Resolved - PS2 Region

[NewSith]

Well then just patch over VPN. Patches will be probably different. EU version will have more localizations, and probably need to be changed to connect to different account system.

I imagine a seriously fucked up registry on my PC if that's true :(...

The FAQ states that SOE will still control the servers and that patches "should" be at the same time "however timezones and local issues may cause slight delays" lets face it in SOE world a slight delay could be months.

Well, delay can only be on publisher's behalf, so we'll see.

[Lunarchild]

Then without trying to troll or offend you, you aren't doing it right.

You can make anything, well .. anything. It just takes time if it's intricate.

Shit here I go, better do it before I start drinking...

bare with me as this is as simplistic as I can make it.

DNS - domain naming server
With this you get a name (usually almost always numbers, but i can be alpha numeric on some systems, not windows though) from a domain server, simple enough right?

IP - internet protocol
with this you get an address from the protocol identifying who you are.

WINS - windows internet naming server
this is a bit complicated, but it gives tons of options on a 2003 /2008 windows server.

If it gets half assed intricate you will need to learn to modify wins, but i doubt it will go anywhere near that far.

SO. DNS gives you your name. You get your DNS from? Your internet provider.
SO. IP gives you your address, where you live. You get IP from? Your internet provider.

SO. when you do any lookup at all except for machine name, you look up their address, you want to know where they live, so you look up there IP. NOW.

If you change your domain naming servers, when SOE says "hey mother fucker, who is you fool" the IP protocol then looks at the domain naming server, and says "fool im in china" ...........

Does that make sense? It's actually quite easy when you learn the terminology if you break it down from the start.. I had a great teacher.

Geo-IP has nothing to do with DNS. Basically IPs are given out in blocks, and these blocks are given out to ISPs, and then registered as to which ISP they belong to, and in which country they reside. For this you don't need Geo-IP, though, just a ping using the WHOIS protocol.

Geo-IP is a technology with which a number of companies maintain a database with exact locations of connections. They get these by paying ISPs. This means they don't have all of them, but using the WHOIS protocol, they do always have the country.

DNS itself does not have location information at all. They can just happen to have a TLD that is maintained by a certain country.

http://www.ip-address.org/tracer/ip-whois.php
http://www.geoiptool.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolocation_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois

I'm sorry, I studies this in the Dutch equivalent of High School.

At any rate, I still really hope that SOE will rethink the blocking of Europeans to their game servers. There are better ways to achieve whatever you need than blocking people. But that is a lesson media conglomerates don't seem to want to learn. Especially big media companies in Hollywood seem to be dead against it, which is why we have piracy now.

[Hamma]

Geo-IP has nothing to do with DNS. Basically IPs are given out in blocks, and these blocks are given out to ISPs, and then registered as to which ISP they belong to, and in which country they reside. For this you don't need Geo-IP, though, just a ping using the WHOIS protocol.

Geo-IP is a technology with which a number of companies maintain a database with exact locations of connections. They get these by paying ISPs. This means they don't have all of them, but using the WHOIS protocol, they do always have the country.

DNS itself does not have location information at all. They can just happen to have a TLD that is maintained by a certain country.

http://www.ip-address.org/tracer/ip-whois.php
http://www.geoiptool.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolocation_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois

I'm sorry, I studies this in the Dutch equivalent of High School.

At any rate, I still really hope that SOE will rethink the blocking of Europeans to their game servers. There are better ways to achieve whatever you need than blocking people. But that is a lesson media conglomerates don't seem to want to learn. Especially big media companies in Hollywood seem to be dead against it, which is why we have piracy now.
Lunar saved me the trouble.

Anyway - please lets get back on topic. Those of you who provided constructive feedback please continue to do so!

Please keep this thread on topic - this means no more debate about Proxies and bypassing IP blocking.

[XPquant]

Segregating the player base is a recipe for disaster. Let me play with my friends!

[Carbanu]

Well I have done really all I can do, voice my concern and disagreement where they told us to. The rest is up to them.

Let's hope we aren't disappointed.

Sad day for online gaming.

[NewSith]

Lunar saved me the trouble.

Anyway - please lets get back on topic. Those of you who provided constructive feedback please continue to do so!

Please keep this thread on topic - this means no more debate about Proxies and bypassing IP blocking.

I want to point out the new policy is a joke for sure.




Otherwise we're fucked and both our hype and PS2 dev team resolve were for nothing.

/thread

[Mastachief]

Pretty much this will mean that everything about PS2 from a euro perspective will be "meh what ever, what other games can i look at now"

[Zulthus]

"Oh no, it's the end of the world."


This is not "killing the game" as everyone is saying and there will very likely be a way to get around it even if it DOES end up like this. I disagree with SOE's decision and believe it will only segregate the playerbase further, however.

You EU players know you'll still play the game anyway...

[Raymac]

Pretty much this will mean that everything about PS2 from a euro perspective will be "meh what ever, what other games can i look at now"

Why? Because you can't play with the "cool kids" over in the States? Because the customer service will be by a newer company which may give better, worse, or equal service?

I can understand not being happy about being split apart, but is it THAT big of a deal?

[NewSith]

"Oh no, it's the end of the world."


This is not "killing the game" as everyone is saying and there will very likely be a way to get around it even if it DOES end up like this. I disagree with SOE's decision and believe it will only segregate the playerbase further, however.

You EU players know you'll still play the game anyway...

Killing the game has to do with a restriction that will add a negative coloring for people considering the "purchase" of the game. Less players = worse. Besides I'm quite sure magazine critics will bite onto this as hungry dogs...

[Xaine]

"Oh no, it's the end of the world."


This is not "killing the game" as everyone is saying and there will very likely be a way to get around it even if it DOES end up like this. I disagree with SOE's decision and believe it will only segregate the playerbase further, however.

You EU players know you'll still play the game anyway...

Pretty much this.

I'm not happy about it, but i'll still play alot. Alot of people seem to be walking around wearing sandwich boards and building giant boats, gathering two of every animal...

The game will still work, and it should still be good.

[ThGlump]

Otherwise we're fucked and both our hype and PS2 dev team resolve were for nothing.

Well i wont or more accurately cant promote game to my friends. "Hey there is very cool game. But i wont play it with you as i will be using anything posible to play on servers with worse connection". I simply cant tell that to somebody who i want to hook to planetside.
All i can is to convince those, whitch are already prepared to play this to try with me sneak to US server.

[NEWSKIS]

When I was playing PS1, after the first year or 2, the only reason I continued to play was because of my outfit. I've been playing games with them for going on 8 years. If it wasnt for my outfit ( half of which were in europe ), I would have quit PS after about 2 years instead of paying for over 7 years of a subscription. I don't know how splitting the playerbase makes any sense.

I've always been on the side of I won't pass judgement on whether I will play a game or not before I actually try it, but this is the first thing that might actually make me not bother with the game.

[Hezzy]

I spent my entire Planetside career playing with an American outfit. Now what?

[Mastachief]

Why? Because you can't play with the "cool kids" over in the States? Because the customer service will be by a newer company which may give better, worse, or equal service?

I can understand not being happy about being split apart, but is it THAT big of a deal?

History shows us that these types of deals never work out well for the customer. Outsourcing is bad for the customer always has been.

" Hey there is this bug lets track and report it to the DEV's...... no wait we can't "

" Wouldn't it be nice to have a big assed dragon? No you are european you are not one of our customers thus your opinion/thoughts or ideas count for nothing "

Big assed slippery slope, in short yes it is that big a deal.

[Reginald]

At the end of the day I would rather play with my buddies from overseas and rage at the +200ms bastards than play by myself with a bunch of greenies with sub 100 ping. And don't give me that bull about making new friends on local servers. I have IRL friends/family who live overseas that I would like to play with.

[ThGlump]

"Oh no, it's the end of the world."


This is not "killing the game" as everyone is saying and there will very likely be a way to get around it even if it DOES end up like this. I disagree with SOE's decision and believe it will only segregate the playerbase further, however.

You EU players know you'll still play the game anyway...

Its killing the game for me. If i cant play with my soe account, i wont play. I will be sad about it, but i have my principles.

Now my only hope ism that my former worst nightmare will come true, and ps2 will end as BF3online. Then i wont be that sad im missing it.

[WarChimp130]

I say send all those dirty Euro's back to Werner where they belong! I don't want to have to figure out how many Dutch Loonies or whatever currency they have it'll cost to buy things, or how many meters my weapon shoots. USA! USA! USA!


Seriously though, some of my best gamer friends are from Europe so I hope this doesn't effect us playing together. This will tear the Overlords apart if we can't have Hitman and Khrin!

[ThGlump]

Give me back werner and ill be happy. Even with that lazy hamster.

[Zulthus]

Its killing the game for me. If i cant play with my soe account, i wont play. I will be sad about it, but i have my principles.

Now my only hope ism that my former worst nightmare will come true, and ps2 will end as BF3online. Then i wont be that sad im missing it.

I know you say that now, but trust me, once PS2 releases, you'll be playing it and having a great time.

[Mag]

I spent my entire Planetside career playing with an American outfit. Now what?

If we're not able to play in the same squad, I'm going to kill some bitches.

As an aside, has anyone considered putting together an online petition to make it abundantly clear how counter to customer desires this decision is?

[ThGlump]

I know you say that now, but trust me, once PS2 releases, you'll be playing it and having a great time.

Im stubborn, trust me. Little example. I really wanted to play skyrim, i was really hyped for it. But then they didnt allow to buy it on steam in my country. I could easily go to nearest shop to buy localized version and play. But i still havent played that game. I have my principles.

[Lunarchild]

I know you say that now, but trust me, once PS2 releases, you'll be playing it and having a great time.

Maybe, but that won't stop me from thinking every moment I play it: If only I could play this game with my friends ^^

[Tapman]

TL,DR: I hope we all get to play together, people should learn to calm down though.

My optimistic tendencies tell me that there is a question here that hasn't been completely worked out yet between the Euro and US tech departments syncing their systems and being able to handle the bandwidth that would be required to make PS2 a global sensation. If this is the case, please try to get it fixed before Beta so that Outfits can translate well together. Otherwise, this will have to be be a must-finish before release.

Outfits are going to help set the tone and the pace of Planetside 2. This should start during Beta and could have enormous weight by release. They developed their communication skills, ranks, and discipline throughout Planetside, truly developing a dynamic that can be admired and feared. There will be plenty of future leaders of Planetside 2 who did not participate in Beta but the fact is that you have the chance to tap an amazing resource, highly trained and highly motivated groups who can do several things for you.

Obviously, a group that already communicates well can give you the best footage possible for a trailer. Breaking up these groups based on international borders would detract from your marketing material. On a similar note, why would you want to antagonize your most avid fans, participants in the world of social media? Not a threat or anything, more that I believe there is enough attention being paid that would warrant more clarity in released information.

Having people of every nationality is one of the reasons Auraxis is so amazing, it truly feels like a diverse section of humanity taken directly from Earth with all of the cultural misconceptions, personalities, accents, stories, etc. SOE is directly/accidentally responsible for this, they combined Planetside's servers until we all became one big melting pot. Taking this away would be several cruel and irresponsible steps in the wrong direction.

I read every post in this thread (after Hamma cleaned it up a bit) and while I'm glad there is outcry over possible meanings of poorly stated information, I am still disappointed that so many folks immediately revert to the broken record assumption that SOE has to fuck this up somehow and this might as well be it for all anyone knows. The simple fact is that there has been no official response since then to confirm one way or another, meaning that this may not be settled.

With that said, I remember being told that SOE intended on taking care of their veterans. I hope they honor that in regards to this issue. If they don't, I will gripe and mope about it, but I'll still play. If they do, I would feel much more inclined to give them more of my hard-earned money at the shop and continue to do my part in spreading the word.

[Mastachief]

To quote one of our American players from our outfit that just posted this to my facebook.

"just saw that article from SZOE you posted. What a bunch of crap. Guess I won't bother with the game, never did like playing on the US servers, that is why I played with you guys. Who comes up with this sort of nonsense anyways?"

It no just your European customers you are upsetting SOE. It does make me ponder if our IP addresses will be akin to some sort of arm patch that labels us as europeans so we are easily fenced into................

[ThGlump]

My optimistic tendencies tell me that there is a question here that hasn't been completely worked out yet between the Euro and US tech departments syncing their systems and being able to handle the bandwidth that would be required to make PS2 a global sensation. If this is the case, please try to get it fixed before Beta so that Outfits can translate well together. Otherwise, this will have to be be a must-finish before release.

Once they separate accounts its done. There is no way to have players with different account types/systems on one server. That would be really mess. Selling accounts to pro7 is forced segregation of community.

[Figment]

History shows us that these types of deals never work out well for the customer. Outsourcing is bad for the customer always has been.

" Hey there is this bug lets track and report it to the DEV's...... no wait we can't "

" Wouldn't it be nice to have a big assed dragon? No you are european you are not one of our customers thus your opinion/thoughts or ideas count for nothing "

Big assed slippery slope, in short yes it is that big a deal.

Not to mention that localization means every new patch needs 20 translations.

Some of those localization packages may be using babblefish quality and all those language changes can cause a week or two delay before these patches go live. Meaning you have to live with bugs and exploits just that bit longer than people on other (read: US) servers and as such as a community can end up more vulnerable to negative effects such as population losses over annoying trivialities that keep lasting, etc. Different quality and speed of dealing with cheats and immature /comall and /c spammers as well.

That certainly was true for Werner... The latter may be something that could improve under pro7, we may get our own events, we may get GMs awake during our hours and we may benefit in some other ways. But we'd still not be playing with our long term buddies...


Even slightly improved local service doesn't warrant basically selling a whole playerbase to another company without the option to play elsewhere and with friends.

[Boogster]

This is fucked up.

Why bother restricting people? Most people will gravitate to their local server, given the choice, but one of the joys of online gaming is the opportunity to meet people who aren't local. PS has an existing community that could be the foundation of a really great, genre-breaking game. Instead, PS2 will be a second class, second hand game for the Euros.

Beta will in all likelihood be a US thing, and if SOE think people are angry now, just wait until that announcement.

[polywomple]

well we know which server is going to have the lowest population *rimshot*

[BorisBlade]

I can understand outsourcing to asian regions because its quite a different culture with different rules and standards and so much thats not compatible. But outsourcing for Europe is a terrible idea.

And as Basti has said many times, they make it sound like its region locked so they can get your business, greedy fuckers. But the reality is you just need to buy the us version and use an SOE account, and never make the Pros...whatever account.

And seriously, SOE has always been badly managed, badly organized, and terrible at dealing with issues or managing games. If any of you ever expected any better you really need to come back down to reality. I hope the game does well but i would bet any amount of money that SOE will do a buttload of really stupid things along the way that really hold their game down massively from what it could do.

Its not hard to do games right, just stop and think when you make a decision :"would Valve or Blizzard do this?". Whether or not you like any of their games, they do AAA quality with their games and managing them. Some things you may not like but they do improve the overall game. Their focus is on making the best game and giving the best user experience, the money comes in by itself when you do that. SOE goes straight to the money focusing on that and leaving the game and customer experience lower down on the list, and so in the end makes a lot less money. Until they see that as a problem and address it, they will continue to make stupid mistakes.

[Fenrys]

"would Valve or Blizzard do this?"

The entity formerly known as Blizzard doesn't exist anymore. They were purchased by Activision, who continues to milk the name but has long since digested and excreted the substance.

[Chinchy]

I'm more happy than sad about this I won't have to see ruskies or CN or BR did you know statistically the BR have the biggest hacking to non-hacking ratio in the world. Kinda sad that the rest of EU and Aussie is segregated from us there isn't much of a cultural barrier there dunno whats up with that.

[Saintlycow]

I can understand outsourcing to asian regions because its quite a different culture with different rules and standards and so much thats not compatible. But outsourcing for Europe is a terrible idea.

And as Basti has said many times, they make it sound like its region locked so they can get your business, greedy fuckers. But the reality is you just need to buy the us version and use an SOE account, and never make the Pros...whatever account.



FTP ftw. If this were paid I'd be even more mad

[Lonehunter]

I just want to point out Planetside 2 won't be the only game this happens to. So the decision SOE is making with this change isn't dependent on our community.

I'm sure our opinion matters, and I'm sure there are Clans in those games who don't want to be split. But I don't think it's going to effect them as much because they've had more European servers then PS1.

In PS1 the American servers seemed like the popular global choice, so naturally we have a bigger uproar about being split up.

