Yes, having world server and so on is nice and all, but really other then for a very small minority this is not ideal. Here a coupel reaosn

1) if your not in the timezone that is prelevant on the server then odds are your going to end being bored and quitting (Take EVE North American playerbase as an example. It makes up what 4% of the userbase)

2) Server can only have certain number of players for most MMO. So if you don't control who gets on, MMO companies will loose money because they installed and place server in one region that won't be used as much, and they will have to buy new on in the other because people that should been playing in NA are playing in Europe. There's a high cost associated to this

3) there's a customer support aspect also. you try to limit as much as possible the impact to your user base. But if your userbase is widespread your going to end up displeasing one over the other. So this can lead to frustrated customer base and lost customer.

4) Some region will gain and advantage over another because of being closer to server. Lower lantency for example, which helps Japanese (or used to when i played FFXI) attack boss mob faster. This leads to irrate customer, and an irate customer generally ends up being a lost customer.

At the end of the day, the reason why MMO are segrated like this is not because MMO companies want to per say. It just make more sense econimically, financially and it mkes supporting  and retaining your user base easier (GM don't need to know 6 language, or you have to wait till you get a GM that speaks your language to fix your issue). It just makes more sense, and personally i think it's a good solution considering that a very small minority would go play on another regionaly server if given a chance.

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Death1942

As an Australian (and i think i can speak for the Kiwi's too) i don't give a toss what region/client i am playing, so long as the server is as close to me as possible.

 

Also to be perfectly honest, i found many intolerant people in the online world.  (not being racist at all but) Typically Eastern and Western gamers don't really get along too well.  Language barriers, cultural divides and negative stereotypes (chinese gold farmers...ect) lead to problems.  In that respect i can see a need for a divide.

 

Well, the point though is not that they shouldn't have an Australian server. It's that Australians shouldn't be forced to play on it, and Americans, if they want, should be allowed to.

All games still require a good global network in that respect. I just see no reason to limit choice.

But you did see it:

Of course, there is the obvious answer. It’s a business decision. It’s frequently smarter for game companies that are unfamiliar with or unable to operate in foreign territories to license the operation of their game to third parties. To protect that investment, the licensee may require that their region’s customers not be allowed to bypass their work and jump to the “official server” in the original region.

This reason will not go away by itself. Only big companies like SOE and Blizzard can afford to make a choice. Your article however does not answer why SOE went one way and Blizzard went the other, but it should be clear why smaller companies make this choice, assuming they have a choice at all. Or, whether they see they have a choice at all. It would be interesting to see what different companies think about that.

OMG a member of MMORPG.com staff not advocating that the business argument on a MMO issue is the best argument? What’s happening?

We have consistently been told recently by the staff and quest writers that the business argument is always the correct one. They don’t always call it the business argument, but that’s what it is, lets take a look at recent article ‘gems’.

We have been told that F2P (in reality RMT’s) are better than subscription games and that subscription games with a cash shop are better than MMO’s without one. We have been told that it is better if a new MMO can run on your granddad’s PC rather than push the graphic envelope forward. We have been told Roleplay servers are a fallacy they don’t work and are not needed.

Every single one of those article opinions means more revenue for the company and a poorer game for you the player. But now we move on to regional servers and the business argument is not the most important one, what’s happened? It seems us dumb players do not need to be educated into the right mode of business thinking this time.

Maybe the staff have woken up to the fact that it’s what players think is important too, not just company executives, but I doubt it.

Originally posted by Scot

Maybe the staff have woken up to the fact that it’s what players think is important too, not just company executives, but I doubt it.

Well, this might certainly encite some discussion, don't you think?

After reading the non stop anti Russians spam in the AOC Euro server chat channels, I'm not so sure that your average modern mainstream MMOers want to play nice together - they just wanna hit stuff and get stuff.

Originally posted by nuififun

After reading the non stop anti Russians spam in the AOC Euro server chat channels, I'm not so sure that your average modern mainstream MMOers want to play nice together - they just wanna hit stuff and get stuff.

In just about every major mmo out there, if someone post on an NA/EU server in anything other than english, the first response they will inevitably get is "Go to your own channel" or "English only". And not just from other players, but from CS and GMs as well. So even without limiting server access, "outside"  players are still usually seperated by ingame rules.

