Southeast Asia Can Play on North American Servers

[lux]

Great news indeed.

[Norfindel]

I love how some people are so cynical that they can take something that is good, and make it horribly disfigured and bad.

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CHANGE AIN'T EASY
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This is called progress. Applaud the fact that they are working on it and have shown evidence of so. Change doesn't come easy, you're a Blizzard player for god sakes and should know this, so calm down.

I love how people is so naive that they don't realize that including a region lock for monetary reasons is horribly disfiguring online gameplay and bad. Shouldn't had ever happened.

By the way, i'm glad that they allowed this, and are happy for the people in that region, but just shows how completely lack of any sense is this region locking, and how much of an excuse are the technical aspects. If SEA can play reasonably well in NA servers (and they wouldn't be doing this if they weren't sure), everyone can play everywhere.

It was bad enough with region locking on the movies, but in an online game, it's ridiculous.

[Dean63]

I love how people is so naive that they don't realize that including a region lock for monetary reasons is horribly disfiguring online gameplay and bad. Shouldn't had ever happened.

By the way, i'm glad that they allowed this, and are happy for the people in that region, but just shows how completely lack of any sense is this region locking, and how much of an excuse are the technical aspects. If SEA can play reasonably well in NA servers (and they wouldn't be doing this if they weren't sure), everyone can play everywhere.

It was bad enough with region locking on the movies, but in an online game, it's ridiculous.

You have no proof that region locking is for monetary gain. Blizzard has already spoken about region locking, stating that it is a technical issue surrounding an influx of lag; likely attributed to the stress on the server farms from which each region operates. In addition, region locking on a global scale is being assessed; this is a test of their hypothesis on how to fix it.

Like I said; change ain't easy.

[Norfindel]

You have no proof that region locking is for monetary gain. Blizzard has already spoken about region locking, stating that it is a technical issue surrounding an influx of lag; likely attributed to the stress on the server farms from which each region operates. In addition, region locking on a global scale is being assessed; this is a test of their hypothesis on how to fix it.

Like I said; change ain't easy.

Sorry, but i don't buy it. They had the whole beta to test it, but they're only going to give free access to the SEA region after launch to test it? They could as well just make all the beta people play in the NA servers to test that at any time.
Do you think they would risk to allow the entire SEA region (hint: there's more than 2 people there) to log into the NA servers if they weren't already sure that the servers can manage the load perfectly? Come on...

[Maul]

YES YES YES YES YES

**FIST PUMP**

The major problem Australians are having with being assigned to SEA is related to lag. Most Aussies would rather play with people on the NA servers, but if we got the lag that the location would suggest we'd mostly be ok with a low lag server. HOWEVER, our second largest ISP, Optus, has routing issues to all of SEA. Instead of routing all their data directly north to SEA, they first send it to the US West Coast and then to SEA, resulting in significantly larger latency than we'd get if the data was going directly to the NA server.

The problem with our second largest ISP having this bad routing is that they wholesale their service to a lot of other ISPs, meaning there are even more ISPs out here with those isssues. Now, with such a large percentage of Australians using ISPs with routing issues to a geographically closer region, it only takes one player on those ISPs to be in a game for the entire game to lag like a mofo. Statistically speaking, about 1 in 3 games will be unplayable due to your opponent being on one of the problematic ISPs, and 100% of games will be unplayable for those on the problematic ISPs.

Blizzard said they were working with the local ISPs here directly to resolve this issue, but this shows that they've failed. They denied this in the article from the OP but none of the problematic ISPs have improved their ping times to the SEA server since Blizzard claimed a month or two back they'd try and solve the problem. They're not favouritising us, they simply have no choice. You can't release a game in Australia with 400+ms delay for about 1 in 3 of the players and claim that they've provided us with a better experience than playing on NA servers with 200+ms lag on any ISP here, which are the servers we're used to playing on anyway.


Yes yes yes!

[Cotcan]

so then if you're from NA, all you have to do is purchase a SEA copy, play with SEA people for 60 days, and then after that reap the benefits of both SEA and NA.

That's true, but if you buy the NA copy...no playing on SEA or any other region (for now).

[evilbox]

i think blizzard has a good reason for doing it

[TheRabidDeer]

It is interesting that those that want to play on the NA servers seem to have to abandon their SEA/aus/NZ localized clients to do so.

[GRUNT]

Hey do you guys know if achievements that Aussies get on the SEA server will also carry over to the NA servers if they switch?

[TheEconomist]

I hope no one actually cares about that.