzard's concern?

[spychi]

yeah I know, I don't even know how it would improve the latency, that is just...

[Hammy]

Why is this a good thing for ladder? Iccup had perfect latency. And if their system can't support great ping, well it's the system they should rework, rather than add stupid restrictions. Sometimes it just seems that Blizzard is throwing wrenches in their gears.

edit: godawful grammar

[Todie]

you're obviously as biased as me on this Spychi; since we're in Europe but part of a predominantly NA-based community - of potential playmates (wtf this word is totally pr0nofied?)

from the beginning i assumed the region lock was only for beta. then i learned it wasnt. but im yet to acutaly see any first hand sources on this!

as n00b says, it makes intuitive sense to allow custom games cross-region. the crux of the matter may be that such a service might be expensive and/or complicated to provide given the current structure or BNet 2.0 (what do i know?) ... at the same time, they are in no way 'required' to provide such a service.

i think its a matter of us in the community needing to articulate the value of keeping sections among us directly linked within the game infrastructure.

there's already needless region separations with all the sub-forums on BNet; its great to provide proper language support , but it has side effects, and i never understood the point of separating NA forums from English EU forums... i cant even post on NA-forum topics with a EU-beta account!


.... Those of us that actively participate in online GLOBAL communities such as this one are clearly the losers in this whole equation; the dedicated e-socially active gamer that isnt rich or hardcore enough to pay for several game copies just in order to keep in-game touch with certain people.

a while back there may have been more localized gaming communities, but i think, those taht are slightly more serious, and quite able to read and write in english, are much more likely to seek contact among like-minded globally than locally.

we need to stand tall on this: Starcraft II could grow big. real big. BNet 2.0 can be a big part of that, but if they force 'community building' to be region based, it cant grow as big as otherwise.. if we weren't cut off, Players like me (defined above) would be much more active participants -heck even walking pillars of advertisement! - for this community-building.. and thats potentially lucrative community-building too.

... for the very infrastructure that is designed to pull us together, to be the thing that keeps us apart... its utterly anticlimactic.

[TunaFish]

Frankly, it's an awful idea.

Lots of people have online friends from other games who live in other countries. If there's no way to play with those people, then suddenly the social angle of this game becomes much less appealing. It's frustrating and makes little to no sense that they would put that kind of restriction.

If latency in ladder games is really that big of an issue, then I suppose they could restrict "guest" accounts outside of their native realms from playing in ladder games. But to restrict players to playing only with people who living in the same country as they do is just dumb.

[TWD]

as n00b says, it makes intuitive sense to allow custom games cross-region. the crux of the matter may be that such a service might be expensive and/or complicated to provide given the current structure or BNet 2.0 (what do i know?) ... at the same time, they are in no way 'required' to provide such a service.

Blizzard has always had problems with gateways and having the multiple servers connected. I always thought it was pretty safe to assume that nothing would change with StarCraft II. Just give us the option to change what gateway we can connect to. Problem solved.
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Tastylikepeachs cam

[GRUNT]

Do not like .

I wanna be able to play with online buddies from all around the world :[.

Their big argument for removing LAN was to connect everyone on Bnet, and ironically, the new Bnet makes it impossible for people around the world to connect to each other .

[Islandsnake]

Theres no reason to like this lol

[n00bonicPlague]

I'd be happy with switching between different gateways like we did before.

Just give everybody one account for each gateway.