Eve Online is a good example. Post in newbie chat in any language other than English and the CSRs will tell you to go to your own language channel.

And there's two sides to the coin. One side is, yes, it divides players. On the flip side, it groups players with those they are more likely to be able to play with little hassle due to language barriers.

Originally posted by Dana

In this week's column, Dana Massey looks at regional services in MMOs. If it's so unpopular, why do they do it? What approaches would make more truly global games work? To find out, he spoke to veteran online game executive Scott Hartsman.

Read it all here.

I've said it before and I say it again - even if you hate $OE, one has to admit they don't make a fuss about servers. Live in EU and want to play on US server, or vice versa? No problem. Why not play on both?

Not that many other MMOs, especially newer ones have this, probably for taxation, support, latency, etc. etc. Worse is, imho, if there is another company operating in other regions, e.g. Codemaster for Turbine, GOA for Mythic, etc. Sucks, because one is then not even in direct contact with developers, always only indirectly, plus one can be behind with patches, etc. I remember in LOTRO EU beta, there were some really nice folks, who got in the end fed up for whatever reason and went to US side, accepting all disadvantages regarding payment options etc. And there went again some nice people with whom contact is "impossible"

It's like region coding of DVDs - who cares, one can circumvent anyway if one wants.

Originally posted by docminus

Originally posted by Dana

In this week's column, Dana Massey looks at regional services in MMOs. If it's so unpopular, why do they do it? What approaches would make more truly global games work? To find out, he spoke to veteran online game executive Scott Hartsman.

Read it all here.

 

I've said it before and I say it again - even if you hate $OE, one has to admit they don't make a fuss about servers. Live in EU and want to play on US server, or vice versa? No problem. Why not play on both?

Not that many other MMOs, especially newer ones have this, probably for taxation, support, latency, etc. etc. Worse is, imho, if there is another company operating in other regions, e.g. Codemaster for Turbine, GOA for Mythic, etc. Sucks, because one is then not even in direct contact with developers, always only indirectly, plus one can be behind with patches, etc. I remember in LOTRO EU beta, there were some really nice folks, who got in the end fed up for whatever reason and went to US side, accepting all disadvantages regarding payment options etc. And there went again some nice people with whom contact is "impossible"

It's like region coding of DVDs - who cares, one can circumvent anyway if one wants.

In SOE's case, they own full distribution rights. So whether you play Na or EU, it's still SOE's servers.

And yeah, the problem with EU LotRO was Codemasters. Which isn't surprising, since they're pretty much crap even with their own games.

Originally posted by aaradun

Yes, having world server and so on is nice and all, but really other then for a very small minority this is not ideal.

EVE using one world server and their playerbase is about the size of WAR's, AOC's or LOTRO's. What is a 'very small minority' to you?

1) if your not in the timezone that is prelevant on the server then odds are your going to end being bored and quitting 

It is currently 6:50 AM EST (shortly after maintenance) and there are over 17k people ingame in EVE Online. Source: http://www.eveonline.com/serverstatusgraph.ashx?gid=1 A single shard universe increases the odds that people will be around when you log in as they are not spread across multiple servers.

(Take EVE North American playerbase as an example. It makes up what 4% of the userbase)

See, now you're not even trying to sound believable anymore. *waggles finger* :) 

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by aaradun

Yes, having world server and so on is nice and all, but really other then for a very small minority this is not ideal.

EVE using one world server and their playerbase is about the size of WAR's, AOC's or LOTRO's. What is a 'very small minority' to you?

1) if your not in the timezone that is prelevant on the server then odds are your going to end being bored and quitting 

It is currently 6:50 AM EST (shortly after maintenance) and there are over 17k people ingame in EVE Online. Source: http://www.eveonline.com/serverstatusgraph.ashx?gid=1 A single shard universe increases the odds that people will be around when you log in as they are not spread across multiple servers.

(Take EVE North American playerbase as an example. It makes up what 4% of the userbase)

See, now you're not even trying to sound believable anymore. *waggles finger* :) 

 

 

player base =! online peopel!