[Ragefighter]

anyone know how this would effect a person who might travel and play on the road?
hope there is enough population to sustain good battles through out the day and night
Like if someone were to fly to UK who comes form the US and try to play a SOE game.

after thinking about this, I tend to lean towards ProSiebenSat.1 being a kinda forced choice. like maybe you can buy the US version or euro version. hope they are not locked though, as it would put a bunch of people who travel in a bad spot, and most of the military members who might play from a base overseas might need to make a whole new account to play at home, or people that work odd hours in any part of the world. here is to hoping they give us an option.

I am hoping for the best but fearing the worst. =p

lets hope there is room for changes in the contract. putting PS2 and EQ3 on this means it is a very long term thing.

One of the big reasons I like SOE is that they build and market their games(albeit they don't market too well, but that seems to be changing with games like PS2). there is no Activision or EA to screw it up.

[Ragefighter]

I'm more happy than sad about this I won't have to see ruskies or CN or BR did you know statistically the BR have the biggest hacking to non-hacking ratio in the world. Kinda sad that the rest of EU and Aussie is segregated from us there isn't much of a cultural barrier there dunno whats up with that.

is there any word that Aussie players are included in this? I figured they would be put in with the US.

[Ragefighter]

I just want to point out Planetside 2 won't be the only game this happens to. So the decision SOE is making with this change isn't dependent on our community.

I'm sure our opinion matters, and I'm sure there are Clans in those games who don't want to be split. But I don't think it's going to effect them as much because they've had more European servers then PS1.

In PS1 the American servers seemed like the popular global choice, so naturally we have a bigger uproar about being split up.

lol the other communities are pissed off too.
the EQ2 players are really pissed, ready to form an angry mob with pitchforks and torches =p

other games they sell can be played with like pings of 300+ and have little issues. so it is not a huge deterrent for them to choose a far away server if it means more dense population.

[Blue]

Thank copyright and power mongering "anti-terrorism" lobbying for crap like this, which is clearly designed to facilitate surveillance by regional authority and curtail cross cultural uprising against the establishment. Don't think so? Keep up with news...

THIS ^

Severely limiting my enthusiasm for PS2. More so than no veh ent/exit animations.:no:

[The Admiral]

The ping argument is dross, anyone who plays on DSL is going to have a 150+ ping that is worse than someone in Europe with cable, should we put them on a separate lag server as well?

[Beagle]

In modern business, it's important to always go for maximum profit even at the cost of completely fucking over your incredibly supportive customer base.

[Chinchy]

The ping argument is dross, anyone who plays on DSL is going to have a 150+ ping that is worse than someone in Europe with cable, should we put them on a separate lag server as well?

Yes Label it OTHER server stick the BR, CN and RUSS in there as well

[Fenrys]

In modern business, it's important to always go for maximum profit even at the cost of completely fucking over your incredibly supportive customer base.

The people at Valve would disagree. (http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/valves-gabe-newell-talks-wearable-computers-rewarding-players-and-whether-w/all)

Fucking over your customers in the video game industry is just tossing profits down the toilet.

Recently I was in a meeting and there’s a company that had a third party DRM solution and we showed them look, this is what happens, at this point in your life cycle your DRM got hacked, right? Now let’s look at the data, did your sales change at all? No, your sales didn’t change one bit. Right? So here’s before and after, here’s where you have DRM that annoys your customers and causing huge numbers of support calls and in theory you would think that you would see a huge drop off in sales after that got hacked, and instead there was absolutely no difference in sales before or after. You know, and then we tell them you actually probably lost a whole bunch of sales as near as we can tell, here’s how much money you lost by bundling that with your product.

It’s not the games that are out there today, it’s the games that we don’t – haven’t even thought of yet that are gonna end up being important. I would push them very hard to stop thinking of themselves as being a platform for everything that already exists and start betting on the inventiveness and the benefits that you would get by embracing a more open approach to the internet and game delivery and game business models and things like that.

Do you think that’s something that the corporate culture of places like Sony and to a greater extent it seems Microsoft would ever be willing to embrace?

I think that you either embrace the new approaches or you go away. I mean Sega and Atari and lots of other, you know, Vectrex, Commodore, you either figure out how to move forward or you get left behind and I don’t think it’s any different. As soon as Valve stops doing interesting, innovative work we’re gonna be left behind and we’ve all been around long enough in the game industry to know that and you have to be pretty myopic not to realize that just because something used to work a certain way there’s absolutely no reason for them to expect that that’s going to be the tickets to being successful in subsequent iterations. So whether or not they do it is a harder question to answer than is change inevitable and some people manage to make transitions. You know, if you ask me I thought Nintendo’s ability to make the transition from 2D to 3D was one of the hardest and yet also one of the most successful transitions that occurred in our industry. So people can do it but as soon as people stop somebody else will step in and keep the industry moving forward. That occurs a lot faster when you have open approaches. There’s sort of a hedging strategy, you can say everybody has to do everything exactly our way and as long as everybody has to put up with that degree of oversight and control on your part then your margins probably go up and your ability to make other people do stuff probably improves, but the problem with that is that when you fall you fall really fast and I think there’s so many examples of that in the history of our industry that you just, you know, some people will embrace those lessons and other people will be sending out their resumes.

[Traak]

I think this also opens people to prosecution who cheat or sell cheats.

A crime against Sony in the US, by someone in the US, could lead to prosecution.

Heck, they just kicked someone out of the US at an airport for having pirated DVD's. Interesting to see the same happen with cheatmongers.

[Death2All]

How does the potential region locking effect players not wanting to play on different country's servers.

Say for instance I'm from the US and I get the best ping from an East Coast based server....Am I going to be able to play on a West Coast based server? Or does region locking prevent me from even doing that?


Also, I'm not ignoring the fact that Euro players are definitely getting the shaft on this, I'm just wanting clarification/maybe putting things in perspective for some of the IDIOTS I've seen posting in this thread.


Yes, let's sacrifice friendships and bonds that have been made and the general freedom of being able to do what you want so you don't "get killed around corner".

Ping was such an issue in PS1 because of the awful net-coding and CSHD. You need to expand your library of gaming, maybe then you'd understand that there's plenty of games that handle high pings just fine as the result of proper coding.

:mad::mad::mad:

[VioletZero]

I don't see how this is an issue. Other than potentially EU customers -possibly- not getting as good as a deal as the US based players, this isn't really that bad.

In my experience, EU and US players always hate each other's guts. And given how Planetside 2 is an FPS, I doubt people want to play on any server but the ones closest to them. So...not that bad really.

But if it is an issue of outsourcing always leading to problems I can understand.

[Death2All]

I don't see how this is an issue. Other than potentially EU customers -possibly- not getting as good as a deal as the US based players, this isn't really that bad.

In my experience, EU and US players always hate each other's guts. And given how Planetside 2 is an FPS, I doubt people want to play on any server but the ones closest to them. So...not that bad really.

But if it is an issue of outsourcing always leading to problems I can understand.


Unless I'm getting you confused with someone else...You said you've never played PS1, correct?


Who are you to say that it isn't an issue that people who've been playing together for YEARS don't get to play with eachother now because of region locking?

I have a few European and even some Chinese people in my outfit that I've become great friends with, I'd really hate to not be able to play with them in PS2 and I'm sure the feeling is mutual for them.

[VioletZero]

Unless I'm getting you confused with someone else...You said you've never played PS1, correct?


Who are you to say that it isn't an issue that people who've been playing together for YEARS don't get to play with eachother now because of region locking?

I have a few European and even some Chinese people in my outfit that I've become great friends with, I'd really hate to not be able to play with them in PS2 and I'm sure the feeling is mutual for them.

Well, I know it was only implied but I basically said that Europeans hate my guts for being American. In every MMO I've ever played where Europeans and Americans played together, Europeans couldn't go two minutes without starting a flame war over how terrible Americans are.

Though, this does raise the question: Why even have EU servers at all? Save money and have a larger community. As WoW proves, larger community means that you're more likely to get more players.

[dsi]

Well, I know it was only implied but I basically said that Europeans hate my guts for being American. In every MMO I've ever played where Europeans and Americans played together, Europeans couldn't go two minutes without starting a flame war over how terrible Americans are.

Though, this does raise the question: Why even have EU servers at all? Save money and have a larger community. As WoW proves, larger community means that you're more likely to get more players.

In team based games no one really cares where you're at as long as you can speak(type) a bit of english/use the game's quick commands.

[RedKnights]

I think this is a terrible decision on SONY's part. What is going to happen to all of the Europeans that we currently play with in Planetside 1?

Years ago SOE forced the entirety of the Planetside community together onto one server, Gemini. As populations dropped further these people joined our East coast outfits, as we have joined theirs, and have formed a strong fighting force and community. In my outfit today several of the most important members are British, German and Swedish. What is going to happen when we are forced apart, and split forcibly like this?

I can tell you almost no person that currently plays Planetside is going to be happy about this decision. But lets be honest, we're all going to play Planetside 2, even if we have to be separated. Why? Because you have no competition. As much well as your wonderful development team has treated the community, the company that manages this property after they're gone cares nothing about the community, and has done nothing but treat us poorly.

So if a competitor comes along for the MMOFPS genre, say Bungie or Respawn Entertainment, both companies that know how to treat a community well, and it is more freely administrated, where do you think all these veterans, with money to spend as we have been spending it for years, are going to go and play? We're going to go to them, and that's where we're going to play, and spend our money, because then we can play with our friends and comrades.

I don't think any of us are ever going to forget how poorly Planetside 1 was managed after the development team left. Bad balances, bug fixes that took years, GM's who let hackers run rampant, or abused their powers with impunity.

Now, the first biggest hit to Planetside 2 players is the alienation of a large portion of the people that already play together? That is not a good start, that is not how a company should be run, and this is not how a community should be treated.

Higby, Radar and the other developers and community managers understand exactly what the heads at SOE have done. Planetside 2 and EQ Next are the last chances for SOE to remain a relevant player in the gaming industry. I don't understand why they would do anything that would risk failure, which I feel would mean the end of their company, in my eyes as a customer, at least.

All I can ask of you guys is you try to make them understand that we want to play together, on the same server, because that's the point of any MMO. If they don't understand the importance of community in the MMO business, they don't deserve to be in it.

[Goku]

In team based games no one really cares where you're at as long as you can speak(type) a bit of english/use the game's quick commands.

This.

[Beagle]

I have no idea how you can come into a 21 page thread of people angry about being split up from their friends and then say "I don't get it, what are you guys so upset about? Outsourcing?"

Planetside 1 outfits are not the only people being split up by this move. Gaming is wonderfully global and brings tons of different cultures together. I live in Australia. I have friends in Canada, the US, the UK and the rest of Europe. We play a lot of games together and in almost every case, ping is only as much of a problem as you let it be, especially considering if we all meet on a US server the farthest of us are hitting 210ms at most.

Not having friends from overseas and not understanding the angry response to this move on a personal level is one thing, but straight up ignoring the pages and pages of people saying exactly why they are angry is straight up retarded.

[p0intman]

I wish I could say I was surprised.

I'm not. Infact, I'm pretty sure I said something like this would happen.

I'm reminded quite vividly by reading the official forums reply thread with what happened with BFRS: The community raged because of it, then split and shattered. Sony did jack all about it.

Good luck getting this reversed, as I doubt it will happen. The track record speaks for itself, Sony rarely if ever backpeddals or reverses these things.

[HitbackTR]

Well colour me surprised.

[Hmr85]

This is something SOE needs to fix ASAP. The longer they let this fester the worse its going to get. There is absolutely no need for it. I know some outfit mates that are good friends that will not be able to play with us. I think this is complete BS. Fix it SOE and show us you are a changed company and not just reverting back to your old ways.

[CutterJohn]

Well, I know it was only implied but I basically said that Europeans hate my guts for being American. In every MMO I've ever played where Europeans and Americans played together, Europeans couldn't go two minutes without starting a flame war over how terrible Americans are.

Though, this does raise the question: Why even have EU servers at all? Save money and have a larger community. As WoW proves, larger community means that you're more likely to get more players.

1. You played with asshole europeans then, or you take criticism far too seriously. I've never experienced or even heard of people talking like this.

2. Wow has servers everywhere. Some are region locked. Blizzard is extremely bad about this, pointlessly region locking both SC2 and D3(But they kindly allow you to purchase another client to get back the functionality you used to have in D2/SC:BW/WC3/etc :rolleyes:).

3. Its an issue because it is pointless, and serves no purpose other than to get rid of functionality we used to expect in games, for no reason other than they expect to profit more somehow. IF they just did this for PS2, I could maybe sorta but not really buy an excuse about pings(but not really since I'm pretty sure they'll let people in alaska and hawaii play on east coast servers). But they are doing this to almost every SOE game, none of which, other than PS2, is really affect by pings to a great degree(and have been functioning just fine as they are for years).

[VioletZero]

While this isn't the end of the world, I do have to ask: If SOE doesn't care about its playerbase then why even get EU servers at all? Just funnel everyone into U.S. servers who cares about latency right?

Region locking in general is something that's always bugged me. Does anyone actually know why region locking exists in the first place? Because I don't. Even if you don't care about your playerbase like people here imply, that doesn't account for why they even bother region locking.

[Mister101]

The ping argument is dross, anyone who plays on DSL is going to have a 150+ ping that is worse than someone in Europe with cable, should we put them on a separate lag server as well?

Ping is based mainly on location not connection speed.
I had dsl when I played on gemini and had 30ms ping.

[Corax]

TL;DR
Planetside was saved by bringing all the servers and the people together, and created the platform for actually allowing Planetside 2 to be made. If you split the people, you kill your game. Create more servers, as the need arises. Not the other way around.

__________________________________________________ ______________________

After having read through this entire thread. Ive come away with a few feelings on this that I am inclined to share both as a fan of PS 1 and a Fan of the coming PS2.

To RadarX, and SOE by an large.

When Planetside was first created, we all know the story of how it was far ahead of its time. And the truth is that it was. It was limited by bandwith, and numerous other problems of the times. By the truth is that still at that early age we were locking out more then 1 continents at a time. During these "Golden Years" we had exactly what PS2 is wanting to have. Massive battles. Massive hour, day long battles where fortunes swung one way or another. Where players like myself still have those "You had to be there moments". (Mine involved a Last Stand at a CC in my Splattercannon, and literal horde of VS softies rushing me)

But threw various issues, the populations started to dwindle. A lot of people lay the blame at SOE Executive descions, and through a general feeling of abandonment of the game. As the populations started to collapse, SOE was forced to merge our servers. (I came from Johari.) Pretty soon we were all forced together on 1 server. The very last of a dieing games community was banded together.

And it was that very thing that saved a game that should have, for all intents and purposes, died. As numerous other posters have stated, the mergers of all the servers into one single fanbase, one single community, has created something that SOE could never have predicted. It created a game, that finally met up with the the original goal of Planetside. To create a world where people of all stripes from all across the world played in a persistent, 24/7 world. Where everything they did actually mattered. Each kill, each rez, each gal drop, each back hacker. It all finally lived up to the goal of Planetside.

This community and gamebase kept an outdated, old, run down, and beat up game alive. And from that we, and I say we because the comuntiy became an integral part of this game at that point, created the stage that would give SOE the chance to bring out a game that could truly revolutionize the genre of MMO and FPS.

If it were not for the loyalty, commitment and love for Planetside by its community, would SOE ever have Greenlighted Planetside 2? In my opinion, no, it would not have. This dedicated community (all of PS players and outfits, PSU, everything), kept this game, this idea going for 8 years now. 8 Years, of people subscribing, logging in, fighting over the same patches of land day in, day out. They have formed bonds that stretch into the real world and actually affect real lives.

This is not a plea, or me begging. What I want to do is to show you that you have access to an opportunity that only a few other games have. (Eve being one of them). Instead of separating and dividing this playerbase. Instead of forcing decisions to chose between outfits and low pings. Give us and yourself the best of both worlds.
Use this deal with ProSieben to drive forward the technology to enable all players from around the world to connect and play with an understandable amount of ping. Im not asking for miracles, but make it so we have the OPTION to choose to play together regardless of location or region. You have the opportunity once again to do something truly groundbreaking with Planetside 2.

This post is in response to the idea that players might be forced to separate.

All I ask is to at least give the playerbase the option to choose to play together. Drive the technology forwards to make it happen.

Planetside proved that a united and unified playerbase will not only keep money flowing to SOE, on a game, that had been left to die, but also create the opportunity to launch and create a game that truly brings devs and players together.

