News: Resolved - PS2 Region

[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]

Originally Posted by Dart

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]

Originally Posted by RedKnights

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.

[Dart]

Originally Posted by Gortha

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

[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.

Originally Posted by Nephilimuk

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/t...344/lolGOA.jpg

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t...23344/clp2.jpg

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t...23344/GOA2.jpg

This is what US got;

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t...223344/asd.jpg

http://i515.photobucket.com/albums/t...344/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.