I  used to play with a international guild in World of Warcraft, well it was mainly UK based with members who were from the UK/Scotland/Ireland/North America before Blizzard broke up the guild and force seperate servers on us based on region. 

Reason they gave was that the EU put out a VAT internet Access Fee that every member of the of the EU had to pay to access the internet including playing any online games. 

They also claimed that if they allowed North American players to play on the EU servers we would have to pay more then $25 a month just to cover the VAT access fees that blizzard would have to pay for every north american player to play there. 

I think this is bullshit, Blizzard really drop the ball on this.  They became fearful of the VAT and the costs of doing business. 

Regional servers hurt in the long run. We in North America were not allowed to buy access to the EU/UK servers and EU/UK could not buy access to the North America Servers. 

I  missed my friends from the UK, we had good times. I still have access to my UK guild forums, they complain that the server they play on is low population and nearly dead.  Blizzard Europe has servers setup for different countries in the EU  and sometimes based on languages. 

Originally posted by Thalarius

I  used to play with a international guild in World of Warcraft, well it was mainly UK based with members who were from the UK/Scotland/Ireland/North America before Blizzard broke up the guild and force seperate servers on us based on region. 

Reason they gave was that the EU put out a VAT internet Access Fee that every member of the of the EU had to pay to access the internet including playing any online games. 

They also claimed that if they allowed North American players to play on the EU servers we would have to pay more then $25 a month just to cover the VAT access fees that blizzard would have to pay for every north american player to play there. 

I think this is bullshit, Blizzard really drop the ball on this.  They became fearful of the VAT and the costs of doing business. 

Regional servers hurt in the long run. We in North America were not allowed to buy access to the EU/UK servers and EU/UK could not buy access to the North America Servers. 

I  missed my friends from the UK, we had good times. I still have access to my UK guild forums, they complain that the server they play on is low population and nearly dead.  Blizzard Europe has servers setup for different countries in the EU  and sometimes based on languages. 

 

I know how that is. I've lost some good friends that way. I still hear from some, from time to time, but its not the same as playing with them on a daily basis. I can't really blame Blizzard though. Its the damn politicians and their eternal regulation, taxation and other such nonsense.  Look at WoW China for an example of how bad it gets. Millions of people lost their game, because some members of some Chinese ministry didn't get their pay off.  How that will turn out, who knows? Its all about power in the final analysis. Its too bad that business can not be conducted without having to deal with such corruption.

Original Post :

The beauty of the Internet is that it is - to invoke the cliché - a global village. MMOs need to be mindful of this. They're about social bonds and the formation of communities. The more they limit it, the more fractured their player base becomes, the harder it will be to keep people online.

This is probably the best summary about how MMO connects communities.

This is the same thing I talk in the post of MMO evolution last week or so.

Major title MMO these days still don't realize how important it is for online communities to be connected , and it is very frustrating.

As for regional MMO seperation, I believe there are still technical and poticial issues, and it is sad that game companies do not invest on how to improve and resolve these issues.

Major companies these days are still looking for ways to earn money rather than continously improving game genre, and it is a very sad thing.

BTW, this is an excellent acticle, excellent.

Perhaps Domenicus did over egg the social justice angle, but I agree broadly with what he says. What I was getting at Horusgirl, is not that the business argument has no relevance. Rather it seemed obvious that when looking at a range of issues over the last few months the staff and guest writers have always agreed with the business argument. Every article was about saving MMO companies money, and increasing their customer base. This one was not, which I thought was odd, considering the extremely company before player view being perpetuated here.

I do not believe this is because the staff have too much concern for where their advertising comes from, I do believe that they may well be spending too much time with company executives. While it is great for the site that we have staff getting the inside low down on what MMO companies think, I think they need to step back and not take everything that comes from MMO company staffers and pundits as gospel.
 

Oh and yes, I think this article is a fair summery of the pros and cons of a difficult issue for both MMO's and players.

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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).