From the get go, Planetside 2 has kept the playerbase in the loop. I ask you now to see the benefits of keeping us together, or to give the choice to be able to play with our across seas friends.

Heck, use beta to prove which is better. See where the stats lie on where people log into. The server with low-lag and less people. Or the server with a ton more people and higher lag. The technology is out there to satisfy both sides.

I do hope that in the coming future, SOE will see the need to offer the choiceto keep the playerbase together.

On a side note, there is nothing like hearing an aussie and a german dude cussing at the same VS/TR baddie that happened to catch them off guard.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,
~Corax
7+ Year Vet
Planetside fan for life.

PS: If you split the people, you kill your game. Create more servers, as the need arises. Not the other way around.

TL;DR
Planetside was saved by bringing all the servers and the people together, and created the platform for actually allowing Planetside 2 to be made. If you split the people, you kill your game. Create more servers, as the need arises. Not the other way around.

[Jamini]

Throwing another voice saying: "This is a terrible idea." onto the pile.

Not only do I need to worry about my old euro mates not being able to play with me, but I've met a few more since I unsubbed that I've been extremely excited about introducing to PS2. I know that should this policy go into affect as-is written, I will be helping as many of them play on the US servers as I can by any means I can. Likewise, I will certainly look for a means to get myself a EU account so I can play on their servers. Regardless of SOE's wishes.

Segregated servers are a horrid idea, worse than invasive DRM and agressive anti-cheat programs. (ACII and Spore... the most pirated games of their times! Punkbuster, disable it or you get booted every five minutes with a dual-core system!) No amount of money or advertising is worth splitting your existing and future communities like that.

[Saintlycow]

Sony Buisness Management Peoples,

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/off-is-the-general-direction-i-wish-you-to-fuck.jpg

[Zulthus]

:'(



lol

[Zulthus]

Ooh, you sure can ;)

[Baron]

RadarX / Matt / Tray / et.al.

I know you guys are the creators and are merely passing the word so I would like to add my voice to the already growing list of dissidents...but before I begin, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you guys, the developers (the guys and gals making such a badass game for us) for even bothering with our collective outrage.

I work for a pretty decent size corporation so I understand that getting one department or business unit to talk to the other (much less provide one with negative feedback from an outside source) can sometimes take divine intervention to get anything accomplished. So again, thank you all for caring.

There are several posts in this thread (corax and Nephilimuk to name a couple) that resonate with how I feel. It's not about ping or having the utmost optimum performance possible for our bandwidth; Many of us, myself included, have forged great friendships with individuals in other countries. As I mentioned in a previous thread, I haven't bought a gaming magazine in almost a decade. However because of the PS2 article in the April PC Gamer, I bought 2 copies (for myself and Mustardseed). I would like to quote an excerpt from that article:

"You don't have a lot of 'remember whens' in Battlefield or in other modern first-person shooters, but in Planetside everyone has that moment..." - Ryan Elam, PS2 Technical Director [PC Gamer, April Issue]

One of my most cherished 'remember whens' involved two magriders, one with an American crew and the other British. Let's just say that after about 15 minutes myself and my best friend were in tears from laughter. That night we played Planetisde until our eyes forced shut from exhaustion. I haven't forgotten that moment in over 6 years and I never will. All four of us in that little-tank-column-that could, weren't even in the same outfit. We were just friends, all of us having played some other games with one or the other person but never all 4 of us at once. Until Planetside.


I know you are doing your best to support our cause and we [forum users with the brain filter] sincerely appreciate it.

-Baron

[Fenrys]

Corax, please copy and paste this post to the official feedback thread on the Station forums here:
https://forums.station.sony.com/station/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=11500038790***11500258343

Or give me permission to do so?

TL;DR
Planetside was saved by bringing all the servers and the people together, and created the platform for actually allowing Planetside 2 to be made. If you split the people, you kill your game. Create more servers, as the need arises. Not the other way around.

__________________________________________________ ______________________

After having read through this entire thread. Ive come away with a few feelings on this that I am inclined to share both as a fan of PS 1 and a Fan of the coming PS2.

To RadarX, and SOE by an large.

When Planetside was first created, we all know the story of how it was far ahead of its time. And the truth is that it was. It was limited by bandwith, and numerous other problems of the times. By the truth is that still at that early age we were locking out more then 1 continents at a time. During these "Golden Years" we had exactly what PS2 is wanting to have. Massive battles. Massive hour, day long battles where fortunes swung one way or another. Where players like myself still have those "You had to be there moments". (Mine involved a Last Stand at a CC in my Splattercannon, and literal horde of VS softies rushing me)

But threw various issues, the populations started to dwindle. A lot of people lay the blame at SOE Executive descions, and through a general feeling of abandonment of the game. As the populations started to collapse, SOE was forced to merge our servers. (I came from Johari.) Pretty soon we were all forced together on 1 server. The very last of a dieing games community was banded together.

And it was that very thing that saved a game that should have, for all intents and purposes, died. As numerous other posters have stated, the mergers of all the servers into one single fanbase, one single community, has created something that SOE could never have predicted. It created a game, that finally met up with the the original goal of Planetside. To create a world where people of all stripes from all across the world played in a persistent, 24/7 world. Where everything they did actually mattered. Each kill, each rez, each gal drop, each back hacker. It all finally lived up to the goal of Planetside.

This community and gamebase kept an outdated, old, run down, and beat up game alive. And from that we, and I say we because the comuntiy became an integral part of this game at that point, created the stage that would give SOE the chance to bring out a game that could truly revolutionize the genre of MMO and FPS.

If it were not for the loyalty, commitment and love for Planetside by its community, would SOE ever have Greenlighted Planetside 2? In my opinion, no, it would not have. This dedicated community (all of PS players and outfits, PSU, everything), kept this game, this idea going for 8 years now. 8 Years, of people subscribing, logging in, fighting over the same patches of land day in, day out. They have formed bonds that stretch into the real world and actually affect real lives.

This is not a plea, or me begging. What I want to do is to show you that you have access to an opportunity that only a few other games have. (Eve being one of them). Instead of separating and dividing this playerbase. Instead of forcing decisions to chose between outfits and low pings. Give us and yourself the best of both worlds.
Use this deal with ProSieben to drive forward the technology to enable all players from around the world to connect and play with an understandable amount of ping. Im not asking for miracles, but make it so we have the OPTION to choose to play together regardless of location or region. You have the opportunity once again to do something truly groundbreaking with Planetside 2.

This post is in response to the idea that players might be forced to separate.

All I ask is to at least give the playerbase the option to choose to play together. Drive the technology forwards to make it happen.

Planetside proved that a united and unified playerbase will not only keep money flowing to SOE, on a game, that had been left to die, but also create the opportunity to launch and create a game that truly brings devs and players together.

From the get go, Planetside 2 has kept the playerbase in the loop. I ask you now to see the benefits of keeping us together, or to give the choice to be able to play with our across seas friends.

Heck, use beta to prove which is better. See where the stats lie on where people log into. The server with low-lag and less people. Or the server with a ton more people and higher lag. The technology is out there to satisfy both sides.

I do hope that in the coming future, SOE will see the need to offer the choiceto keep the playerbase together.

On a side note, there is nothing like hearing an aussie and a german dude cussing at the same VS/TR baddie that happened to catch them off guard.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,
~Corax
7+ Year Vet
Planetside fan for life.

PS: If you split the people, you kill your game. Create more servers, as the need arises. Not the other way around.

TL;DR
Planetside was saved by bringing all the servers and the people together, and created the platform for actually allowing Planetside 2 to be made. If you split the people, you kill your game. Create more servers, as the need arises. Not the other way around.

[cellinaire]

Just another pure comedy on SOE's part....

You've done it yet again, SOE. Yet again.

[Nobel]

RadarX, Higby, Smed, and to whomever it may concern:

I just have one quick line I must send to you.

Rarely do companies make a move that is so universally seen, and thought of as a bad decision by the community at large BEFORE it is too late. I have played Planetside 1 for over 11 years now. I have made lifelong friends over these 11 years that I still play PS1 with, tonight. You are suggesting that I "find another game" to play with these friends with, the only message I see from this is that you do not want me to play your products in the way that I see fit, with the friends that I see fit. This is not what Online Gaming is about. This is not what your company should be about. Please... fix this... don't assume you know what your consumers want even when they are all telling you the opposite.

TLDR : I don't want to find another game to play with my friends. I want to play your game with my friends. Don't Make me choose, as Ill choose my friends over you.

[Beagle]

Isn't there some way we can boycott this? Fight it? I know we aren't all American, but mother fuck, everyone has the right to fight for what they want....

Make your voice heard, post in these threads, send Smedley an e-mail (a constructive e-mail, not hate-mail, that's not really going to help anything :love: )

You're doing SOE a favour by making sure they know this is a colossal bungle. I'm sure they'd prefer their game not fail too.

[Hydra]

This is horrific.
And This is why I don't trust SOE, fuck John Smedley, now I wonder whats next on their list of things to fuck up.There's gonna be alot of orphans like myself in PS2, and its going to painful seeing all those broken outfits.

If its possible to create accounts for overseas friends, sign me up as one of the people willing to help, I will dedicate the time in doing so.

I'm seriously gonna miss hearing women with those sexy British accents. Dammit.

EDIT: I'm am seriously pissed off at this, but SOE doesn't and will not ever give a shit about the community. Another company that actually cares about the community is going to create a game that rivals SOE and thier bullshit and then I seriously hope SOE fucking burns down to the ground when they aren't a relevant gaming company anymore. :mad:

[Corax]

@Fenrys Go right ahead buddy, I cant at the moment because I am about to go teach one of my classes, so your more then welcome too.

In another idea, can someone who knows how to, get a Poll going on here. That way we can Vote, and actually show some numbers towards possible preferences?

Perhaps make the categories,
With modern technology for servers and getting the best ping possible I think this is a fair attempt at a balanced poll.

A. Yes to region locked servers. Low Ping
B. Yes to region servers (not locked) Low Ping
C. Yes to one server for all regions (Current Planetside) Medium Ping
D. Yes to one main server (Medium ping), but with optional servers for each region with (Low Ping)

[Saintlycow]

If its possible to create accounts for overseas friends, sign me up as one of the people willing to help, I will dedicate the time in doing so.



I offered to do that earlier, but the more people the better

[Reginald]

Count me in too, hell I'll setup a VPN for anyone who wants to use my connection to register an account.

[Papagiorgio]

There are a number of high quality, high performance proxy services out there which will give you a US IP address for a few bucks (or Euros/Pounds) a month. So there are workarounds here.

[FHMathew]

Hey folks, Long read that was :P

As a fairly new player to the Planetside scene I have been extremely exited about this new release and I have been promoting the game on the Forgotten Honor forums. The community I come from is an international community we have had thousands of players past and present all over the world, And I cant wait to represent Forgotten Honor in PS2.

Forgotten Honor is totally new to the planetside scene I jumped at the chance to start promoting this game on our forums when one friend on steam told me about it. I recognized it from the time when I played the free trial of PS1 years ago fuck knows when that was :)

This news has really took me by shock and saddens me. I have real respect for the guys who have stuck with the 1st game and are exited about the new release, Being in Forgotten Honor for 3 years I have this dedication to with players I've lead and I have bonded with them and made friendships. This is one of the reasons I want to represent Forgotten Honor in PS2 I want to give them a totally new experience of FPS. If there was a region lock I would only be able to attract certain players "Here's this awesome game but there's a catch we wont all be able to play together" It just would not be a good attraction for big gaming community's who want to come into this game and play together especially international ones.

We all know that PS2 promised to look after the veterans, So far imo they have not lived up to that statement, By taking away the opportunity for players, groups and outfits who have played together for over 9 years away from them. I wouldn't say that's looking after you exactly :)

From what I have seen today, I feel sorry for the devs who are working on the game. Imagine putting all this effort on the actual game and having no population to play it just from one mistake from those higher up, No person in their right mind would want that to happen ! (probably would never happen but anything can happen)

If we had to create 2 accounts I would find it more of an annoyance than anything else but as long as I get to bring my group in and be able to play together internationally I will be happy. The game will be amazing whatever the case with the help of the community in beta but it's the decisions the Boss's make towards the community that will make this whole thing fly or sink.

I probably forgot to say alot of things I've been muttering to myself the whole time while reading these forums lol. Is there any public teamspeak you guys go to to talk about this stuff would like a good chat with some Planetside people for a change :P

[Lazza]

This is very worrying... I'm Australian and I fear the direction they are taking will land us here on an Asian server, and we know the The9 has already signed up as the Asian partner.

I don't want to be taunted in some language I don't understand whilst standing in the corner nursing my cycler, nodding and smiling.

[Chefkoch]

So Planetside 2 will not be on Steam too like DCU, EQ2 and all the other F2P SOE Games ?

Well 30mil potential players lost because nobody gives a damn about ProSieben Sat1 Media Group...well done SOE. :mad::mad::mad:

[RedKnights]

I probably forgot to say alot of things I've been muttering to myself the whole time while reading these forums lol. Is there any public teamspeak you guys go to to talk about this stuff would like a good chat with some Planetside people for a change :P

Hey, I've been meaning to try that game for awhile now, now I just feel bad. ^_^;

We do have an IRC on this site, it's nice to hang out on.

Yea i'm sure you can appreciate coming from such a broad organization how nice it is to be able to play with all these international people side by side as a team.

[cellinaire]

Still no official comments or dev tweets about this. Hmm...

[IronMole]

Fix it SOE or the bunny gets it!

[ShockNC]

Still no official comments or dev tweets about this. Hmm...

probably because it's outside their ability to effect. I'm sure Higby and T-Ray are doing their best to get it fixed but this is beyond them and it's already in contract. they're more than likely (hopefully) brainstorming ways to get the players what they want but i dk

[MadKat]

Well this is a bum wrap, poor move SOE.

[Naeadil]

I'm glad I don't have to play with Europeans anymore.

Good job SOE.

You won't play PS2 (a free to play game.....) because you can't play on a server with higher ping? QQ go play alone and stop bugging us MURRICANS

[IronMole]

I'm glad I don't have to play with Europeans anymore.

Good job SOE.

You won't play PS2 (a free to play game.....) because you can't play on a server with higher ping? QQ go play alone and stop bugging us MURRICANS

Troll harder.

[Fenrys]

probably because it's outside their ability to effect. I'm sure Higby and T-Ray are doing their best to get it fixed but this is beyond them and it's already in contract. they're more than likely (hopefully) brainstorming ways to get the players what they want but i dk

Yeah, they and theirs are getting screwed worse than anyone.

[Trolltaxi]

...elite club that SOE disbands...

I think they feel for us, but they estimate a much larger playerbase than the elite club formed after the last merge... And they serve the needs of that larger playerbase. $OE >> everything... :(

[Sirisian]

https://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley <-- smed is tweeting

https://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status/172210938689236992
Lots of good feedback from our player base about our existing European community.. Guilds, servers etc. we will be discussing with Prosieben

Just wanted to make sure you knew we were listening.

[Higby]

https://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley <-- smed is tweeting

https://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status/172210938689236992

I reached out to John about this tonight. He's off in Japan right now but was aware of the issues that everyone was bringing up (he's on here more often than you guys know about) and wanted to be sure you guys knew we were hearing the feedback and paying attention.

[kilroy]

LOL, sir yes sir, no more talk about bypass. Other than that.

Okay so, I'm fixing to get trolled.

To sound completely contradicting to my previous posts, I fully support the blocking of European and Asian countries to play on American servers and vice versa for selfish reasons.

When someone can kill you four feet behind a wall, it's just not fun. When someone is ADAD'ing and their ping is 600, it's just not fun. When you spend a full clip to the face of MCG rounds and they don't die....it's just not fun...

One of the reasons I believe SOE has decided to segregate the population is because of technological issues. Sure, BF3 can get away with a high ping or two on a 64 man server, even though high ping players are still extremely different to hit, Planetside 2 will not be able to handle it I believe.

Now being empathetic to those who have clan members and outfits in America that are not Americans, I understand and agree with your frustrations, they are valid and SOE should adhere to them.

But if they don't.... I'll enjoy playing lag free.

/troll begins :(

I'm just waiting for the day where region locks are the norm and some new company comes along and decides that inter region locks are necessary and I can't play with anyone outside of NY anymore (be it for the perfect lag free environment, $$, or any other conceivable reason).

It's 2012 and the only solution for high pings is region locking? Sounds bogus to me. I thought the internet was supposed to connect people around the world.

