It seems that North America and Europe won't be the only ones to enjoy the RvR goodness this Fall when Warhammer Online launches. Today, the company announced that Australia, New Zeland and parts of Southeast Asia will see a simultaneous launch as well.

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR) will ship in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia simultaneously with the North American and European Fall 2008 release.

In addition, WAR will also feature a dedicated server in Australia, ensuring the best game play experience possible for players in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and other Southeast Asian territories. Players will still have the option of connecting to North American servers.

"Warhammer is a worldwide franchise with a strong following in Australia and New Zealand. By placing our own server down under and running customer service out of EA Mythic, we can ensure that when we launch WAR, Oceanic players will experience the same quality of game play and customer service as North American players," said Mark Jacobs, VP and General Manager of EA Mythic.

Based on Games Workshop’s epic and longstanding tabletop fantasy war game, WAR features revolutionary Realm vs. Realm™ (RvR) game play that immerses players in a world of perpetual conflict. WAR is scheduled for launch on the PC in Fall 2008.

To learn more about the game, please visit www.warhammeronline.com.

To keep up-to-date on all the latest news and features from WAR, sign up for the monthly newsletter at www.warhammeronline.com/newslettersignup/.

More on WAR here.

Very cool EAMYTHIC....another thumbs up!!

In this day and age its about time someone paid attention to the REST of the world for online gaming.   Over the years I have seen numerous complaints and long threads from Aussies and Europeans due to late availability of product in their countries and also no dedicated servers.

Its about time...:)   EAMYTHIC...show the rest how its done...again!!   Good customer service. :)

Cend

When I first read this, I was jumping up and down with joy.  When I re-read it I saw the "our own server" and "a dedicated server" bits and started to cry.

What's worse, a 350-500 ping, or waiting hours in a que to get onto an over crowded server.

Damn, all you other Aussies, go play on the yank servers, PLEASE.

ouch - do you think there will really be queues? i was fairly horrified when i heard people queued for wow servers, but not because of lack of choice but because of what server was 'cool' or not

SuiMe - EAMythic is "damned if you don't damned if you do" based on what you are saying. When I read it I was happy that a company would go to the extra expense / hassle of localized servers for a better playing experience for the customer. I don't think that you would find that with a lot of companies.

It makes me very hopeful that this idea of customer experience from playability, to PvE content to RvR content will make Warhammer a winner.

Originally posted by SuiMe

When I first read this, I was jumping up and down with joy.  When I re-read it I saw the "our own server" and "a dedicated server" bits and started to cry.

What's worse, a 350-500 ping, or waiting hours in a que to get onto an over crowded server.

 

Damn, all you other Aussies, go play on the yank servers, PLEASE.

Sometimes it seems like..no matter what EAMYTHIC does..there's always someone out there predicting gloom and doom.

How about...complaining AFTER the game launches and AFTER you know how the server situation is.   Do you think with the MONEY that this company has backing them..that they wouldn't add extra servers to accomodate crowding/overflow/queues???

Assumptions without knowledge...do nothing but create rumours at best.

The EAMYTHIC crew has stated in their podcasts that they want thousands and thousands of players playing their game....would be rather silly of them to turn some away at the door due to insufficient servers to accomodate them all.....now wouldn't it??

yeesh

Cend

honestly.  population of 21 million, maybe 5-10,000 at the most playing WAR (and not all at the same time).  if there are queues (i hope there are) then it will mean there is a strong enough following to keep the servers running.  i dont want to see an Aussie server that is at half the population that the others are at.  low ping means nothing if you cant find anyone to fight.

but i think the server will be full, like Mythic said, strong following down here

Ahem, Stradden, there's an extra a in New Zealand :P

will launch simultaneously

what's this?  what's this? 

You mean there's other realms besides Ahmehrika that need to be serviced ??? 

Shocking.

Maybe we could trade the Saudi's oil for WAR accounts???

I think the real announcement is that they have done their feasibility studies and have already evaluated that there is sufficient demand to rent a location and put in place the networking infrastructure and support processes to sustain an ongoing presence in the area which is the biggest hurdle and one other companies dont have the guts to do. Scaling additional equipment for customer demand is a trivial matter.

It is up to local gamers to support their investment and at least try the game on these servers or it wont be long before they re-assess the ongoing expense vs customer utilization and pull the plug on the idea - so lets bring it to its knees!

Thanks EA for giving it a go!!!

also worth noting, once one company has made that move,taken the risk and proven that the rent, equipment, staffing and continuous training required for a datacenter site works - other companies will follow.

so supporting your local servers is important, unless you are in the EU and the routing is utter drivel and we'll probably get better connections to your NZ servers than to EU :)

It is about time our kiwi and kangaroo lovin' cousins from the future got some attention on launch day. Congratulations guys-n-gals, if I could get my hands on a oceanic copy on launch day I would be playin on your servers.

This is something of a first from an MMO of this caliber. Two thumbs up.