Again I'm reminded that a number of MMOG developers still have no idea what this newfangled community thing is. Let me reiterate how this works: the value of a network increases in proportion to the square of the number of nodes in the network. By forcing people to select a particular subnet one severely decrease the value of the product. For example: Let's say WoW gets 500k subscribers. If people get to choose freely which server to play on the value of WoW is 500k². Further, let's say that the subscribers are distributed with 200k in the US, 200k in Asia, and 100k in Europe, but that people are forced to play on their respective servers. The value of WoW is now 2*200k²+100k² - it has been reduced by 2/3! Now, this is their game - they're free to do what they want with it. However, considering the effort they've put into getting entire guilds over from EQ, it is interesting that they've failed to notice that many guilds, or communities - as we like to call them, are multi-national. One would think they actually wanted to preserve those guilds in WoW, but it is apparently not so. And (no offense, but) their excuses for doing this are just pathetic.
Localized support.
From what I've gathered Europe will have English, German, and French support. Not Spanish,
Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Polish, Russian, or any
other European language. No: English, German, and French. The only phrase I remember in German
that is not a curse is "Noch
ein bier bitte", in French all I can do is curse. Seriously, it makes absolutely no difference
to me if the support person I'm talking to say "I can't help you with that" with a
British or American accent. I'm sure the Australian players will appreciate their Korean support
even more.
Billing issues.
The only way they can possibly have this kind of issues is if they use Microsoft Passport or
whatever that retarded system is called. And if they're that stupid they deserve the problems
they'll get. Considering the number of MMOGs on the market, and that Asheron's Call 2 is the
only game in history that had similar issues - this is bullshit.
As for latency problems:
People, who are able to install the game, create an account, provide a valid CC, launch the game,
patch it, and actually manage play it, should be able to (and allowed to) figure out which server
they prefer to play on. A small latency
indicator on the realm/server selection screen should be all even the slowest of us need.
In addition, since I'm European, I have to wait till approximately two months after launch to play, since the European launch has eta "rest of the world + 2 months" and my European CC is not good enough for their American servers. I was a bit surprised by this actually, as Blizzard is one of very few developers that have had the decency to release at the same time around the world in the past. All in all it seems as if Blizzard has taken what they've learned from the launch of Asheron's Call 2 and Shadowbane, chosen the most idiotic system proposed (I don't remember if Shadowbane actually used the segregation by CC model they proposed) for each game and decided to use those. Good luck! Considering how well AC2 and SB did in Europe - they'll need it.
Oh, but they will provide a solution for those who want to connect across regions - just not as default. Which kinda makes me wonder why they bother with the segregation in the first place. It is not any easier to implement, it does not improve their support, it does not make billing any easier, and it does not improve the customer experience. All it does is reduce the value of their product and annoy their customers - maybe there's a PHB at work here?