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Still not a good enough reason to block people from playing in other regions, if they pay for it. It is actually arrogant to assume that people should be playing with their own language servers.

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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.

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Yes, but that was not Dana's core argument. I doubt you even read the article because he discussed this on the second paragraph.

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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.

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Non sequitur.
 

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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.

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Personal preferences. I could easily turn that argument other way around, but it would just be waste of time. Let's just say that WoW, for example, destroyed many global guilds.

While I understand the economics behind regionalisation of game, I find the enforced regionalisation of games counter productive.

I can only speak from my personal experience.  I am an Aussie living in Korea.  I teach EFL, it's my job.  I usually play  F2P games for personal reasons and I find regionalisation reduces the number of games I can play.

I find for many NA versions of these games I am blocked from playing, some even block me from viewing the website, so I cannot continue to join in the forums for these games.  I then try to legally join the Korean version of the game.  I have a Korean (foreigner) social security number that should (technically) allow me to play the game.  Unfortunately, most companies decline to use the database that will allow foriegner KSSN's to be read and alternative methods require jumping through hoops that would surprise you. 

It's not that I refuse to play the Korean language versions, I'm sure I would quite enjoy it if I could.  I can read Korean well enough that I can follow what is happening or at least do research in English. Its just that many Korean versions of games seem to actively hinder non-Koreans from playing the game even though they are resident in Korea

As a new media scholar who studies transnational play in virtual worlds, I was thrilled to read this article. Dana does an excellent job of acknowledging multiple sides of the issue. 

Some of you might have noticed postings from me in various MMORPG forums related to cross-cultural play. If anyone reading this thread is willing to chat about their experiences with international guilds, non-region-locked servers, and cross-cultural encounters in the gameworld, please feel free to contact me at transnationalgaming@gmail.com.

Thanks! 

Aaron Delwiche

Associate Professor 

Department of Communication

Trinity University

Originally posted by aaradun

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* :) 

 

 

 

I've pllayed EVE and i'm NA and main reason i stopped playing was becaue our PRIMETIME is dead time in EVE. most space other then JITA, core lvl 4 mission hubs is empty. Most of everything is empty for a fact. And  after DT is not rekevant really beceause it's middle of day for most of Europe (which is the core playerbase of this game). And 17k at noon is reallly a bad indication, it's like 300-500 people onine on a WoW server (IE:: dead) . It's not a whole lot. out of these 17k, 1-2k are AFK macro farmer, there's 3-4k of them in Jita area, another another good chunk is AFK in base somewhere waiting for a skill to finish, or AFK freighter pilots.

Most of 0.0 is empty, and your lucky if you find more then one or two people in non mission area or market area (Jita for example).

Finally, the 4% was a number i saw somewhere. It probably too low but North American does indeed make a very small number of EVE playerbase (i'd be suprised if it's more then 10%). In fact it's probaby more popular in NA if it did have iNA servers (but then again the game gets boring fast so who knows)

I've played EVE in NA, US East coast and I have to say, what part are you from because what you state is totally untrue.

Its busy as heck when I play, I've been in massive (400 vs 400) fleet battles in "empty" 0.0  (and ganked there several times while I'm ratting as well)

I've fought large empire wars against Merc Corps (with up to 75 people in my corp flying with me) at around 10 or 11 pm in the evening, so again I ask, what game where you playing?

I've played EVE right after downtime, as its a great time to run past gate camps btwn low sec and 0.0 and if you aren't quick enough or lucky, you still get tagged by a rapidly reforming camp.

I can't attest to actual numbers of NA players, but I actually know 5 here in my hometown, which is pretty amazing when you think of how small and distributed the player base is.

No, we have no issues with the number of players in EVE no matter what time of day, and if you check your star map you'll easily find systems at any time of day with a large number of pod kills within the last hour.

Which is why EVE is so great, you can always find a good corp to join that fits your prime play times and experience everything the game has to offer.

An EU/North America regional server/publisher split is one of my major dislikes and top marks to CCP for showing up other companies for being full of crap on this issue.