I'm not a fan of regional servers because over the years I'm managed to make friends all over the world and even with different timezones we still managed to play together. A good example of regional servers being a fail is Warhammer, I think that game would be succeeding more if we all played on the NA servers, In its prime the Skull Throne server was the un-official international server and was alive 24/7 and playing on the Euro servers due to work etc, playing at night the servers were dead after a set time 11pm onwards.

I've been playing games for many years from the likes of Everquest on a dial-up now these days mostly everyone is on broadband / cable so i think most gamers should be able to play on overseas servers.

Lets face it if your serious about gaming mmo's you make the steps needed to be able to play on any server ie, computer setup, good internet service provider, high speed connection.

No matter what game you play chances are you will always encounter some sort of lag, so I think the lag excuse for not having global servers is kinda wearing thin now and the real reason is down to old fashion bad coding / sub-standard equipment on the game companies side.

Just my 2 cents....

Originally posted by aaradun

Yes, having world server and so on is nice and all, but really other then for a very small minority this is not ideal. Here a coupel reaosn

1) if your not in the timezone that is prelevant on the server then odds are your going to end being bored and quitting (Take EVE North American playerbase as an example. It makes up what 4% of the userbase)

Your petty guess is about ten times too low. Source

IMHO, the only segregation of servers should be by time zone.  I do like the idea of being able to choose a server thats likely to be hopping during my primetime.  WoW did this at launch and my home server was listed as west coast, I played with alot of Aussies and Asians who chose that server as well and it was awesome.  Since im in Alaska there was always someone on no matter what time I logged in.

One regional issue that I have seen is how players that are online earlier than another group has an advantage. I first ran into this in Dark Ages of Camelot. By the time I got home from work and online, I would find that the Europeans had taken all our castles in the last few hours. By the time we recaptured our own castles, most had to log for the evening. The next evening would involve the same routine... which got old after a while. One interesting fact I found in EVE Online is that some Alliances seek out Corps in other timezones to join them, so that they will have 24 hour coverage of their territories. So I believe this to be a regional issue with gameplay, but not one that is a real deal breaker. If it has been mentioned before, then I am sorry for the double post.

Personally, I find having as many people interact together is a good thing. Many MMOG's have emotes that allow people who speak different languages to still be able to communicate... as well as seperate chat channels for specific languages. One online game that does this and comes to mind is Guild Wars. However, culture is a much bigger block. While recently taking a college course in globalization, we discussed how any type of entertainment needs to be adjusted to match the culture... some more than others. Some can come across fairly easily (like Pokemon and Hello Kitty), where some require large revamping (as Aion). For any online game, the players have to feel comfortable and fit in with the game. Perhaps the one piece of good advice I received when traveling to other cultures is not to tell a joke. What may be funny in our culture, may make absolutely no sense in another... thus not always coming off well. The same thing is true when trying to develop a storyline in a MMOG like Aion.

So even I do not like the idea of regionalizing Servers, I can understand why they are.

I think the big mistake some of these producers are making is selling their game to another producer in another geographical location.  The chances of hurting your IP by using a bad producer can be a publicity nightmare because of the globally used discussion boards.  Mythic is a prime example.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by nuififun

After reading the non stop anti Russians spam in the AOC Euro server chat channels, I'm not so sure that your average modern mainstream MMOers want to play nice together - they just wanna hit stuff and get stuff.

 

In just about every major mmo out there, if someone post on an NA/EU server in anything other than english, the first response they will inevitably get is "Go to your own channel" or "English only". And not just from other players, but from CS and GMs as well. So even without limiting server access, "outside"  players are still usually seperated by ingame rules.

Eve Online is a good example. Post in newbie chat in any language other than English and the CSRs will tell you to go to your own language channel.

And there's two sides to the coin. One side is, yes, it divides players. On the flip side, it groups players with those they are more likely to be able to play with little hassle due to language barriers.

Funny huh, since the game is made by CCP located in Iceland eh?  I agree with CCP on this regard, a single world environment is a great thing, but there has to be one unifying element, and that is language. 

Since English is the dominant language of a large portion of P2P MMO's is makes sense to standardize it.

Fortunately while we in America suck at learning foreign languages, so many people I've met from over in Europe and elsewhere can speak it it works out pretty well in a game like EVE.

That said, I was recently in a corp that was part of a Russian renters alliance called Shadows of Death and our alliance channel was all in Russian.  We used Google translate and actually located a few translators willing to help us during coordinated fleet battles.