[MadKat]

Yay, Higby! Appreciate the info.

I see the pros/cons of the 'locking', sure hope a medium can be met.

[CaptainMaverik]

I reached out to John about this tonight. He's off in Japan right now but was aware of the issues that everyone was bringing up (he's on here more often than you guys know about) and wanted to be sure you guys knew we were hearing the feedback and paying attention.

thanks Higgles, we know you're just in the middle of this, and contracts have already been signed, etc, etc

but we appreciate your efforts

dont know where im going to fit in now, being based in Australia, do i have to join the Chinese servers? lol

[RedKnights]

I reached out to John about this tonight. He's off in Japan right now but was aware of the issues that everyone was bringing up (he's on here more often than you guys know about) and wanted to be sure you guys knew we were hearing the feedback and paying attention.

Thank you for being our advocate, we trust you :)

Never thought i'd say that to an NC XD

[FastAndFree]

One of the reasons I believe SOE has decided to segregate the population is because of technological issues. (

If we accept that Higby, the guy in charge of DEVELOPING THE GAME didn't know about this, then there could be no technological reasons behind the move. Just money

[Higby]

If we accept that Higby, the guy in charge of DEVELOPING THE GAME didn't know about this, then there could be no technological reasons behind the move. Just money

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

[MGP]

So, i need to create new Pro7 account to play. But i've used SOE account to play PS1. I guess that means "no PS veteran benefits" and "no early beta access" for me.
/sadface

[VioletZero]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

So why block people from playing on whatever server they want?

Does someone playing from far away really cause more server strain than people playing from up close?

[Mauser101]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

I don't think anybody would have realistically argued against regional servers, eg. Werner. They make great sense. It's the possibility that players will have options taken away from them by region/ip locking.

As I'm sure you're already aware the primary concern is for people on the wrong side of the Atlantic to be able to play with their friends that are not in Europe. People want options. Hell, I used to play on Werner every once in a while and Emerald was my home.

Sturmgrenadier has a large number of Euro players primarily because we are not a single game guild. The likelyhood is that if those Euro players cannot play with us many of them will simply not play.

Secondary concern is off peak time populations. Euros that enjoy playing on US server help stabilize off peak populations. Same can be said for US player that prefer Euro servers.

[Atheosim]

I honestly find this "SOE killed the game" balderdash highly hilarious due to its purely hyperbolic childishness.

[polywomple]

Sturmgrenadier has a large number of Euro players primarily because we are not a single game guild. The likelyhood is that if those Euro players cannot play with us many of them will simply not play.


I don't think it's going to stop euro players from playing PS2 at all. People will compensate, if this is really the case.

[Magpie]

Many online games have this more the type mmo games, 3 editions of the game

U.S edition
E.U edition
Asia edition

Most of the time it's what everyone one you buy gives you the severs you want.
In the short time of things outfits from ps1 will ripped apart but ps1 is proby only 15% of the marketing taget. But in the long run you *may* get a smoother gameplay less lag ect.

This is out of are powers an we just gonna have to take it.

Outfits from planetside 1 heres a ideal I know your outfits are gonna be spit but why not have the outfits on all the severs?

U have eu officers and you us officers make two outfits same name, same website

But just remeber they have a manhattan of a project to do and every little help ;)

[Azren]

I fear most of the negative feedback here comes from the fact that Pro7 will publish the game in EU and not the IP block.

Let's set things straight: IP block was always disliked by players, since it reduces the options of choice. Everyone should be made aware that while the wast majority of the playerbase will play on his/her region's server, a very few might choose otherwise. The reason for this is very simple: clans/outfits/friends. People they met online, possibly in Planetside, and had great joy playing with. An IP block removes any chance for these people to play and have fun together, like they used to.


As for Pro7 publishing the game, I personally find this to be a good idea and am in full support of it. The marketing skills of this company can not seriously be questioned. I would expect a far better EU marketing for PS2 than anything SoE could do on it's own. Lookint at SoE's past marketing faliures (PS, EQ2), I would say this is a change for the better, not the worse. Apart from marketing, the customer support should be at a higher level too.

[Nephilimuk]

first 2 bits of feedback to the news from the press - expect more to come

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/21/soe-opens-up-about-multi-year-european-partnership/
http://www.csicon.org/the-three-mmosketeers-emergency-podcast-1/

tick tock tick tock

[stordito]

Dear SOE
I'm from Eu...
Most of the people will use the nearest server, as usual.
but at least leave some slots (20%) for non-regional players...
Or implement a Kick for 400+ ping.
Maybe the playerbase in EU is not as developed as in the US,in fact larger communities are US-based...
PS2 has been developed with such great focus but then it fails on the simplest tasks like not pissing off the playerbase with stupid resitrictions never seen on PC.
Local Partners,region Locks,exclusives,data plans may sound good when you are in your leather chairs but they piss off costumers when it comes to choose,because they see their rights restricted day after day,wich is pretty common these days but not a good excuse to do the same.

I already feel we europeans are going to be second-class costumers,wich is exactly what Sony did with all their platforms and games here in the last 20 years or so,with poor regional management and lame costumer service (4 months for fixing a faulty PS3? x360 did it in 2 weeks)
So we are not going to be in beta probably,wich is sad for a "triple-A title"...
One of my Outfit plays from the US, i guess we will have to say goodbye,or set up some sort of tunneling/proxy/spoof server here so he can join us,maybe risking a ban or something just so he can play.

Up until a week ago everything seemed fine, the game looks very promising
and the engagement with the community has been excellent (and we are grateful for that).
I'm no market analyst or game developer,but the community will be a huge part of bringing the best experience possible and, most of all, spreading the word of this game existance.
You SOE proudly boost a (or should i say THE) MMOFPS featuring massive battles,but than you just split the experience not in the numbers but in the possibilities...
I've always seen the free to play policy with suspect:
as a costumer i do not seek savings as a minization of the price itself but as a maximization of the result
So i rather pay a 10€ fee and have a better experience and a costumer service,wich is exactly what most multiplatform players says about PSN vs xbox Live)

And bottom line, we have decent connections here,my ping to the US is between 70 and 100 ms with 100mbit BW.sometime i ping less than others playing from there,so i don't see why i need to be confined in a global network.
In the end I think that both of EU and US players will suffer from this decision.


some decisions...just...can't understand...WHY?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZzXevucGsR4/TJ0bdObXHtI/AAAAAAAAAfM/nwkbh9V4To8/s400/crying-indian-tear65p1.jpg


PS: sorry for typos/grammar, i'm not english.

[jakaul]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

I don't understand this. When PS1 had multiple servers, I got around the same ping on all of the servers as most of the Europeans and I live near Seattle. I play BF3 on Euro servers all the time and don't notice any real ping related issues, so what technical reasons other than ping are a factor?

As I said on tweeter to Smedley, you're effectively asking us not to play with friends that we've played with for 5-7+ years. People that kept subbed to PS1 for YEARS mostly because of their mates. Groups that helped each other buy US versions of WoW or whatever game so we could still play together. Man, that's a bitter pill to take.

[Dorest0rm]

This thread exploded faster than the beta key one.

I hope this will not be anything like Dark age of Camelot where EU got patches months later.

Sent from my Gameboy Advanced using Tapatalk

[Tatwi]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

From the poll/thread I made the other day, a lot of people seem to actually agree with the concept of regional servers for performance optimization. However, what folks seem to be genuinely upset about is that this optimization comes at the expense of personal choice.

[Mirror]

why can't we just choose a server at login like we did in planetside 1 for years before the merge. why take a step backwards???.

I'm worried now that I won't get into beta now and my account all get shipped over to some company that I want nothing to do with.

if I can't play with the rest of my outfit on a server that suits all of us then consider me a customer that soe will get no further money from. I'm sure that others feel the same way that I do and I hope they follow me in a boycott if this continues.

[DaddyTickles]

I reached out to John about this tonight. He's off in Japan right now but was aware of the issues that everyone was bringing up (he's on here more often than you guys know about) and wanted to be sure you guys knew we were hearing the feedback and paying attention.

Japan, eh? So he's either getting fired or he's selling the Aussies to a big Far East e-publisher?

Well, I know which option I'm hoping for.

[Vancha]

From the poll/thread I made the other day, a lot of people seem to actually agree with the concept of regional servers for performance optimization. However, what folks seem to be genuinely upset about is that this optimization comes at the expense of personal choice.
Absolutely.

What needs to come back is a server screen with the US and EU servers on. A regional choice without having to register with a different company or download a different version of the game.

Ideally I'd like to see EVE's system, but I know that won't happen.

Edit: Wasn't Smedly out of the country last time we needed him as well? His clout would probably be quite useful to us right now...

You EU players know you'll still play the game anyway...
Actually, no I won't. I have good resolve when it comes to things like this and I can only hope there are enough others who are the same.

[DirtyBird]

This currently doesnt effect me afaik but it reeks of a decision from someone who has never played an MMO. Yet those are the people that will continue to make these unpopular decisions.
Its all about $$ and nothing else to them.

I hope that some sort of common sense prevails and this possible split of the community is rectified asap.

[Spoof]

Sometimes it's good to speak with a clear voice, and I believe most of the community would agree with the following key points.

Regional Servers
Yes. We want the choice of playing with a decent ping.

Regional Blocking
No. We want the choice to continue long-standing friendships with guilds and outfits. The internet doesn't need another Berlin Wall running through the mid-Atlantic.

Beta Participation
Yes for all. There is no valid reason to region block the beta. Network code needs to be tested with fuzzy Euro pings too.

Veteran Rewards
If Europeans have to create new accounts with a new publisher, then any potential reward scheme must migrate with them. They've shown the same loyalty, paid the same fees, and fought in the same battles as everyone else.

Service
Game patches, server hardware and performance, and customer support should be on an even par with all other regions. Regardless of who publishes the game SOE must take responsibility and not allow players to slip into second-class tiers.


And yes, this seemed as good a time as any to stop lurking after all these years :) Greets!

[Princess Frosty]

To devs:

I'm not going to dance around this issue being a EU player who has been burned several times in the past by MMOs which have decided to erect artificial barriers between regions. I know you want to settle our fears by telling us X and Y but the honest truth is that other developers have said the exact same thing in the past and their partners dicked us over anyway, so words mean little, action on your part to directly address issues is what is important.

Quite frankly this just seems like another in a long line of stupid decisions, starting with outsourcing everything over in the EU, you seriously need to consider justifying to your player base the restrictions you're deliberately putting on them...

I can only speak for myself but I was ready to drop a load of cash on my account on day 1 to boost everything, but the more I read about the separation or EU/US accounts the more put off I am. It would be worth keeping in mind that some players like me are going to see money spent on boosting exp and skills as an investment in your game for potentially the next 5+ years of gaming it NEEDS to feel like a safe investment, I need to believe you're making decisions that are in the PLAYERS best interest, restricting my rights based on where I live is ridiculous and pathetic, that's about as civil as I can muster, my apologies if that doesn't meet the standards for acceptable feedback.

[FastAndFree]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

That's true, I'm not arguing that. But I meant forcing people on their respective regional servers.
If we will be forced. It's still unclear to us

[stordito]

...

^ I agree.

[Jonny]

Well this is dissapointing as I was imagining playing with/against some of you guys across the pond. (live in UK)

What would be nice is some more clarity on why they think this is the best way to go - ie what reasons it would benefit gamers.

[Xaine]

I'm very ignorant about the technical side of all this, but why can't you just have NA/EU servers that are CLEARLY labelled when you start up the game.

Planetside 1 did this. You could see you ping to all the servers, you knew which one you SHOULD play on if you're looking for your timezone, but the option was there to go onto another one.

Is there some massive issue I'm missing here?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

[EVILoHOMER]

This fucking sucks.



SOE games have been established on guilds playing together from all over the world. Also now Planetside 2 will be unplayable for most the day and you'll have to wait for peak times again. At least with Planetside you could join the US servers when EU peak was over. Then you have the problem of EU servers always being less populated than the US ones and how we have to put up with all the different languages in the EU.


If this game is region locked I wont play, quite simple.

[Fara]

Adding my voice to the chorus of dissatisfaction. I'm all for region servers but I live in EU and have a large number of friends is US that I regularly play with. This smacks me as a massively stupid move by corporate SOE.

Please reconsider. One of the best moves Swtor did was allow EU,US and now Asia servers to be listed under one game client. This allows me to hop on US servers to play with friends with my alt character and continue to play EU with my main (while I wait patiently for PS2).

[EVILoHOMER]

Also just have ping restrictions instead of region lock if you care about performance. I live in Europe and I get 100 pings from US east coast servers and 150 on the west side. I personally feel that is an acceptable and playable ping but just restrict people who have like 400 pings.

[Gandhi]

I live in Europe, both my brothers live in Canada. We had loads of fun playing Planetside together for a while there and were really looking forward to playing again in PS2.

This really sets the tone for the kind of community interaction I can expect from Pro7, together with their bad reputation as a gaming service I won't be spending any money on this game. I may still give it a shot, but as an investment it's not something I'm prepared to sink money into. Since everyone involved in this decision surely knew how it would be received by the community, I'm not hopeful that all this negative feedback will change anything. All that's left is to vote with my wallet.

[Neurotoxin]

Maybe you can use Proxy Servers / Sites to access the other location of the game?

Probably against the rules....

[Corax]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

Hey Higs, I was curious, if in the end we did have regional servers, would there be a possibility of SOE hosting at least 1 International server?
No need to confirm or deny, Im just wondering at the actual possibility?

[QuiCKaNdDeaDLy]

Can players still access the U.S. servers?

Under the new partnership between SOE and ProSiebenSat.1 Games, European players of the above mentioned SOE games will be able to play via ProSiebenSat.1 Games's service and will not have access to U.S. servers. However, existing EverQuest II players in Europe that have played on U.S. servers before the transition will be allowed to continue playing on those servers through their SOE accounts.


Why cant we just have the same Deal with PS1 Accounts?

[Kran De Loy]

I'm very ignorant about the technical side of all this, but why can't you just have NA/EU servers that are CLEARLY labelled when you start up the game.

Planetside 1 did this. You could see you ping to all the servers, you knew which one you SHOULD play on if you're looking for your timezone, but the option was there to go onto another one.

Is there some massive issue I'm missing here?

I believe the choice to use a partner for services in the EU was definitely a management decision that very likely has little do with with the satisfaction of it's customers.

My own pessimism makes me believe it was a 'Get Rich Quick' choice. Sell the rights to another company and you get a load of cash or promises of cash flow or something now that you can use to show off to investors or something to that effect. Instead of the still questionable amount of money they'd get for managing everything themselves.

Also this other company could already have the infrastructure to support the games saving SOE a whole ton more money by doing this.

In the end though they're still alienating a lot of people. The guild I am a part of had over 30 people that were committed to playing PS2 with a another 30-50 tentative depending on various factors when it came out.

About a third or so of these people are in EU. Thus the call was made that if EU is gonna be segragate we're not gonna put the guild effort into it. Honestly there will still be a few people that play it anyway, but maybe only a handful or two instead of 30-60 or as much as 80.

[Princess Frosty]

I believe the choice to use a partner for services in the EU was definitely a management decision that very likely has little do with with the satisfaction of it's customers.

Sure, it's a management decision to save cash at the expense of user experience, at the end of the day it's little different from outsourcing support helplines to india where labour is cheaper, they're just throwing the "problem" at another business who claim they can do it for a whole lot cheaper.

It almost always results in the work getting farmed out to the lowest bidder which drives down quality, it also keeps any negative press away from SOE because they can just blame their partners as a sort of escape out of responsibility (note: nothing changes after mistakes, deals are done so life goes on and there's no repercussions for messing up) I've literally seen and experienced it all first hand before on several other MMOs so I know pretty much exactly what to expect.

[Sabrak]

Seriously...

Who the hell are those ProSieben guys anyway?

I mean...
What experience do they have in online gaming?
What means do they really have to make the game known in Europe?
Several people on here and on other sites already said they don't want anything to do with that company, because they simply have no idea who they are, so how could we trust them?

I know that's not really what everyone is talking about right now, as we're all concerned and annoyed by the partnership, and how the community is going to be ripped apart.
But I'd still like to know more about those guys, out of curiosity

[QuiCKaNdDeaDLy]

Seriously...

Who the hell are those ProSieben guys anyway?

I mean...
What experience do they have in online gaming?
What means do they really have to make the game known in Europe?
Several people on here and on other sites already said they don't want anything to do with that company, because they simply have no idea who they are, so how could we trust them?

