Clarification on StarCraft 2 Multiplayer for Aussies

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Clarification on StarCraft 2 Multiplayer for Aussies

Post by trog @ 12:22pm 27/04/10 | 23 Comments

Blizzard dropped us a note to clear up some possible confusion about the multiplayer experience for Australians in the upcoming StarCraft 2, noting that the servers for Australians will be hosted in 'Southeast Asia':

'Blizzard Entertainment also announced today that both the standard edition and Collector's Edition of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will give players from Australia and New Zealand access to play on servers based in Southeast Asia, alongside gamers from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. This local datacenter will offer players in the region improved latency for a high-quality gameplay and connectivity experience.'

While having local servers would be awesome (and we know after our recent interview that it's still an option for Blizzard), there should be little problem for us playing on these servers. Hopefully cross-server play will be an option for those pro-gamers that want to hit up the international scene a little more at a later date.

starcraft 2

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HyperJ
Posted 12:29pm 27/4/10

At as guess they will put the data center in Singapore..

Last time i checked the latency was less to west coast US than Singapore..

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shadowdanc3r
Posted 01:05pm 27/4/10

Possible true but after you join the game it's only the latency to the other players that count and they could be next door. And I'd suspect the matching system will take latency into account as well as rank

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trog
Posted 01:06pm 27/4/10

yeh latency doesn't really make a big difference. The 'servers' in this context are just for matchmaking - it's not a client/server game so ping to these things is pretty much irrelevant.

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PsychoPuppy
Posted 01:11pm 27/4/10

Worries me a little because of the new BattleNet system.. if we're on the BattleNet shared with these countries, not the US, will our friends from WoW be able to speak to us while we're playing Starcraft, that kinda thing? Also.. I really hope they don't consider giving us our own WoW servers that we need to share with the majority of countries in that area that don't speak English.

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Khel
Posted 01:14pm 27/4/10

So we get thrown in with all the worlds most uber starcraft players? Harsh :(

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Bikkies
Posted 01:27pm 27/4/10

Exactly what i was thinking Khel.

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Dazhel
Posted 01:29pm 27/4/10

Aren't the most uber players korean not indonesian or philipino?

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konstie
Posted 02:47pm 27/4/10

So we get thrown in with all the worlds most uber starcraft players? Harsh :(

should see them in HoN now... it's CRAZY. can't understand anything they say until on the mic they say "FML" or accuse you for being a noob.

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FaceMan
Posted 02:54pm 27/4/10

Im not buying the game if we have to play with people from just Thailand and Indonesia. Ill wait till its not region restricted.
Out of those countries only New Zealand speaks English.
At least most koreans can do English.

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Tim Tibbetts
Posted 02:54pm 27/4/10

As long as the game runs well I'm happy.

I don't talk to people in 1 v 1 games, and if it's 2 v 2 I will play with a friend. I do find it odd there's not the option to pick the server though.

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kirkoswald
Posted 03:19pm 27/4/10

Same here tim, 1v1 dont speak 2vs2 always with a friend anyway

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Tetsuo
Posted 03:31pm 27/4/10

Singaporians speak majority English (In some cases better then most Australians in high school).
PNG speaks English as well...

I get the point about languages but in a 1v1 match does it REALLY matter in an RTS weather or not your opponent speaks your tongue? At least this way if they insult you it just seems funny instead of making most people rage...

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skythra
Posted 03:36pm 27/4/10

The 'servers' in this context are just for matchmaking

Hrm.. from my time on battlenet ladder games were far more laggy than custom map games hosted in the same country.

There must be some routing of information via america.

In fact, you can't host custom games without opening ports on your firewall, but you always connect to a 'quick match' or an 'arranged team'

Explain that?

Edit: PS, im talking about even when i got matched up in war3 against some of the local guys like moth and vorador and a bunch of other guys we occasionally ran into in our quest for ladder ranks

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Phar4oh
Posted 12:41pm 28/4/10

any effort by Blizzard to reduce Aussie lag gets a "top gun windmill high five" from me any day. Keep it up. I'm sure they'll get the balance right eventually. Now all they need to do is slap one in Sydney (where Exetel routes my connection) and I'll be be the fastest zergling on the creep.

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Mass
Posted 01:07pm 28/4/10

I managed to get spanked by some kid from Malaysia the other nite (in a Beta practice match).....his engrish very good. I'm assuming their games will be in their native language....will be some funky chat translations going on I reckon.

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CSIRAC
Posted 01:26pm 28/4/10

Possible true but after you join the game it's only the latency to the other players that count and they could be next door. And I'd suspect the matching system will take latency into account as well as rank

yeh latency doesn't really make a big difference. The 'servers' in this context are just for matchmaking - it's not a client/server game so ping to these things is pretty much irrelevant.

This was true for battle.net 1.0 but it is not the case anymore for battle.net 2.0. All games are hosted through battle.net and no one directly connects to each other.

The problem with this whole situation is the lack of an option. It doesnt sound like we have a choice of which region we want to go to - which is totally fucked.

Ping also isnt an issue when the battle.net default ping is set to 250, for everyone (higher for australians but again this can be fixed with proxy services).

And being region locked in general is pretty crap for people in australia who want to participate in american online comps (which if the beta is anything to go by is where most of the comps are held, that and europe).

This is already a huge and annoying situation in beta where theres an international invitational and people in europe have to borrow accounts just to play on the US servers and vice versa, just to compete. These region locks on accounts seem to be totally counter productive to blizzards mission statement of wanting to promote e-sports. oh well

last edited by CSIRAC at 13:26:03 28/Apr/10

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nozz
Posted 01:44pm 28/4/10

i just want to play with badass koreans, no Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia plz

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Khel
Posted 04:45pm 28/4/10

In their defense, they did say it wasn't a permanent thing and they're working on getting it so everyone can play everyone. I guess if it comes down a choice of delaying the game while they fix problems that stop all the different regions being able to play each other, or release it sooner with some region locks, they're going to go for the latter.

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 05:28pm 28/4/10

They may not be able to fix the problem until they know what the actual server loads will be like. Perhaps it is just a load balancing thing?

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Superform
Posted 05:47pm 28/4/10

its like playing hon with europeans, they are all swedes or ruskies or some stupid country wherre no one talks english, i only play matchmaking games set to US now, even though the ping sux the play is much better - fuck having to play with asians all day, i think you should be able to select a language and only play with ppl who use that language

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CSIRAC
Posted 06:10pm 28/4/10

Fragmented communities suck. Even if it is temporary its still very lame.

The worse thing about this S.E asia server is that it doesnt include South Korea and to a lesser extent china, the 2 powerhouses of the region in craft games. So we kind of get screwed over twice. Once for not being able to play with mostly english speaking players and the 2nd time having the whole of asia split in 2 as well. its all a crock of crap!

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 07:06pm 28/4/10

Dudes, they pretty much said it was only temporary. Blizzard are actually trying to do something right by you by trying to make your initial experience as smooth as possible, instead of having laggy servers..

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step
Posted 07:10pm 28/4/10

Meh, still rather play on US servers.

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