On more than one occasion I fought along side the Russians and w/o their help we'd have never prevailed against BOB and SmashKill.

So I prefer international servers. I don't mind if companies set up regionalized ones, as long as people are free to play which ever one they want to.

Originally posted by Scot

OMG a member of MMORPG.com staff not advocating that the business argument on a MMO issue is the best argument? What’s happening?

We have consistently been told recently by the staff and quest writers that the business argument is always the correct one. They don’t always call it the business argument, but that’s what it is, lets take a look at recent article ‘gems’.

We have been told that F2P (in reality RMT’s) are better than subscription games and that subscription games with a cash shop are better than MMO’s without one. We have been told that it is better if a new MMO can run on your granddad’s PC rather than push the graphic envelope forward. We have been told Roleplay servers are a fallacy they don’t work and are not needed.

Every single one of those article opinions means more revenue for the company and a poorer game for you the player. But now we move on to regional servers and the business argument is not the most important one, what’s happened? It seems us dumb players do not need to be educated into the right mode of business thinking this time.

Maybe the staff have woken up to the fact that it’s what players think is important too, not just company executives, but I doubt it.

Maybe they came out of the closet too largelly with the RP article, and now they are doing some kind of cosmetic support to customers after that... What I do know that it is an incridible coincidence that we are now talking about how important is to you to play with your foreign friends, not only with your country-player-base just after Blizzard having problems with their chinese servers and lost 6M players...

Of course this site support only the big guns and treat the players are cattle, after all its a free forum paid by the big guns... What have made me surprised was the RP article, because its was so naive to think that we could not see which side they were playing for, so clearly... And what is so idiotic is the same thing that happened with the financial crisis... Inconditional support to the stablishment and not know that what makes the wheel to roll are the people, above all of that... WE subscribers are the base of every game, starting to treat us as the most important thing in the process is a good business direction... Remember NGE, Aoc, etc... And, yes, if you try to save something and NOT make a RP server, for exemple, you will win now and lose later... No matter how much the stablishment thinks otherwise and asks you to support it....

/boycot

Originally posted by Domenicus

Originally posted by Scot

OMG a member of MMORPG.com staff not advocating that the business argument on a MMO issue is the best argument? What’s happening?

We have consistently been told recently by the staff and quest writers that the business argument is always the correct one. They don’t always call it the business argument, but that’s what it is, lets take a look at recent article ‘gems’.

We have been told that F2P (in reality RMT’s) are better than subscription games and that subscription games with a cash shop are better than MMO’s without one. We have been told that it is better if a new MMO can run on your granddad’s PC rather than push the graphic envelope forward. We have been told Roleplay servers are a fallacy they don’t work and are not needed.

Every single one of those article opinions means more revenue for the company and a poorer game for you the player. But now we move on to regional servers and the business argument is not the most important one, what’s happened? It seems us dumb players do not need to be educated into the right mode of business thinking this time.

Maybe the staff have woken up to the fact that it’s what players think is important too, not just company executives, but I doubt it.

 

Maybe they came out of the closet too largelly with the RP article, and now they are doing some kind of cosmetic support to customers after that... What I do know that it is an incridible coincidence that we are now talking about how important is to you to play with your foreign friends, not only with your country-player-base just after Blizzard having problems with their chinese servers and lost 6M players...

Of course this site support only the big guns and treat the players are cattle, after all its a free forum paid by the big guns... What have made me surprised was the RP article, because its was so naive to think that we could not see which side they were playing for, so clearly... And what is so idiotic is the same thing that happened with the financial crisis... Inconditional support to the stablishment and not know that what makes the wheel to roll are the people, above all of that... WE subscribers are the base of every game, starting to treat us as the most important thing in the process is a good business direction... Remember NGE, Aoc, etc... And, yes, if you try to save something and NOT make a RP server, for exemple, you will win now and lose later... No matter how much the stablishment thinks otherwise and asks you to support it....