I know that's not really what everyone is talking about right now, as we're all concerned and annoyed by the partnership, and how the community is going to be ripped apart.
But I'd still like to know more about those guys, out of curiosity

http://www.planetside-universe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38532

[Kur]

Splitting the US and EU doesn't work, just look at how Warhammer Online went when Mythic outsourced the servers and distribution in Europe, it failed terribly.

[Coreldan]

As if WARs failure had anything to do with that.

[RedKnights]

Maybe you can use Proxy Servers / Sites to access the other location of the game?

Probably against the rules....

They said I couldn't buy 7 dollars of moonrocks....

Doesn't matter, doing it anyways, Europeans deserve better.

If beta starts before SOE is slogged with bad press I'll have a robust proxy set up. ~200 Up/Downs to circumvent Geo-IP if we need it... might not be pretty, throw me a PM if you live over there and we'll do a small load test to see how many blades i'm going to need to reserve from my university for "research" to handle the connections.

http://i.qkme.me/369ecm.jpg

[SpLiTNuTz]

.. :(

[Sabrak]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38532

Not answering my question, as I already read that thread (and posted in it).

[Shogun]

i am not going to quit the game because of this, but i was going to give a lot of money to soe from day one with the optional subscription.

now i will only play the game for free and not give any money if soe doesn´t do all of the following things:

eu players need to get the same access to beta using their station accounts.

eu players need to be able to access the game on any server, using their station accounts (if there was or is a ps1 sub in this account) or at least be able to transfer the account to pro7 without loosing veteran status (which then gives access to us servers)

if there are different client versions, we need to have the free choice which one to use!
german version will be crippled for sure and if i have to use it, without the chance to switch to american and uncut version, i´m not even going to play. i import all of my games because of the stupid censoring and lame localisation in germany, and games that don´t let me play the original version don´t get bought.

the devs of this game are the best of the best, but the evil soe beancounters work very hard to destroy the company and all their great games!
some things never change and if ps2 fails because of those business guys, i will never ever touch any sony game again.

[Kur]

As if WARs failure had anything to do with that.

Partially, it pretty much killed off the EU customer base, and all the decisions where being made by the US rather than in co-operation with the rest of the world.

[Dale]

Seriously...

Who the hell are those ProSieben guys anyway?

I mean...
What experience do they have in online gaming?
What means do they really have to make the game known in Europe?
Several people on here and on other sites already said they don't want anything to do with that company, because they simply have no idea who they are, so how could we trust them?

I know that's not really what everyone is talking about right now, as we're all concerned and annoyed by the partnership, and how the community is going to be ripped apart.
But I'd still like to know more about those guys, out of curiosity

I probably know as much as you know about them, but here is their gaming divisions website: http://www.prosiebensat1games.com/en/index.13.html

They seem to be specialising in free2play-gaming with micro-transactions.

With the business model of free to play games with sales of virtual items and little advantages in the games, ProSiebenSat.1 Games operates on the frontline of monetization in its markets. ProSiebenSat.1 Games systematically grows its gaming business organically and quickly to one of the leaders with relevance in the European online gaming sector of free to play games. ProSiebenSat.1 Games is interested in and open to new games, partners, new talents and service providers.

They also claim to have the most exciting game portfolio in [on?] the net with games such as:

alaplaya, ARGO, Audition, Avalon Heroes, Fantasy Tennis, Florensia, L.A.W - Living After War, LOCO, S4 League.

I am no free2play-expert but I doubt I have ever heard of any of the games listed above, except possibly Avalon which I might have encountered on a random surf through youtube gaming-channels.

I guess it's time to start digging through all these games and see what their respective communties think about ProSiebenSat Games to get some general idea of how they conduct their buisness.

Edit: alaplaya seems to be a game portal for above mentioned games.

Here is a link to their forums: http://en.alaplaya.net/forum/

[ringring]

To summarise my opinion.

Regional servers: Good thing and in fact I always expected Werner to be revived.

European Publisher: Good thing. It means their concentration will be on marketing within the EU. If they are to make any money from this deal they have to market.

Werner Server Hosting by SOE: Good thing. SOE will be applying patches and whatnot.

Local Support: Good thing. Well Germany isn't local to me but it's a little closer time-zone than San Diego (although not so different to Atlanta looking the other way).

Pro7: On the Fence: Never heard of them previously and they have no footprint in a lot European countries, but I would be willing to give them a chance.

Region Locks: A complete and utter bad thing. If it's done it will obviously be for a business reason rather than a technical one. Perhaps SOE hadn't realised the impact this would have on their player base many of whom are in multi-game guilds.

Conclusions: Do not implement region locks. Obviously if there is a reationale around having them it would be to ensure that gamers attracted by Pro7 would buy gear in the new Werner (Pro7) cash shop. On the other hand any European based player who would play Emerald would be balanced by a US based player playing Werner, if you know what I mean, and I bet there would be no net loss to Pro7.

[Azren]

Someone should put up a poll for the region lock, would be much more representative than a 25 pages long whine thread.

[Mirror]

Someone should put up a poll for the region lock, would be much more representative than a 25 pages long whine thread.

try www.planetside-universe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39108

edit. my phone doesn't copy links correctly.

[Aractain]

ARGO, Audition, Avalon Heroes, Fantasy Tennis, Florensia, L.A.W - Living After War, LOCO, S4 League.

Wow thats a big list of terrible games, these ProSabot#360 people don't look good. :confused:

[Pillow]

As a nocturnal player this fuck things up hardcore.
I want to play with my friends on a populated server when the EU server goes to sleep without having to climb a fucking berlin IP wall :mad:

[Mastachief]

Sometimes it's good to speak with a clear voice, and I believe most of the community would agree with the following key points.

Regional Servers
Yes. We want the choice of playing with a decent ping.

Regional Blocking
No. We want the choice to continue long-standing friendships with guilds and outfits. The internet doesn't need another Berlin Wall running through the mid-Atlantic.

Beta Participation
Yes for all. There is no valid reason to region block the beta. Network code needs to be tested with fuzzy Euro pings too.

Veteran Rewards
If Europeans have to create new accounts with a new publisher, then any potential reward scheme must migrate with them. They've shown the same loyalty, paid the same fees, and fought in the same battles as everyone else.

Service
Game patches, server hardware and performance, and customer support should be on an even par with all other regions. Regardless of who publishes the game SOE must take responsibility and not allow players to slip into second-class tiers.


And yes, this seemed as good a time as any to stop lurking after all these years :) Greets!

Very clear and concise.

[Dahlian]

In my personal opinion I don't really have anything against region locking, as long as they would include a fourth server option that is international. And allow different regions to communicate. I think this could be a good middleground.

US (locked)
EU (locked)
Asia (locked)
International (not locked)

It gives players the option to be part of a larger community or playing with people within roughly the same area (less lag and more stability), or do both (1 character per server).

This also gives incentive to have more characters and might bring profit to SOE if people want to buy cosmetic gear for additional characters.

It also ties nicely into the time based cert system.

The best thing about this setup is that you let the players decide what they want.

However handing over our accounts to pro7 feels pretty inconvinient and might cause a rift between the different communities.

[LostSoul]

My response to this as posted on the Sony forums. In short: I see advantages but are highly disappointed.


Good afternoon,

I read about this last night but gave it a little thought over before I would jump to conclusions and only type out of disappointment.

First I'd like to take note of the positive sides of this contract with ProSiebenStat.1. As long subscriber of the SOE game Planetside 1 I always criticized Sony on not supporting their European client base well enough. Over the past years (and still) Planetside is annoyed with hackers who enjoy disrupting other peoples gameplay, the response from SOE (at least its current response) is non-existent. Hackers can roam the last active server for hours until they either get bored them selves or removed by a GM who is obviously lost. While this isn't the only example it is the most known one. In the past we've also had continent crashes that took hours before they we're resolved. Server management taking place during prime-time and lack of "events" on the European server. The deal with ProSiebenSat1 is (obviously) going to help closing this gap and lack of service.

On the negative side though, and I fully agree with most people that have responded either here or on Planetside-Universe, is that this decision will split the playerbase. Many of our outfits (guilds) exist from US and EU players since (and before) the werner-gemini merger in Planetside. What this region-block (or region-split) is going to do is to split the playerbase that has always supported your games (even though neglected at times) into two camps.

Obviously ProsiebenSat wants to make money of this deal (it will sure have cost them quite a bit to get it), but I do not think splitting the player base (SOE - US, ProSieben - EU) is the way to do it as it will tick allot of people (and friends) off.

After the deal with Prosieben (what an unpronounceable name btw) I still hope to have to choice to play with my US friends on the US server while being based in Europe and not needing an additional client. There is no need to split the internet as it does not know borders or time zones.

[Vancha]

I seem to remember Pro7's support of S4 League was abysmal, which doesn't bode well.

[Dart]

The notion of SOE asking us for "feedback" on this deal is insulting and disingenuous. The contracts on this multi-year deal were signed 6 weeks ago... Our negative feedback will make less than no difference now. Their pretense of being interested in our 'feedback' is ridiculous and I'm amazed more people haven't commented on it. Don't kid yourself, this is a fait accompli!

Obviously this decision was made above Higby and RadarX and actually if you read Higby's replies it's more telling what he didn't say. His comment about always intending "Localized Servers" made no mention of forcing players to use them. It would be nice however if they'd stop treating us like idiots and saying that they care about our "feedback" - if you're reading this and employed by SOE please take note!

Now in regards to the actual deal, although we don't know the specifics yet (the official SOE line from Higby, RadarX et al is that they're still working them out - this of course is rubbish; you don't sign a multi-million dollar contract but agree to hash out the details 'later'...) I'm inclined to believe that this will involve some kind of IP lock. The reason for this suspicion is simple. Pro7sat.1 is an ambitious and fast growing media company. They've signed a deal with SOE to license every aspect of the game for the entire EU region. Now if you'd done that, wouldn't you want to protect that investment by ensuring that all of your potential customers had to play on your Servers and had no choice of using alternate Servers? I can't believe they wouldn't impose an IP lock. It'd just be bad business.

In terms of SOE's reasoning behind this deal, don't get confused by the 'Latency Smokescreen'. This has nothing to do with pings and everything to with profits. A couple of weeks ago the new CEO of Sony reported the company was headed for a $2.9 billion annual loss. SOE is only a very small sliver of the corporate pie but the entire entity is in the shit right now. So with PS2 gathering steam SOE has decided to 'cash-in' now on the EU region and struck this licensing deal with Pro7sat.1 media. Put very simply, we, as customers, have been sold. We - the loyal, hardworking, long-standing gamers who have played their games for many years and are the only reason they even have an 'EU region' have been sold to a Corporation we've never heard of without even so much as a clear explanation.

Finally, to everyone who played the first game saying they don't see the big deal here - you have no idea how many European/Australian/Asian gamers were very prominent members of your "American" Servers. These were fellow gamers with whom you were playing, fighting against, being led by and basically enriching your gaming experience. If you don't understand that you simply weren't as knowledgeable about your community as you think.

I won't start listing individuals because the this is about us as a community but I've played PlanetSide since beta and only on US Servers and I can't think of a single veteran Outfit that won't be affected by this "business decision".

The decision is made and our opinions are irrelevant, so all we can do is vote with our $/£/€. SOE don't care - as a European gamer I'm now Pro7's responsibility - but neither I nor the rest of Delta Triad will be playing PS2 unless we can all play together.

What a shame to be so utterly failed by a company I've supported for the last 8 years, and yes Higby, Radar, Smedley, that one's on all of you.

Dart,
Delta Triad

[Kaotc]

Well said, hit the nail on the head!

[stordito]

I don't think the PS2 dev team had voice in this decision...
I find they did a good job so far keeping us up to date,it would be ungrateful to blame them for SOE's decisions.
A lot more than just planetside 2 will be messed up, so...

We can just hope they can deliver our disappointment to the right desks.
right?

right?
:(

[Gandhi]

The notion of SOE asking us for "feedback" on this deal is insulting and disingenuous. The contracts on this multi-year deal were signed 6 weeks ago... Our negative feedback will make less than no difference now. Their pretense of being interested in our 'feedback' is ridiculous and I'm amazed more people haven't commented on it. Don't kid yourself, this is a fait accompli!

Thanks, I thought I was the only one. I won't believe anyone at SOE thought for one second that the existing community would react positively to this, so "listening to feedback" is meaningless at this point. Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes.

[Dart]

I don't think the PS2 dev team had voice in this decision...
I find they did a good job so far keeping us up to date,it would be ungrateful to blame them for SOE's decisions.
A lot more than just planetside 2 will be messed up, so...

We can just hope they can deliver our disappointment to the right desks.
right?

right?
:(

They're asking us for our feedback... Feedback?! It's been done! There are no "right desks" at this stage. Don't kid yourself, SOE was popping corks when this went through (6 weeks ago). This is irreversible and as evidence of that, if like me you're in Europe, the "right desk" for you is now isn't even at SOE, it's in Germany! What I'm trying to explain is that I'm not just disappointed by the decision, I feel let down by the way in which it's been done. Higby and Radar are a part of that.

They obviously knew about this a while ago - Higby mentioned he met with Pro7, don't you think this is the first thing he'd have asked - and I understand he was unable to tell us. I know a great deal about this kind of corporate partnership and the kind of secrecy it involves however to come here and ask us for our thoughts and opinions after the fact is just insulting. I did say that I don't believe Higby wanted this. I believe him when he says he's a big fan of the PlanetSide experience and this kind of segregation is the antithesis of the true PlanetSide experience. But his and everyone's handling of this debacle could've been so much better than simply issuing an ambiguous FAQ followed up by 'cookie cutter' please give us your feedback responses.

I feel let down on a number of levels on this one and as anyone in DT will tell you, I'm usually the last one to cry "foul".

Dart,
Delta Triad

[Nephilimuk]

I don't think the PS2 dev team had voice in this decision...
I find they did a good job so far keeping us up to date,it would be ungrateful to blame them for SOE's decisions.
A lot more than just planetside 2 will be messed up, so...

We can just hope they can deliver our disappointment to the right desks.
right?

right?


No

I agree it a done deal but it is tinged with irony as the decisions made in 2009 have compounded the situation. I do not expect to be reversed or even altered.

However promises and commitments made to existing players regarding being looked after is something else and SOE can certainly do something here as it is prior to formal release of Planetside 2.

It would be an idea to work out what we have leverage on if anything and try and salvage something rather than to fight against an existing done deal. If this is nothing then we can all exercise our right to choose.

This is an epic engagement fail. A couple of simple town hall or combined pod casts detailing the benefits and answering concerns could have turned this around and is simply managing change / setting expectations. Customer service 101 and a must for any community dependant product. All this could have been sold in a more positive light as there are some advantages to better European support, it would at least softened the blow.

SOE did you not see all the commotion over the CCP Incarna expansion? Or did you just see us all as a commodity item?

[Nobel]

Dart, I completely agree with you... SOE is making a very dumb decision here. Especially with a F2P product, boycotting giving them any money is easy to do, I just never use their cash shop. How I can have my cake, and piss in their boots. Don't give them a dime until this is made right. I'm cancelling my PS1 subscription today. Something I have never done.

[Dart]

Or did you just see us all as a commodity item?

The wicked irony, and I hope it's not lost on Pro7, is that they've effectively bought two markets. One is future customers and with their media clout I'm sure they're confident of expanding that number right across Europe. The other is SOE's existing European community and in business terms that is the safer bet because you already have a good idea of those numbers and don't need to use the dreaded 'f' work (forecasts). The irony is due to the PR shitstorm they've created over this announcement I can guarantee that 'safe' number has just taken a hit.

I wonder if this is the kind of feedback SOE were looking for? Advice on dealing with Public Relations??

[Dart]

Dart, I completely agree with you... SOE is making a very dumb decision here. Especially with a F2P product, boycotting giving them any money is easy to do, I just never use their cash shop. How I can have my cake, and piss in their boots. Don't give them a dime until this is made right. I'm cancelling my PS1 subscription today. Something I have never done.

This is the kind of solidarity which makes a community.

I did the same about 45 minutes ago.

[Mirror]

Dart, I completely agree with you... SOE is making a very dumb decision here. Especially with a F2P product, boycotting giving them any money is easy to do, I just never use their cash shop. How I can have my cake, and piss in their boots. Don't give them a dime until this is made right. I'm cancelling my PS1 subscription today. Something I have never done.