Originally posted by Renko

An EU/North America regional server/publisher split is one of my major dislikes and top marks to CCP for showing up other companies for being full of crap on this issue.

Exactly. But did you notice that even Eve has to have a server cluster in China?  Thats not due to technical issues. Its because the Chinese government demanded it.  Their attitude(like most governments) is we must control ALL, or we control nothing. In all too many cases one finds that its governments, rather than the companies involved that are interfering.

ping .. do i need to say more , how can there be such posts  on site like this..

i dont rly care if its going to be wow way , eu/america/asia , or vanguard/soe way,  all in one.. but servers located in those locations.. eu/usa etc

i rly dont care how perfect server you gona.. playing from eu in usa, probably gove give you atleast 50 ms.. bonus... not the bonus you would like..

second timezones.. wow. imagine global server.. i pick  server which is made of mostly lets say  everyone but european .. then lets say i play for week or two.. before i even notice.. cuz its lvling, game start blabla, you wont go grouping 24/7

in the end you either end up rerolling, browsing forums for unofficial european server.. so you can actually have more than 50 ppl online at a time.. cuz its middle of the night.. when its daytime for you ..

what kind of games you play.. to even ask such question.. you even mentioned your father.. chess isnt mmo.. chess is slow game.. without any concern about delay.. and no i do not wish to get up 6 am, before work.. so i can run instance..

Very great article. Unfortunately I believe this is soon to be a moot point as more and more gamers would rather just solo online multiplayer games, and the developers are heavily catering to them.

first  .. have mercy  ..... i just hada can of self made beer  at a little party  :)

second ....

realy strange about the first repley ....

shadowbane

i started playing in asian beta  and found  lot of nice people  to play  together and agaimst

in retail i was member of turkish  english and and some other  language dominated  groups .. i am german

i  was member of a guild lead bya chines guy i meet ... while we were in a german guild ... and joind a french aliance  ....  hahah .. it was way b4  the cn polarisatinon happened

was a lot of fun and realy good feeling to play and with all  those different kind of people ad cultures

 .. gbtw i was a guild leader of an english dominated guild for a while too  .....  

as a sidenote to devs and developers

DO NOT SEPERATE US  with those silly dedicted server  !!!!!

do not make it difficult  for us to play with people we like to play with

we players are able to  socialise with players  we like to  play with or against  if we like to

no matter which laguage or cultural background ... we can find each other  ...  if you give us the option in your design 

AND THATS ONE THING THAT MAKES MMORPG  A GREAT  WAY TO WASTE TIME

   hahaha

thanks for the oportunities  and damn youi if you prohibit them .......

Originally posted by Smikis

ping .. do i need to say more , how can there be such posts  on site like this..

i dont rly care if its going to be wow way , eu/america/asia , or vanguard/soe way,  all in one.. but servers located in those locations.. eu/usa etc

 

i rly dont care how perfect server you gona.. playing from eu in usa, probably gove give you atleast 50 ms.. bonus... not the bonus you would like..

 

second timezones.. wow. imagine global server.. i pick  server which is made of mostly lets say  everyone but european .. then lets say i play for week or two.. before i even notice.. cuz its lvling, game start blabla, you wont go grouping 24/7

in the end you either end up rerolling, browsing forums for unofficial european server.. so you can actually have more than 50 ppl online at a time.. cuz its middle of the night.. when its daytime for you ..

 

what kind of games you play.. to even ask such question.. you even mentioned your father.. chess isnt mmo.. chess is slow game.. without any concern about delay.. and no i do not wish to get up 6 am, before work.. so i can run instance..

 

 

The article was about giving players the freedom to choose. I firmly believe that servers should also list where they physically are, so that players can make an educated choice (especially when it comes to ping). FPS games do this very well, usually.

You're focusing on a detail that is irrelevent to the larger debate. The entire premise is about choice, not about forcing you to do anything. If to you ping is the single most important thing, then clearly you'll pick the connection server. If you play during "regular" hours, you'll pick a server that fits that style.

