News: Resolved - PS2 Region

[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]

Originally Posted by Neurotoxin

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.

[SpLiTNuTz]

..

[Sabrak]

Originally Posted by QuiCKaNdDeaDLy

http://www.planetside-universe.com/f...ad.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]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

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]

Originally Posted by 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

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.

Originally Posted by ProSiebenSat

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]

Originally Posted by Azren

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

try http://www.planetside-universe.com/f...ad.php?t=39108

edit. my phone doesn't copy links correctly.

[Aractain]

Originally Posted by Dale

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.

[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

[Mastachief]

Originally Posted by 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!

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.