I'm also going to cancel mine. I've had mine open for the past 7years maybe longer. because of this news I doubt that eu players will be invited to beta because it's in the other region.

second shafting by soe in less than 2 weeks, a new record.

[RedKnights]

The notion of SOE asking us for "feedback" on this deal is insulting and disingenuous. The contracts on this multi-year deal were signed 6 weeks ago... Our negative feedback will make less than no difference now. Their pretense of being interested in our 'feedback' is ridiculous and I'm amazed more people haven't commented on it. Don't kid yourself, this is a fait accompli!

I know, right?

I really don't think SOE knows the kind of wrath a tight-knit community can bring to the table, and EQ and Planetside definitely both fit that definition.

I have never been so disappointed and genuinely angry at an institution as I am now.

Probably 20% of GOTR's 1000 strong community is international. If they think I or anyone else in our outfit is going to role over and go with this decision they're dead wrong. We're not going to just sit back and watch huge chunks of our outfit, DT, AT and other outfits get relegated to playing somewhere else other than with us by force.

But like Dart said, the deal is done, it's over. The only way we can retaliate now is by going somewhere else. And there are quite a few PS competitors rumored to be in the pipe, after being treated like this, as soon as PS2 has a competitor i'm going over there, as will a lot of people I imagine.

They wrote their own going out of business sign to the point i'm canceling my PS1 sub as we speak. :mad:

Edit: -Hah, while I was writing my post others had the same idea, I love this community, don't give them a single cent until they learn their lesson, buy not a single Station Point. Beta Starts? Log in and sit there.

[Sta]

As a german myself I was surprised to see that the tv channels pro7 and sat1 suddenly do video games??

Can anyone explain to me why they have to build up Chinese walls nowdays everywhere on the internet?
Can anyone imaging why they decided to do this especially for ps2?

In what way will ps2 benefit from such a move?

Since day one I was always under the impression the internet was there to gather information from all over the world but for some years now it seems like someone is trying to erect new Iron Curtain like environments for obvious economical or maybe political reasons....

[Dart]

They wrote their own going out of business sign to the point i'm canceling my PS1 sub as we speak. :mad:

Haha see losing 20 DT subs won't hurt much (I'm sure a few of you would be delighted not to see us in fact ;) ) but losing several hundred GotR ones would make a real dent.

Oh and Red, make sure you leave a nice comment at the end of the cancellation questionnaire!

[Nephilimuk]

The wicked irony, and I hope it's not lost on Pro7, is that they've effectively bought two markets. One is future customers and with their media clout I'm sure they're confident of expanding that number right across Europe. The other is SOE's existing European community and in business terms that is the safer bet because you already have a good idea of those numbers and don't need to use the dreaded 'f' work (forecasts). The irony is due to the PR shitstorm they've created over this announcement I can guarantee that 'safe' number has just taken a hit.

I wonder if this is the kind of feedback SOE were looking for? Advice on dealing with Public Relations??

The aggrieved expert opinions coming from bitter vets cluttering the PS2 forums for the next few years could become deafening. That could have a terrible effect on adoption and a grinding niggle on overall player satisfaction. A badly treated customer will tell 10 people there experience in the real world, digitally the whole world is a stage...

I really do want this game to succeed but I do feel very let down at the moment.

[MgFalcon]

To start, I would like to state that my sentiments towards the actions by SoE are mostly, if not exactly the same, as the community in general has been feeling; hurt and extremely disappointed.

As a paying and loyal customer for years, I had always had faith within SoE, even through all their "mistakes." I feel that the playerbase (the guys who give SoE their paycheck) should have been informed on this issue a lot sooner, or at least have a representative(s) who could reach out to the whole community and give us real feedback regarding all of our concerns. I myself am affected like mostly everyone else within our community, my outfit had EU players and I have been vigorously tracking them down and updating them on Band of Bros return in PS2; not to mention that but I am also planning on moving to England within the next two years.

We understand there are technical issues, we understand SoE is a corporate giant and looks firstly to make money, but what we don't understand is why the playerbase needs to be screwed over... Again.

I would gladly go back to a paid subscription and play with my Friends from EU than have a free game game segregated and locked into regional servers. The only solution I can foresee (which is 100% breaking the terms of the ProSieben agreement) is a mixed server -NA and EU, simultaneously having their own region locked servers solely accessible by their region. (i.e. NA gets servers A,B,C,D4 and EU gets 1,2,3,D4) Would that really be too hard? :/

[ViaDolorosa]

"Fuck this shit, we dont care about eu assholes, let's just shift all the blame and we are cool"
And thats what we get for years of being dedicated fans of your game soe, we getting dumped on by region block and rerouting all customer services to some shitty company without any experience on this field. Well sony, fuck you too then!

[RedKnights]

Haha see losing 20 DT subs won't hurt much (I'm sure a few of you would be delighted not to see us in fact ;) ) but losing several hundred GotR ones would make a real dent.

Oh and Red, make sure you leave a nice comment at the end of the cancellation questionnaire!

Maybe, but personally I and a number of others like having you guys around.

I'm going to run this by the outfit at a meeting and we'll see if we can't organize a walkout of sorts. If a few of the other Mega-Outfits do the same it could literally make PS1 unplayable...

And oh boy did I, I've been wanting to do that for years, time to brush up on my BF3 skills. It's a sad day when you would rather deal with EA and Origin than ANY other game company, but this does it.

[Vancha]

And oh boy did I, I've been wanting to do that for years, time to brush up on my BF3 skills. It's a sad day when you would rather deal with EA and Origin than ANY other game company, but this does it.

I was just thinking, not even EA or Activision splits up it's communities like this. Does this deal qualify SOE for the "worst gaming corporation" award?

[OnTheJazz]

Been reading for ages, this news made me finally sign up to comment. Disappointed doesn't begin to describe my feelings right now - in all my time in Planetside (first subbed back in 2004) I played in a group of four friends: we'd known each other before any of us tried PS and stuck together right through it. Last few years we all drifted away from the game, but every few months one or other of us would get the bug, resub, spread the word and the others soon followed, and we'd be like old days again for a few weeks.

We were all really looking forward to PS2, and fully expecting to have our little team together once more. But, one of us emigrated to the US a couple of years back; the rest of us are still in Europe, so this pretty much screws us over. Hopefully it'll be possible in some way to get accounts for the other regions, but why oh why does it even have to be this difficult to let old friends play together?

This is absolutely terrible for marketing the game too - considering how many international clans and communities are out there, to say to them that if they play Planetside 2, they can't play with their friends, means they won't play, most likely! It's certainly put a huge dent in my enthusiasm, and I'm at least in a small enough group that we may yet be able to coordinate things between us. Large outfits are basically screwed, and I think this'll hit potential numbers hard.

I agree with those who say regional servers are a good idea; I looked forward to the return of Werner, tbh - it had a great community back in the day! But there HAS to be the option of playing on servers of the other regions, so friends and outfits can remain together. C'mon SOE, you killed PS1 through neglect, bad decisions and nonexistent marketing, don't kill PS2 before it's even released by making more of the same mistakes - good community relations is the only way to success in a fairly niche market, and pissing off all your loyal customers is the opposite of that.

[sylphaen]

If PS2 is a success, there will be a ton of new players who will care more about ping than the server location. As such, new solo players will choose a new player and THEN build their community over time.

Consequently, segregation of regions will almost exclusively affect PS1 veterans and their communities because they are segregated by force and also forced to abandon their old friends and restart everything with strangers. We spent almost a decade living and breathing through our PS1 communities, our outfits and our borderline retard CR5s.

Why destroy everything from us ? Why destroy your user communities ? There will be tons of new users if PS2 is a success !!! They'll gladly join their regional servers.

Leave the choice to the user !


I had characters on Markov, Werner and Emerald. Why ?
- I chose Emerald for ping
- I then made a character on Markov for off-hours.
- one day I moved to Europe and had to create a character on Werner (it never felt any fun without the people I knew and I kind of stopped playing)
- finally moved back to the US, back to Emerald, met my GOTR buddies and had the best time of my life in a video game.

Why the hell shouldn't we be allowed to do that anymore ? What about those who work off-hours and look for prime-time on another server ?

My point is that operationally, it is a logical decision to have regional servers. However, segregation of communities shows complete disregard and a we-dont-f***ing-care attitude towards PS1 veteran and other gaming communities.

This is what disgusts me and why I do not trust SOE even though they hold-up the game we love. You guys have a wonderful dev team but when decisions like that are taken, it really breaks the whole goodwill thing.

Why force users on specific servers if you really believe in the success of your franchise ?

We are only a minority who will want to play from EU in US. But we have the most meaningful reason to do so: community.

If SOE keeps being so insensitive to who plays their game and why, how can that company ever understand why people play their game ?

It's one thing to create an AAA title. Staying completely oblivious to the sensitivities of your customers and think it will be fine, however, is a pretentious and insulting mistake. Reputation does not appear out of nowhere.

[Gortha]

I really don´t like this move by ProSiebenSat.1 and Sony Online Entertainment.

With a little bit effort in datamining and handling they could easily see how many
Americans play on Pro7-Servers each Month and vice versa. So they could swap the money each one "lost" because foreign players were playing on their servers.

Sad move for many of us.

:confused:

[Dart]

With a little bit effort in datamining and handling they could easily see how many
Americans play on Pro7-Servers each Month and vice versa.


This is what leads me to suspect Pro7 would've insisted on some kind of IP lock as a clause within the contract. Pro7 will have had a look at SOE's books while they were doing due diligence and so would presumably know how many EU based players were using the US servers throughout PlanetSide's lifespan.

As I said, I think a lot of people would be surprised at the size of those numbers. I used to joke that VS CR5 chat on Emerald was a part of the US which escaped the War of Independence, due to the fact that it was still under British rule!

With that information in hand I'd be amazed if they didn't insist on a method of forcing those players to use the new, Euro-only servers.

[Sta]

Sorry to bother out of ignorance,
ive seen now a lot of posts which state why its a bad idea from the player base perspective but why will ps2 benefit from locking servers?
I've played a lot of online games and there I've always had the choice where I wanna play!
I mean even in bw/ea's swtor its free to the player where he wants to go to...
And those cats really just care bout fuking money :huh:

[Wakken]

Oh no... please no! I dont trust anything that has to do with "EU provider" since what GOA did to Warhammer Online's and Dark age of Camelots EU playerbase. Nooo!!!

[OneStepAhed]

Dissapointing news, the post below echos my sentiments.

Hi Radar

Thanks for posting please find below some feedback minus the insults which I hope is clear and kind of constructive.

In 2009 SOE took the decision to merge its existing Planetside servers into a single server Gemini. This brought together the existing global Planetside base into a single environment in which loyal paying customer created new bonds and continued to play the game they loved despite any significant content updates. In effect this has created a global private members club in which people pay to play with friends and a lot of time nostalgia. The global players of this club have been the games greatest advocates and some of the hype around Planetside 2 can be directly attributed to this worldwide community prior to any major push from SOE. This may have been an unforeseen consequence, but it is a direct effect of the business decision to merge the servers. SOE you have created this community and in the main this community has support you by remaining subscribed to a zombie MMO Planetside 1.

We now receive the news that this “club” which was inadvertently created by SOE is now going to be disbanded and removed due to a change in the business model and a sharing of risk with a European partner. Great business decision for SOE and I fully understand why it is attractive. This does however have a considerable impact on your most loyal players and the ones who stuck with you despite no real support. In effect you have alienated your European player base and split your existing community. (It has not been confirmed about the I.P banning or not being able to play in the US but with out a formal statement from SOE i am airing on the side of caution)

Personally I do not feel as a paying customer to PS1 this is great customer service and if I would have known this 6 months ago I would have questioned keeping my subscription open. (back drop of account hacks possible personal data loss ect...)

A second and more interesting slant to what is unfolding is the question if the European servers are run by a separate company what would the impact be on access for Europeans to the Planetside 2 Beta?

We have been told time and time again that us PS1 players would be looked after as the game has been hyped and SOE has solicited the community. I am a subscribing player and still play PS1 I would hope I fall into this category. If this is not the case then, then that certainly leaves a sour taste in the mouth and with out meaning to sound over emotional discriminated against should other members of the private members club you created get to play.

A bit of a PR cock up at the moment but I am sure a formal statement will go a long way to counter act any irrational fears which may be surfacing in the community.

I do understand that there are winners and losers in any business decision. However burning advocates of the Planetside brand in such away does not seem overly smart. The adage no publicity is bad publicity is not strictly true in the digital age.

[Wakken]

I'll try to be more clear what GOA actually did to EU's player base and why I dont trust "EU providers" anymore. At all.

Mythic (developer for DAoC and WAR) were handling the US player base and GOA were responsible for EU's. Their support were rubbish. Patches US got with new content could come out months later for EU, meaning the EU guys had to sit around with bugs/without content for a long time before they finally got the patch.

When playing Warhammer Online, their support was not much better. The instant Mythic announced that GOA will take over EU once again, there were a reaction pretty much like this one. No one liked them, no one wanted them, we wanted Mythic to handle EU as well and stay under one banner. But nooope. GOA stayed around I think one year, then the playerbase had enough and Mythic actually took EU in under its wing.

What GOA did wrong? I still have a few pictures I can show you guys. We had a broken/un-updated website, support being rubbish. Even though the patches came out fairly regular, it still sucked.

This is what EU got in a nutshell;

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t351/asdasdasd111223344/lolGOA.jpg

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t351/asdasdasd111223344/clp2.jpg

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t351/asdasdasd111223344/GOA2.jpg

This is what US got;

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t351/asdasdasd111223344/asd.jpg

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t351/asdasdasd111223344/forum1.jpg

This is why, I wish SOE will take EU. I do not trust any more "eu community provider".

[texico]

Why am I not surprised that SOE is screwing us over?

Nothing anybody does is going to change this. Only thing I can see working is to somehow mass-boycott the game when it's released.

[sylphaen]

No one is going to boycott anything. The sour after-taste may stay for a long time, though.

[Coreldan]

Boycotts in game like these arnt necessary the best idea anyways.

The game that can actually save itself after a bad launch (which would happen if everyone really boycotted would happen) are very few.

That said, the people boycotting would be a drop in the sea anyways, thus you would not achieve anything. This change does not affect your average joe that SOE is targeting. Sure, the hardcore playerbase from PS1 suffer a bit, if they had strong connections to an international clan, but they cant fully cater to a small minority either, those dont really pay the bills.

But once again, I rather wouldve sticked with just SOE. Also I'd hope that there wouldnt be any region blocks per se, but even if there is it doesnt affect me in any way. Just gotta hope Pro7 wont fuck us over too bad. That said, not like SOE was known for.. not fucking people up later :D

Also, I 100% love the developers behind PS2. This is not their fault, they couldnt help this, and I most certainly still love them and want to support their product. Fuck the high ups of SOE, but my love for Higgles & co is neverending! :D

[stordito]

right now "veteran" sound more like an handicapped war survivor to discard to social services rather than something good the game spawned during those years and a knowledge source for the future developement...

i too respect the efforts of the team, this is between us and SOE.

[Vancha]

To everyone saying this doesn't affect anyone but PS1 players...

What of all the Call of Duty clans, Battlefield clans, Counter-Strike clans, TF2 clans etc. etc.?

None of those games are region-locked. Who knows how many multi-national clans might have moved over to PS2 to try it out, but decide not to because they can't play together?

Additionally, what of all the people who were thinking of giving SOE another try and decide not to because they see they still care so little about their customers? I've already seen people who had a wary interest of PS2 (due to SOE's bad reputation) stating they won't play it because SOE clearly hasn't learned...

[Coreldan]

Seeing it's a F2P game, I doubt the amount of "I wouldve tried but not since they did region blocks" is very high.

Would be a whole different ballpark if it actually costed something to try/play.

That said, I'm surprised if there really are that many internation FPS clans who intend to always stick together. WASP for one has seperate NA divisions and we never even expected to play PS2 all together. One could argue that it's pretty much a totally different clan in that case and I do sorta agree, I was originally against us expanding from the EU community we were to international, but either way, we were always prepared to play as seperate groups.

The reason we did expand was more about sort of the clan as a.. franchise. We were always extremely known on EU APB servers due to a few reasons, and we have a very specific theme to ourselves, so some wanted to expand the "franchise" also over to NA servers.

[Figment]

No one is going to boycott anything. The sour after-taste may stay for a long time, though.

Boycotts only make things worse, because they lose you as a stakeholder, you stop contributing feedback (through channels they may learn of said feedback) and most of all: you're not paying, so why would they possibly listen?