RP servers are usually more trouble than they are worth, and for EXACTLY the reasons stated.  Real RP'ers tend to be a bit unstable to start with(I'm being charitable here... ^^) toss them all together on one server, and they can't even agree what color the sky is, let alone what is or is not Role Playing. Not to mention that they are the natural target for griefers, who seek to ruin other peoples experience. Given the technical and personnel resources required to do a RP server right, its just not worth it in all too many instances. As for the other... You should really be waving a copy of Das Kapitol as you exclaim "Gamers of the world UNITE! You have nothing to lose but your subscriptions!!"      

Russian here (add a cliched RA2-like accent at taste).

If avoiding local servers is an option for me, I will avoid them. I don't care if its cheaper, provides better ping and a boatload of russian players. Only 2 things can stop me - friends on local server and IP blocks.

I belive that good service sells itself, resorting to IP blocks speaks for itself... not that it matter, russian players already know what local publishers "service" is good for...

As usual, I nearly completely disagree with Dana Massey's points.

There ARE reasons why games can't do multiple languages/regions simultaneously. It's called money. You know, the one thing you always run out of as a small developer (or even big developers).

Plus, restricting by region can be due to publishing rights, etc. Or is the game developer supposed to be all powerful and say to all of its various publishers, you will allow anyone on your servers regardless of whether they paid you to play there! Um, no.

Then, of course, there's the "if you allow someone who wants to play on an Oceanic server to be with friends" play that way, they must deal with the lag of that connection, and all the problems that arise from it. Sure, most people have a basic idea of geography, but most certainly don't have a clue about how the internet works. So when they lag, they get upset, and tend to bad mouth the game as laggy, and eventually quit.

Besides that, people tend to play close to home because of the language barriers, culture, etc. So while having a choice is nice, does it make financial sense to try to open up a community which prefers to remain closed? Take EQ1 for example: The Nameless server was the server of choice for people from Taiwan, and various other servers were for the french, spanish, german, etc.

Sure, I met people from all parts of the world on my server, but most of them remained clumped up with people from their own areas. So the benefit to EQ1 for having one "world" collection of servers? Very small if any.

One thing for me and many other players is that I don't care where players come from, only that they play during the times I play. So in a game like EVE, I spent the first half of my "career" playing with UK peeps since I played during their primetime, and the second half playing with US peeps since I had gotten a "real job" and played during their primetime.

I guess that would be a plus for multi-region servers, since people that played outside of primetime would have groups to play with.

I certainly prefer servers that can be accessed by anyone on the globe.  My primary MMO is Anarchy Online, which has 3 servers, of which two are English global and one directed at the German community.  Any one can log into any of those servers, no matter where they are from.  Most Orgs of any size in the game consist of players from all regions.  My own Org could not move to a game like WoW or AoC simply because 1/2 of us are from the US, and 1/2 from Europe and the priority would be to maintain the group over the call of any new MMO.  Over the years we have developed friendships, gotten passports, and traveled overseas to visit each other.  This, to me, can be largely attributed to the existence of those globally-accessible MMO's.  Regionally locked MMO's just go counter to what the Internet itself encourages and represents and seem to encourage isolationism.

The EQ1 servers were great if you worked odd hours - I started playing these games precisely because I was working odd hours and wanted some way of socializing while the people I knew in RL were asleep. So I played with lots of awake yanks instead of sleeping brits.

More generally, if language is the number one barrier I'd say it would probably makes more sense from a financial point of view to have global servers if the language is going to be English - maybe not if the main language is something else.

I can see also see a ping problem for games that require fast response i.e twitch or PvP.

Overall though I'd hate to think I might have missed out on those EQ days because of regional servers.

Why goto all the trouble of making your prized MMO region restricted?

Wouldn't it be better to have region of the MMO world on various servers depending on their location?

For example, US would have a regional area. Oceanic would be another, then Europe and Asia.

More regions could then be created to fit into country laws. Then as a player I can either go into this region and play within those confines or go around this area and continue with others elsewhere.

If I'm playing from Australia and venture all the way to a region of European acreage, then it would also reflect their timezone too. So if I play at night here, there would be daytime. There is more than one way around this issue, I just think too many American Devs are more closed minded than the Chinese Governement.

At least by looking at the issues while playing an MMO, we all get to interact and iron out these issues without resorting to the need to segregate the world online too! For me this is the best part of the experience in multicultural MMO's. The more humans that get to know other humans will come to the same conclusion, we're all human.