[elucifer]

I'm not sure if this has been asked before but I did a search and I didn't find anything on it.

But will this game have any form of region blocking like what En Masse did with Tera?

[Soultaker]

we're not entirely sure since the official servers are not out yet.

[Notturno]

There was a thread on this subject, but you probably couldn't find it because it was poorly named.

My post from that thread...

Notturno, on Oct 30, 2012 - 4:01 PM, said:

Not likely, there's no reason to have a single server cluster for North America and Europe.

Due to the way internet piping works throughout the world, players connecting to a North American server from Europe, or vice versa, suffer high latency. While the overall speed of response is quite high, ranging from 120 to 250 millisecond delays, it's very long relatively speaking. Playing any game with latency over roughly 150 ms is very noticeable and results in a degraded quality of service; simply speaking, games suck when you have high ping replies. It doesn't make sense to provide a sub-par experience to an entire consumer region, so often you see services split between major geographical regions to reduce latency issues.

It's basically a given that there will be a North American service, and a European service. Whether the European service is ran by NCsoft's European subsidiary, or an outside publisher, is still unknown. Though based on the fact that Aion is their latest title and is ran by their European branch, it'll likely be NCsoft Europe that handles that region. The bonus of this is that if NCsoft is internally publishing for both North America and Europe, you likely won't see region locking. Region locks are typically reserved when an outside publisher wants to retain their ability to net customers within their region. Since NCsoft gets the money either way and do not need to worry about working with another company, there's really no reason to enforce any region locks.

In short, region locks likely won't exist since it looks like NCsoft will probably be publishing the game themselves in Europe and North America. You'll have regional servers, but there's not much of a reason to enforce region locks, so you shouldn't have an issue playing with your friends in Europe. Worst case scenario, you'll have to play through a VPN.

Basically, nobody is sure what is going to happen because there's no official announcement. However, there likely will not be a region lock because NCsoft is self-publishing the game in North America, Europe, Korea, and others. Region locks are done to protect publisher profits in different regions, but with this system NCsoft gets profits either way. As long as NCsoft is publishing in a region, don't expect that region to be locked.

[Lithia]

Going with what NC did already with Guild wars 2, I think it would be a stupid move
to go back to locking things like the way you fear.

One world-server: most likely not. We can only hope this will be done, but no.
Free choice what server-region to join: I don't see why not, its proven to be a well-received option in GW2,
I hope NC sees that this is something most people appreciate.

That said, there's no way to know for sure.


- Lith. ...Theory.

[Ghastly]

This is a discussion we need to have and which we should present to NCSoft West. I believe that they should give players an option to play within their region only or to join the "West" server which has US, Canda, and Europe. And a world server which is open to the Americas and Europe, and other countries too.

What we ask for is for the option to play internationally.

[Lyndis]

International options, perhaps. I can't say I am always on board with allowing any country to play on any server though. Its a tough decision to make from both marketing, distribution, balance, and even gameplay standpoints. Once we get an official discussion on this going I will lay out my present ideas.

[JemL]

The only reason why regions exist is because lag mainly, thats why they put EU with EU and NA with NA (is Canada, USA and Mexico, not only Canada and USA like someone stated) plus whole America always get directed to NA servers, such an argentinian

But ofc if someone from EU want to play in NA and dont care about a little higuer latency, theres absolutely no excuse of why they wouldnt let you do it, like now iam in NA but couldve log in to Korean servers with a huge lag, if there was no lag at all...they wouldnt need publisher and localization in the west and europe, they would need only translation, support language and that stuff.

This post has been edited by JemL: Nov 12, 2012 - 8:05 PM

[Mizuki]

If licensing calls for a block then probably, Persona 4 Arena was region blocked due to the English dubbing contract

Even if they do decide to block due to licensing you can use a proxy server to mask your IP

This post has been edited by Mizuki: Nov 12, 2012 - 8:16 PM

[Tashigi]

I hope they go the EME TERA way but this is NCSOFT; we all know it's not going to happen.
Anyway, there is also the ping issues. But if someone is willing to suffer through poor ping; it should be their choice. So... why not?

[Lyndis]

EDIT: Too off topic.

On topic, we will just have to wait until we get closer to launch to see what they have in store for the NA version.

This post has been edited by Lyndis: Nov 13, 2012 - 6:25 PM

[gunner429]

Honestly why would anyone want international play? As others have stated the hurt it puts on a players ping is just not worth it, especially in a game where ping can decide who lives and who dies.(In a sense). I guess if people want to suffer through that then by all means let them. Just don't allow it to affect other peoples game experience.

[JemL]

if you ask me, i would definately prefer one server for the whole world...but damn latency, damn you.

This post has been edited by JemL: Nov 14, 2012 - 3:14 AM

[Jett]

I would also like the game to be open to anyone to play. I have many friends from all over the world, and would like to be able to play with them.

[elucifer]

It is not a matter of ping issues. Fact of the matter is, the US launch is the only copy of this game that is available to some people. Whether or not latency is an issue is altogether another matter. Blocking any region just because of a latency issue is outright ridiculous.

Or even En Masse for the matter. I'm calling them out on it. They are a bunch of morons and their slanderous claim that the region they are blocking is because majority of the traffic are cyber criminals.

[Jett]

elucifer, on Nov 14, 2012 - 9:21 PM, said:

It is not a matter of ping issues. Fact of the matter is, the US launch is the only copy of this game that is available to some people. Whether or not latency is an issue is altogether another matter. Blocking any region just because of a latency issue is outright ridiculous.

Or even En Masse for the matter. I'm calling them out on it. They are a bunch of morons and their slanderous claim that the region they are blocking is because majority of the traffic are cyber criminals.

I agree. Look at perfect world my (before it closed) and perfect world international, they were open to the world, with more then just 1 server and had no problems, maybe a little lag here and there, but what MMO dosn't have lag?

However, the majority of cyber criminal activity is related to out of country sources. Even if the criminal happens to be in the US your Europe they are still using an IP to be traced to a county of another origin so they wont be caught as easily. However, to single out an entire country for the actions of some is pretty rediculous.