PS1 was boycott by a lot of players for various reasons to make statements. Did it change anything? Yes: It reduced the amount of support the game got and it made them believe the game had fundamental flaws elsewhere then where we saw issues with it.

Sadly, statements like boycotts get taken the wrong way too easily.



Off-topic, but speaking of effective boycotts, "Iran stops shipping oil to EU countries". Yes, to those EU nations they wern't really exporting to in the first place, as a response to getting boycott by other EU nations. :rolleyes::rofl:

[sylphaen]

Figment, just in case I might have been misunderstood, that's what I meant too... Boycotts are pointless. No one who loved PS1 would boycott a chance at playing PS2 anyways.

However, the aftertaste I was talking about was when we will log in a EU server and not have the US community of people we knew and loved playing with or against... That's sour.

[Figment]

*was backing up your statement* ;)

[IronMole]

Seeing it's a F2P game, I doubt the amount of "I wouldve tried but not since they did region blocks" is very high.

Would be a whole different ballpark if it actually costed something to try/play.

That said, I'm surprised if there really are that many internation FPS clans who intend to always stick together. WASP for one has seperate NA divisions and we never even expected to play PS2 all together. One could argue that it's pretty much a totally different clan in that case and I do sorta agree, I was originally against us expanding from the EU community we were to international, but either way, we were always prepared to play as seperate groups.

The reason we did expand was more about sort of the clan as a.. franchise. We were always extremely known on EU APB servers due to a few reasons, and we have a very specific theme to ourselves, so some wanted to expand the "franchise" also over to NA servers.

Don't you still have to buy the game originally - the same scheme as Guild Wars?

Also, many clans stick together no matter what - Unleashed for example. We're a small community of mixed people who enjoy playing games as a group. Many friends from across the pond...

[Fara]

I'm part of an active gameing community called Blacksun since 2006 ( www.joinblacksun.com). As a collective group of around 200 different people (with 50-60 active at any given time) we play a variety of games and since I'm a former PS1 vet day 1, I've been pushing this game very hard on our forums and how awesome it was and will be.

However that being said we are... a 50/50 split of Americans and Europeans with some sprinkled members in other countries all over the planet. Region locks will kill off any interest in this game, even if its Free to play, simply because our collective group can't play together.



I get this is a game and all but whats with the China style "oh no you can't do that" setup? Smacks me as very anti-freedom. Isn't that what America is all about, Freedom?

[IronMole]

To everyone saying this doesn't affect anyone but PS1 players...

What of all the Call of Duty clans, Battlefield clans, Counter-Strike clans, TF2 clans etc. etc.?

None of those games are region-locked. Who knows how many multi-national clans might have moved over to PS2 to try it out, but decide not to because they can't play together?

Additionally, what of all the people who were thinking of giving SOE another try and decide not to because they see they still care so little about their customers? I've already seen people who had a wary interest of PS2 (due to SOE's bad reputation) stating they won't play it because SOE clearly hasn't learned...

Exactly - many communities have members from different countries. If a region lock was in place then that would ultimately prevent them from coming to PS2.

[FHMathew]

I'm part of an active gameing community called Blacksun since 2006 ( www.joinblacksun.com). As a collective group of around 200 different people (with 50-60 active at any given time) we play a variety of games and since I'm a former PS1 vet day 1, I've been pushing this game very hard on our forums and how awesome it was and will be.

However that being said we are... a 50/50 split of Americans and Europeans with some sprinkled members in other countries all over the planet. Region locks will kill off any interest in this game, even if its Free to play, simply because our collective group can't play together.



I get this is a game and all but whats with the China style "oh no you can't do that" setup? Smacks me as very anti-freedom. Isn't that what America is all about, Freedom?

Exactly the same here :)

[sylphaen]

*was backing up your statement* ;)
:thumbsup:

[Coreldan]

Don't you still have to buy the game originally - the same scheme as Guild Wars?

Also, many clans stick together no matter what - Unleashed for example. We're a small community of mixed people who enjoy playing games as a group. Many friends from across the pond...

No, the game does not have a retail cost.

As for the latter part, I do understand, but even in that situation it wouldn't stop me from playing the game either in another group or solo if the "primary group" wouldnt follow or then just playing with the people from the "right side of the pond". But I guess that's just me :D

[SniperSteve]

In League of Legends you need a separate account to login to the EU/US servers. It will pretty much 'default' you into your location, but if you want to play in another region, the option is there if you are willing to dig around a little bit.

That is really the best approach. This way most people will play on the regional servers and get the best experience, and only a few that want to play with people from other countries will go through the effort of creating an account for that other region.

[Duddy]

In League of Legends you need a separate account to login to the EU/US servers. It will pretty much 'default' you into your location, but if you want to play in another region, the option is there if you are willing to dig around a little bit.

That is really the best approach. This way most people will play on the regional servers and get the best experience, and only a few that want to play with people from other countries will go through the effort of creating an account for that other region.

While not wholly ideal in itself (e.g. I wanted to pay the equivalent of a sub for this game, I'll be damned if I have to do it across 2 accounts though!) this is probably the best compromise for all involved.

I think we just need to wait for their response to our feedback.

[Mirror]

While not wholly ideal in itself (e.g. I wanted to pay the equivalent of a sub for this game, I'll be damned if I have to do it across 2 accounts though!) this is probably the best compromise for all involved.

I think we just need to wait for their response to our feedback.

I think we will be waiting a while for that. in the mean time we need to use psu, fb, twitter, reddit etc to keep this in SOEs face.

[Figment]

http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-things-soe-forgot-about-in-the-prosiebensat-1alaplaya-deal/

Some interesting issues brought up by EQ2 players.

[Duddy]

I think we will be waiting a while for that. in the mean time we need to use psu, fb, twitter, reddit etc to keep this in SOEs face.

I certainly didn't mean to say we should drop visibility on the issue, but yes we need to make people aware of the issue. Particularly those that may not read media covering this.

But as opposed to keeping it in SOE's face, the best thing we can do is try to get them to commit to a time frame in which we can expect a response, because then if they don't hold to that then we have due reason to badger them for a response.

Might be tricky getting them to commit to such a thing however!

[Vancha]

http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-things-soe-forgot-about-in-the-prosiebensat-1alaplaya-deal/

Some interesting issues brought up by EQ2 players.

Another piece of writing that needs to be seen by the powers that be.

[Duddy]

Another piece of writing that needs to be seen by the powers that be.

Indeed, several things I hadn't considered at all in there.

Thanks for sharing that, Figment.

[Shamrock]

Have to say im very disappointed. I enjoyed switching between servers, each had their own unique ambiance/play-style. Also the number of outfits that had a mix of US EU players was considerable. I enjoyed logging onto team-speak and hearing accents from all over the world, it was kinda cool that despite being 1000's of miles apart we could work together, laugh, joke and play as a solid team. That was all part of the experience that kept many of of us playing/subscribing from 2003 till today.

I noticed that the German company Pro7Sat.1 is owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, this is an American Private equity firm, hell it's the ORIGINAL private equity firm. These guys are seriously hard-nosed sharks, they leverage up companies and squeeze every cent they can out of them, up the productivity, get the balance sheet looking shiny no matter how hard they have to hammer the employees; and then sell it off for a fat profit to divide up between the small circle of equity partners.

They even made a movie about them "Barbarians at the gate"
Barbarians at the Gate trailer - YouTube

[Dart]

At the risk of sounding flippant: http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-things-soe-forgot-about-in-the-prosiebensat-1alaplaya-deal/


Pro7Sat.1 is known for poorly-supported, security flaw riddled Korean-style browser MMOs. Not only does Pro7Sat.1 have a history of hacked accounts due to poor security, but they’ve done little to resolve the matter. More than a few players have expressed concern at the prospect of dealing with this shady company.


At least the two companies have some common ground!! :mad:

For those who haven't already, read that list - some excellent points.

Here are the final two, for anyone wondering what kind of company we're being sold to in Pro7Sat.1


UPDATE: Pro7Sat.1 reserves the right to DELETE accounts and character data (http://en.alaplaya.net/pages/terms) (Part 6) after 90 days of inactivity. Will this apply to SOE games?


UPDATE: In violation of German and EU privacy laws, Pro7Sat.1 publishes the real names on accounts (http://en.alaplaya.net/forum/support-f66/open-payments-t12991.html) which are past-due.



I'm feeling less like I want to play this game by the second.

[Mirror]

I want nothing to do with this company and I don't want my details or my account passed to them.

[Boomzor]

It doesn't matter how many new players turn up. They would probably turn up anyways. What you should think about is how many more players show up in addition to what you already have.
No matter how you twist and turn it, it'll be less people buying stuff off their e-shop.

Building on what you have is always better than replacing and starting over (unless the core is really rotten but there's no sign of that in regards to multiple region access is there?). It can't be that hard to figure out.

- unless there's some tax/trade regulation thingie underneath all this that makes small transactions stupidly expensive -

[Gandhi]

I guess one of the factors behind the region lock is that nobody would willingly associate with Alaplaya if it could be avoided. Regardless of how this plays out I'm not giving these clowns my personal info and I'm certainly not giving them my money.

[Figment]

It has been brought up on other forums that new TOS/EULA Anti-Class Action waiver stuff could have something to do with this entire move. ie. to have a seperate TOS/EULA for US and EU players. Thoughts?

[Dart]

It has been brought up on other forums that new TOS/EULA Anti-Class Action waiver stuff could have something to do with this entire move. ie. to have a seperate TOS/EULA for US and EU players. Thoughts?

Call me old fashioned but I've got an Anti Class Action solution of my own: produce good games and provide adequate customer support! I know, it's crazy, right?

[Figment]

Call me old fashioned but I've got an Anti Class Action solution of my own: produce good games and provide adequate customer support! I know, it's crazy, right?

SOE isn't Sparta! D: That's in Europe! Must be madness.

[Mauser101]

- unless there's some tax/trade regulation thingie underneath all this that makes small transactions stupidly expensive -

Collection of VAT may have been one of the issues, though I'd think that SOE would know their way around that mess by now.

[GoldDragon]

All I can say is no. I posted on the SOE forum as well and I encourage others to do so.

Region locking the servers will remove a lot of the creative problem solving players experience. When you're fighting people who think like you, it's a lot easier to have stagnant game play where as fighting or playing with people from other regions and cultures brings new ways to thinking to the game. Watch how a Russian player fights verse an American or European or Chinese, and so on.

On top of that, it will tear established communities apart. I know my outfit will lose a few European player if this goes through.

[ThGlump]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.


There are good reasons for regional servers. - No one is against that
There are no reasons for regional locking. - it hard split communities
There are no reasons for having third party account if i want to play SOE game. - Its selling us to someone with no proper online game experience, with poor security.

[General M]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

But seriously, how hard is a ping limit?

[Coreldan]

But seriously, how hard is a ping limit?

Not necessarily hard, but perhaps not ideal either. I hate when I play some random generic online shooter and like once after 30 mins of playing my ping for some reason jumps above the allowed threshold and I get kicked for it, even if most of the time my ping isn't a problem.

Hmmh, overall speaking I dont think ping limits are the way to go anyways.

[Coreldan]

I'm not sure they can back out of the contract they signed, but if they don't figure something out with all of the bad PR and negative articles I have read on this, it is going to crush SOE completely.

It's not going to crush SOE completely. This does not concern majority just about.. at all.

[Mastachief]

From their EULA:

“P7S1 Games is entitled to delete your Account, and with it your personal information, if you go for a period of more than 90 days in a row without using the Services. If you have purchased APs (see Art. IV. [1] below), P7S1 Games will delete your Account and revoke any remaining APs if you have not used the Services for a period of at least one (1) year.”

“P7S1 Games may delete data and/or refuse to store additional data if the technical limitations are exceeded, in consideration of the specifications according to Art. III 6. This applies in the event you go for a period of more than 90 days without using the Services offered by P7S1 Games. P7S1 Games will notify you prior to deleting important data.”

Fun fun fun.

[Figment]

I'm not sure they can back out of the contract they signed, but if they don't figure something out with all of the bad PR and negative articles I have read on this, it is going to crush SOE completely.

Crush? No. Damage reputation? Yes.

The sad thing is, Sony's reputation was climbing back up recently (last year or so) with more direct interaction with and more catering to the players.

For instance, the way the dev interaction has been going around here hasn't gone unnoticed by more than the PS1/PS2 playerbase (some sites picked up on the notion of interaction). This is going to undo the renewed goodwill to at least some extend, especially for players who were skeptic or burned before.

[Redshift]

It's not going to crush SOE completely. This does not concern majority just about.. at all.

Well tbh that depends on what pro7 are like, i'm not too fussed about being lockied into Europe, i mean i don't like it but i can deal with it, but i REALLY am not sure about giving my credit card details to pro7, from what i've read about them so far they just don't seem trust worthy

[MadPenguin]

Im not comfortable with having Pro7 dealing with the issues of the game in Europe and not SOE.
REALLY not comfortable giving them credit card details, especially since from what i read my account would just get hacked and they wouldn't give 2 shits.

[XLynxX]

There are definitely sound technical reasons for regional servers and we've always planned on having them.

Regional servers make perfect sense.

Locking them is illogical, it destroys communities, removes freedom of the player by being able to choose their server. Planetside 1 managed to do regional servers fine, are you seriously saying 9 years later you can't?

Also, the company you've given it to seem to be hated by their customers. They are known for bad customer service, seemingly bad ethics in their working, and have actually published lists of people online (in public view to name and shame, which is borderline breaching EU Human Rights Legisation) who are in arrears with the company. And that is for their TV licensing, who knows what they'll be like in an area they have little to no experience of.

You're effectively giving the European Planetside 2 over to the European Rupert Murdoch empire.

[SUBARU]

Dart, I completely agree with you... SOE is making a very dumb decision here. Especially with a F2P product, boycotting giving them any money is easy to do, I just never use their cash shop. How I can have my cake, and piss in their boots. Don't give them a dime until this is made right. I'm cancelling my PS1 subscription today. Something I have never done.

Just cancelled my Ps1 sub,I filled out the survey and told them why i cancelled. In game name KLECKO

[Raymac]

There are good reasons for regional servers. - No one is against that
There are no reasons for regional locking. - it hard split communities


Not trolling you, but I see these 2 statements as being contradictory. The good reasons for regional servers are the good reasons for regional locking.

Perhaps I'm just an old school ping snob because going back to my CounterStrike days I would always sort servers by ping and select the lowest. So I'm not really going to be crying over seeing fewer people rubberband warp on my screen.

Sure it will suck a bit for a minority of gamers who have forged bonds, but you are a minority and not trying to sound cold, but you will get over it, especially if PS2 is far more popular than PS1 ever was.

[MadPenguin]

Sure it will suck a bit for a minority of gamers who have forged bonds, but you are a minority and not trying to sound cold, but you will get over it, especially if PS2 is far more popular than PS1 ever was.

I cant speak for all the europeans, but reading up about this company, i doubt im the only one not willing to give them my financials

[Raymac]

I cant speak for all the europeans, but reading up about this company, i doubt im the only one not willing to give them my financials

To me, that sounds a bit ironic considering the "unpleasantness" that SOE had with hackers not long ago.

[Vash02]

Not trolling you, but I see these 2 statements as being contradictory. The good reasons for regional servers are the good reasons for regional locking.

Perhaps I'm just an old school ping snob because going back to my CounterStrike days I would always sort servers by ping and select the lowest. So I'm not really going to be crying over seeing fewer people rubberband warp on my screen.

Sure it will suck a bit for a minority of gamers who have forged bonds, but you are a minority and not trying to sound cold, but you will get over it, especially if PS2 is far more popular than PS1 ever was.

Come on Raymac,the only reason for region lock these days is because the local publisher wants a locked in consumer base that they have with no competition.

[Qwan]

Dont think ill be playing to much planetside, over half my outfit is European based guys, Actually when i think about it all of them are from Europe because I was stationed in germany when i bought the game. So i dont think ill be playing planetside 2. Well i still got diablo 3 and Tera online, they let me play with my european friends :) as well as BF3.

P.S. I will miss them though :(

[IronMole]

I like how people call us the minority as if the majority are going to be players that have no correlation with an outfit, guild or clan. :rolleyes:

[Gandhi]

To me, that sounds a bit ironic considering the "unpleasantness" that SOE had with hackers not long ago.
It's not ironic, it's sad. Sad that SOE seems to have learned nothing from that experience.