As this thread shows, lots of North Americans play at "European" times and so on. To them, another server might be more attractive. As it stands now, too many games make that choice for their players.

(and even EVE has a Chinese world)

is pretty clear that Dana have no idea about the Chinese law, in order to sell a MMO in China u must have the server in china (and even EVE has a Chinese world) so this line sound pretty stupid to me

edit: for that reason i hope the eve chinese server will die soon(TM)

Originally posted by cosy

(and even EVE has a Chinese world)

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is pretty clear that Dana have no idea about the Chinese law, in order to sell a MMO in China u must have the server in china (and even EVE has a Chinese world) so this line sound pretty stupid to me

 

edit: for that reason i hope the eve chinese server will die soon(TM)

Yes, as I said the Chinese dictatorship demands that Eve have a cluster in China.   They have a very restrictive attitude towards foreign games(and business in general) there.  Its a good thing that CCP is in Iceland instead of the US. Other wise the ITAR regulations would have forbidden shipping some of that advanced hardware/software to mainland China.

 I wish all EU games where managed by USA people.  Looking a tthe services and quality the USA guys get, I am jealous. 

Not only that, there are companys like GOA, and having your game managed by these guys is like stepping on a mine.  GOA are cool people, but follow the standards of  france bureocrats.  And that is a down as you can get. Lower it 1 point, and you get Kafka-ske management. 

EU region: DO NOT WANT!

Originally posted by thexrated

 

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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).

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Still not a good enough reason to block people from playing in other regions, if they pay for it. It is actually arrogant to assume that people should be playing with their own language servers.

 Your answer has nothing to do with mine. *boggle*

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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.

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Yes, but that was not Dana's core argument. I doubt you even read the article because he discussed this on the second paragraph.

 Its a huge factor on why the current games don't do global servers unrestricted anymore. Back in EQ1 days, because Sony was the publisher AND the developer, we had unrestricted servers because SOE had no reason to restrict them. But if you wanted the game and it wasn't published in your country, you had to order from somewhere else... from Sony. Sure, SOE can do it, Blizzard can probably do it outside of China, but most other devs cannot be both publisher and developer.

Dana's second paragraph was prompty shot down by his 3rd. He obviously didn't grasp just how important it is to publishers who host servers that people PAY them to run them. Its a simple concept.

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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.

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Non sequitur.
 

Your response is a typical "I don't have a rebuttal, so I'll just say it doesn't make sense" cop-out.

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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.

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Personal preferences. I could easily turn that argument other way around, but it would just be waste of time. Let's just say that WoW, for example, destroyed many global guilds.

 You can thank Vivendi for that. The EU company is a seperate corporate identity than the US, the profits are seperate, so they "compete" versus each other.  Besides, for each "global" guild that was "destroyed", it appears many "regional" ones were formed to take their place...

I just want every MMO to be set up like GW. I know that it had a lot of problems, but instancing towns from the outside world does not bother me. You would not need to promote soloing in the way GW does (outside of PvP obviously, which is their main audience, I think), but you could have iterations (Districts in GW) of both towns and open world areas. This solves the problem of people camping mobs for whatever reason. They can simply go to a private iteration. You can still come across players in the game world, but not be overrun by hundreds of people trying to do the same quests (think release day or any content update for any game with a decently sized population). Add to that the fact that they very, very rarely have any reason to discontinue service. If they take down one server for maintenance, the nature of their system allows any number of other servers to take over. You can go to iterations of the world hosted on servers near to you, or far from you, or wherever the hell you like. It's a beautiful thing.

Now, I'm kind of sad, thinking how lacking that game is in other respects. At any rate, that is, in my opinion, the only real solution for the problem posited by this thread. And it's a good one.

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Your response is a typical "I don't have a rebuttal, so I'll just say it doesn't make sense" cop-out.

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No, it indicates your failure/lapse in logic. An argument that does not make much sense. Why rebute it?