[Redshift]

To me, that sounds a bit ironic considering the "unpleasantness" that SOE had with hackers not long ago.

Difference is if the card details got abused SOE would make things right, or rather sony would because of the negative press. Pro7 just look like they'd ignore you.

[Hmr85]

Dont think ill be playing to much planetside, over half my outfit is European based guys, Actually when i think about it all of them are from Europe because I was stationed in germany when i bought the game. So i dont think ill be playing planetside 2. Well i still got diablo 3 and Tera online, they let me play with my european friends :) as well as BF3.

P.S. I will miss them though :(

Your still going to play it and you know it. :lol:

[Raymac]

Come on Raymac,the only reason for region lock these days is because the local publisher wants a locked in consumer base that they have with no competition.

I don't think it's the "only" reason, but I'd absolutely agree that it is the "primary" reason. That's why you have exclusivity. The other benefits are merely a side effect, but we all know this is primarily about money. But hey, SOE is a business, not a charity.

It's not ironic, it's sad. Sad that SOE seems to have learned nothing from that experience.

No, what I mean is that it is funny that people are saying they feel much more secure with SOE that just had a major hacking problem, but have problems with a newer company with a cleaner record. I mean I constantly hear "stupid SOE" and now everyone would rather be with SOE. That's what I think is ironic.

[Duddy]

Not trolling you, but I see these 2 statements as being contradictory. The good reasons for regional servers are the good reasons for regional locking.

Perhaps I'm just an old school ping snob because going back to my CounterStrike days I would always sort servers by ping and select the lowest. So I'm not really going to be crying over seeing fewer people rubberband warp on my screen.

Sure it will suck a bit for a minority of gamers who have forged bonds, but you are a minority and not trying to sound cold, but you will get over it, especially if PS2 is far more popular than PS1 ever was.

I'm surprised you seem to think it is the minority of people that have forged international bonds over games. Perhaps in proportion for those new to PC online gaming, sure, but for those who have been playing a long time I would find hard to believe that people hadn't made such a connection.

I'd love to see actual numbers, but I think that's somewhat a peripheral point. What I find galling however is the telling people they are the minority. Got any proof of that? Even a "guesstimate"? May I suggest that if you want to propose this is not a matter for people that you back up what you say with either a well thought out conjecture or numbers to support it.

As for the technical part of the discussion, it remains an unproven variable. Ping was not a huge issue in PS1, but whatever ping/loss you did have was exacerbated by client-side and extrapolation. On the whole it was definitely playable and personally I don't think you could tell an average foreign player from a native player unless they (or you) had a very bad connection. Not to say there weren't outliers, but they existed regardless of region.

Realistically, until we know how PS2 would fair with international play we can't say whether it would be bad enough to "warrant" a region lock. But this said, going by the fact it was more than playable back in 2003, I somehow doubt it would be worse in 2012 but again this is my own conjecture and, as mentioned, have no way to prove it.

But ok, we get it, you don't think it's a problem and you think people should deal with it. But some of us (which, if you were to judge by the reaction so far, is the majority here as opposed to the minority you suggest) disagree and we'd like to know what can be done about it.

[MadPenguin]

To me, that sounds a bit ironic considering the "unpleasantness" that SOE had with hackers not long ago.

The difference here is SOE apologised, and tried to fix the problem. Pro7 just doesnt care and isnt doing anything to deal with the supposedly still on going problem

[VioletZero]

Did some contemplating and I thought of ONE good reason why they would want region locking.

They might want to avoid one set of regional servers soaking up more players than the others. That way, if someone wants to play on a server close to them, it won't be dead and they won't be forced to play on some server overseas to get a decent amount of people.

[Fara]

After re-reading Pro7 FAQ I can't believe how angry and passionate I feel about this game (which is a good thing, means I care) but at the same time I feel like a total idot for thinking I could place my trust in SOE again.

Keep up the good work Dev team, and as for SOE executive branch have you heard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama:_Bender%27s_Big_Score#Torgo.27s_Executive _Powder ??

[Straws]

One of the things I really loved about Planetside was that it catered for the fact that I worked nights. It allowed me to play on whichever server provided me with the most gameplay based on my life. Better still, when things changed, even though I would have to start a new character from scratch, I at least had somewhere else to go, and my previous "playground" wasn't closed off from me. In this sense, it has offered to truest MMO experience of any MMO I have played to date.

As some of you may know, Blizzard has been working for a long time to try and break the limits that are imposed on MMO developers through technology. Whilst WoW is a proven popular product, it has never (and still doesn't) allowed a true MMO experience due to how limited the number of players there are per server. They have slowly expanded the access their playerbase has with each other through various systems. Whilst the entire gameplay experience of this product is not as far reaching as instanced grouping, it's been making progress.

However, despite their progress, they have made some really poor business decisions along the way, one of which was nipped in the bud before it was implimented. The problems are that it's still not a global product, despite it's numbers. English speaking Europeans can't play with Americans, French speaking Canadians can't play with the French, etc.

The other mistake was actually made when they finally made good progress with allowing players to finally play regionally. When they finally broke down the cross server barrier, they wanted to charge it as a Premium Service for certain game types (raiding and battlegrounds). This is the one that was nipped in the bud.

Which leads me to this. Regardless of what you do with all this information that is being gathered, please do not try to profit from it. Do not "offer a compromise" of charging an extra $/£/€1 per month for access to out-of-region servers. It would be an insult and I wouldn't be surprised if it pushes more players (who experienced the prefered system SOE offered historically) away from SOE products altogether.

[General M]

No offence to americans, but it's not the fact that I won't be able to play US that's a massive problem but the fact that from here on in EU players are second class citizens for SOE,"they're prosieben's group and if things fuck up, they can't blame us" is an easy attitude for them to take and I've seen no evidence so far that prosieben will be any benefit to us whatsoever.

Secondly, I'm highly suspicious of the whole "we had no idea, megasoz" coming from SOE considering they have never mentioned ONCE about an EU beta. Call me a conspiracy theorist but they must have known about something, unless they were simply massively forgetful. IDK about anyone else but I asked enough about EU beta as I'm sure many others have that someone at SOE (PSU, Twitter)would have seen it and could have given info.

[MadPenguin]

No, what I mean is that it is funny that people are saying they feel much more secure with SOE that just had a major hacking problem, but have problems with a newer company with a cleaner record. I mean I constantly hear "stupid SOE" and now everyone would rather be with SOE. That's what I think is ironic.


I appreciate some people have said this but i havent.

[Gandhi]

No, what I mean is that it is funny that people are saying they feel much more secure with SOE that just had a major hacking problem, but have problems with a newer company with a cleaner record. I mean I constantly hear "stupid SOE" and now everyone would rather be with SOE. That's what I think is ironic.
Yeah it's quite a feat that they managed to find a partner even less attractive than them when it comes to security, I'll grant them that. Couldn't have been easy.

[Hamma]

http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-things-soe-forgot-about-in-the-prosiebensat-1alaplaya-deal/

Some interesting issues brought up by EQ2 players.

This is a great find - I will get this some visibility in our community as well.

[texico]

The single biggest hit from this deal will be dedicated gaming clans not playing PS2 because they're international and will only play multiplayer games where they can play together.

This has other ramifications too. Gaming clans and guilds are highly organized. Playing PlanetSide2, it's them who would be the ones employing smart tactics to overcome another empire, just like how some of the higher profile outfits in PS1 drove a lot of the gameplay. If guilds and clans don't come to PS2, you're losing a lot of organization in battles right there. I'm not saying people won't organize themselves into outfits in PS2, but you're still losing those large multi-game highly-organized outfits.

Gameplay is going to be directly worse as a result of this, with the playerbase being more zerg-like and disorganized.





Also, I didn't say that a boycott is at all feasible, but theoretically an internet campaign'd large boycott with a clear message in which the majority of people planning to play PS2 don't for a period of time is probably the only thing that's going to do anything.

They've already signed the contracts apparently, without consulting the community AT ALL. They're not going to listen to our thoughts, if they were interested in those they would have consulted us prior to signing the deal. I don't see how they can back-track now?



Also, I suspect the devs are royally pissed about this. The game they developed doesn't need this kind of terrible negativity associated with it.

[Oryon22]

Would the affected parties be willing to pay a fee to play with their friends overseas?

Give EU players the option to "transfer" to a US server for a nominal fee and slightly higher ping.

[Rbstr]

If you honestly think there's no reason, outside of some nebulous corporate money-grubbing argument, for regionalization you're not thinking clearly.

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.
Sure, it's better these days than it was back in PS1s time. But I think the only way the game shouldn't be region locked is if the servers kick on exceeding some kind of latency threshold so dicks from other continents or on dial-up don't ruin the game for people with good connections.

[Vancha]

Like someone said in the other thread, contracts can be broken, albeit messily. This is not done and dusted.

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.
Sure, it's better these days than it was back in PS1s time. But I think the only way the game shouldn't be region locked is if the servers kick on exceeding some kind of latency threshold so dicks from other continents or on dial-up don't ruin the game for people with good connections.
We had this earlier in the thread. I got 93ms and no loss from the UK to Emerald. There were plenty of Americans that lagged about more than I did.

[texico]

Would the affected parties be willing to pay a fee to play with their friends overseas?

Give EU players the option to "transfer" to a US server for a nominal fee and slightly higher ping.

What?!?! You can absolutely guarantee that EU players aren't going to pay for something that US players get for free, that's going to be a slightly worse experience for them anyway due to ping. Or at least, they'd be highly offended by that notion.

[Gandhi]

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.

There must already be a ping cap system, otherwise anyone could fire up a BitTorrent client to abuse the resulting high ping and packet loss. So this is a non-issue.

[Mastachief]

There must already be a ping cap system, otherwise anyone could fire up a BitTorrent client to abuse the resulting high ping and packet loss. So this is a non-issue.


Nope there is none and actually certain "skilled" players already do something similar.

[Raymac]

I'm surprised you seem to think it is the minority of people that have forged international bonds over games. Perhaps in proportion for those new to PC online gaming, sure, but for those who have been playing a long time I would find hard to believe that people hadn't made such a connection.

I'd love to see actual numbers, but I think that's somewhat a peripheral point. What I find galling however is the telling people they are the minority. Got any proof of that? Even a "guesstimate"? May I suggest that if you want to propose this is not a matter for people that you back up what you say with either a well thought out conjecture or numbers to support it.

I just got my numbers from the "Out of my Butt Institute" so it's not scientific. What I was referring to really was the number of Planetside players actually left playing with each other in comparison to the hopefully vast numbers of Planetside 2 players. So I consider the current PS players a minority, and the EU players a subset of that minority.

You bring up a solid point, however, about gaming outfits / guilds in general. They are international more often than not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hard set on advocating for region locked servers. However, I do see an upside to it, and considering what it looks like business-wise, I don't know if there is anything that can be done to change it, so I'm taking the view of, we all better start to learn to accept it and move on.

[Gandhi]

Nope there is none and actually certain "skilled" players already do something similar.
Planetside has a lot of problems with cheating and hacking, I'm assuming they won't be making those mistakes again.

[Redshift]

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.

Almost half of America doesn't have access to high speed internet last time i saw the stats, I guarantee the people here that are pissed off about this have far more capable connections and get lower pings than a good sized chunk of the usa will

[Wakken]

To everyone saying this doesn't affect anyone but PS1 players...

What of all the Call of Duty clans, Battlefield clans, Counter-Strike clans, TF2 clans etc. etc.?

None of those games are region-locked. Who knows how many multi-national clans might have moved over to PS2 to try it out, but decide not to because they can't play together?

Additionally, what of all the people who were thinking of giving SOE another try and decide not to because they see they still care so little about their customers? I've already seen people who had a wary interest of PS2 (due to SOE's bad reputation) stating they won't play it because SOE clearly hasn't learned...

A very good point

[IronMole]

If you honestly think there's no reason, outside of some nebulous corporate money-grubbing argument, for regionalization you're not thinking clearly.

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.
Sure, it's better these days than it was back in PS1s time. But I think the only way the game shouldn't be region locked is if the servers kick on exceeding some kind of latency threshold so dicks from other continents or on dial-up don't ruin the game for people with good connections.

/sigh.

[BlazingSun]

I think those guys who get upset about the "region lock" are reading too much into the contract between SOE and ProSiebenSat1. I think this is more of a contract clause than an actual statement of them somehow enforcing a "region lock".


Planetside has a lot of problems with cheating and hacking, I'm assuming they won't be making those mistakes again.

I wouln't put my hand in the fire for that, if I was you.

[ThGlump]

Planetside has a lot of problems with cheating and hacking, I'm assuming they won't be making those mistakes again.

Yea. Soe is bragging about how theyll will hunt and punish hackers. Ok if they focus on it it could be done. But what will pro7 do? Will they ban hackers too, or will they ignore them? Again second grade service.

[Duddy]

I just got my numbers from the "Out of my Butt Institute" so it's not scientific. What I was referring to really was the number of Planetside players actually left playing with each other in comparison to the hopefully vast numbers of Planetside 2 players. So I consider the current PS players a minority, and the EU players a subset of that minority.

You bring up a solid point, however, about gaming outfits / guilds in general. They are international more often than not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hard set on advocating for region locked servers. However, I do see an upside to it, and considering what it looks like business-wise, I don't know if there is anything that can be done to change it, so I'm taking the view of, we all better start to learn to accept it and move on.

Fair point in regards to what we have here being a minority, the common phenomenon of the silent majority and the vocal minority and the same is true here.

Forgive any potential accusations, this wasn't my intent, but the approach you appear to be adopting just seems somewhat dismissive and defeatist.

Likewise I understand the positives for such a move, which is why I would support making us use a different account for US play as somewhat of a a barrier to it so that not everyone does it. But I can't accept the seemingly current plan in light of what it does to various communities.

But yeah, agreeing to disagree to a certain degree. :P

[Wakken]

http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-things-soe-forgot-about-in-the-prosiebensat-1alaplaya-deal/

Some interesting issues brought up by EQ2 players.

this article must be seen by the powers.

[p0intman]

I'm sort of the peanut gallery in this, but I went and read the EQ2Wire post about it (http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-things-soe-forgot-about-in-the-prosiebensat-1alaplaya-deal/) and at the end were two parts that threw me for a loop.

UPDATE: Alaplaya reserves the right to DELETE accounts and character data (Part 6) after 90 days of inactivity. Will this apply to SOE games?

UPDATE: In violation of German and EU privacy laws, Alaplaya publishes the real names on accounts which are past-due.

Just... wut? Its a meme, but really...

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/funny-pictures-cat-cannot-brain-today.jpg

Did the people at the table on this just have the dumb? I expected an SOE fuckup, just not this early and not on this horrible scale.


this article must be seen by the powers.


I know that for sure its in Smed's inbox, he replied to me last night... twice. I sent that this morning.

The responses pretty much boil down to the fact that he's aware of the problem and that they're looking at a bunch of options. Stuff Higby and Co. already said.

If the track record says anything, I expect something of the following

http://www.ostrichheadinsand.com/images/ostrich-head-in-sand.jpg

[Lunarchild]

I'm sort of the peanut gallery in this, but I went and read the EQ2Wire post about it (http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-things-soe-forgot-about-in-the-prosiebensat-1alaplaya-deal/) and at the end were two parts that threw me for a loop.

UPDATE: Alaplaya reserves the right to DELETE accounts and character data (Part 6) after 90 days of inactivity. Will this apply to SOE games?

UPDATE: In violation of German and EU privacy laws, Alaplaya publishes the real names on accounts which are past-due.



Hrmm, in fact, I think someone in Germany should contact the authorities. Because that's just wrong.

[texico]

I expected an SOE fuckup, just not this early and not on this horrible scale.


Really? I was absolutely expecting it after the way they treated PlanetSide1

[MuNrOe]

!!!!!

[Raymac]

Forgive any potential accusations, this wasn't my intent, but the approach you appear to be adopting just seems somewhat dismissive and defeatist.

Likewise I understand the positives for such a move, which is why I would support making us use a different account for US play as somewhat of a a barrier to it so that not everyone does it. But I can't accept the seemingly current plan in light of what it does to various communities.

But yeah, agreeing to disagree to a certain degree. :P

I think you are right that my view is a bit defeatist. I'm pessimistic that the contract will be changed just because of the very nature of exclusivity.

As much as I've banged the ping drum in this thread, I would be happy to see families, err, guilds be able to stay and play together. The bonds we forge make the gaming experience exponentially more enjoyable, especially in a game like Planetside.