StarCraft 2 regions linking to share players
Several SC2 multiplayer regions are being linked with a partner, letting players from each pair play against each other.
Several regional multiplayer servers for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty are gaining new friends, Blizzard has announced. Later this month, they'll be joining with another to share their playerbases.
The North America and Latin America regions will be linked, while Europe connects with Russia, and Korea with Taiwan. Players in linked regions will be able to player with their new buddies, in custom games and in matchmaking, and be able to add them as friends. It'll help smooth things over for players in less-active regions. This'll happen when Season 3 of the StarCraft 2 ladder kicks off, which is currently scheduled for the week of July 18.
"Having a larger pool of players means the automated matchmaker for ladder games will be faster and more effective at finding opponents at or near your skill level. Similarly, more players means faster queue times for custom games, which benefits both players and map creators," Blizzard explains. "From a social perspective, players will be able to create character and Real ID friendships with people from the newly linked region, which they couldn't have before."
Blizzard insists that "There should be no impact on game performance," explaining, "All players in the linked regions will be connecting and playing through the same data centers that they were using prior to region linking, which is the main reason why linking these regions together is fairly straightforward."
Unfortunately the divide between regions is not being outright demolished. Australia and New Zealand are left in the lurch in the South East Asian region, and European players still won't be able to play with their American Internet chums. It's certainly still a welcome move, mind.
Thanks to Shacker 'Mandoca' for the tip.
-
Alice O'Connor posted a new article, StarCraft 2 regions linking to share players.
Several SC2 multiplayer regions are being linked with a partner, letting players from each pair play against each other.-
-
-
-
-
nah, actually there are more NA noobs/cheesers than LA ones. it's just that NA players troll about LA players because they don't understand eachother in team games... i've seen it happen alot...
the reason why is because of the internet penetration in Latin America vs North America. there is way less people playing online in these 3rd world countries than in NA... WAAAY LESS... therefore, the chances of getting matched with/against North American noobs/cheesers are much higher....
-
-
-
-
-
-
Why not link the EU and US servers as they both natively speak english? Link RU and Latin as neither of them usually speak english. You could even throw china in there for good measure.
Seriously, regions should be split up by language, not by location. Location definitely denotes server location, but often times it doesn't taken into account language barriers that prevent any sort of social interaction and sometimes actually destroy it.
And yes, before you say people in US that speak spanish will pick spanish servers, you could simply use both attributes to give the best possible combination. I don't know why they don't let people pick their localization anyway besides for marketing and product segmentation. :l-
-
A lot of it is region pricing as well. They don't want everyone getting the like $30USD Russian version then playing in america where they should have bought the $60 version.
It's basically region codes like DVD's have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code
-
-
-
-
-
I feel it was a huge part of why Starcraft was great. I remember the firs ttime I beat a Korean in Starcraft; I was ecstatic. And opening up global servers introduces a much higher level of competition. But I'm not referring specifically to this one issue.
Blizzard, to me, seems like they've really deviated from a lot of what, in my opinion, made their earlier games great. DIablo was an engrossing and difficult dungeon crawler. Starcraft had a good story, great characters, phenomenal gameplay, and an amazing community that Blizzard did nothing but encourage. D2 continued that trend, with the community becoming all important, with an excellent story and a really compelling world. WC3 was much the same, with even better presentation and writing.
But once WoW hit it big, a lot of those things fell by the wayside, I feel. Story and community were especially unimportant in WoW and the story in SC2 was pretty junky too. Their region lock business, plus the lack of LAN play, were two more strikes against it. Maybe it's just that the times are a-changin', but I don't like it >:-
Blizzard is my biggest Love/Hate relationship of any company ever now.
They just do so many irrational things now. (from a consumers standpoint)
But it goes so much deeper than just the stuff that you mentioned. It's things like the large number of lawsuits that they get involved in with their customers, many more than any other gaming company I'm sure. They just set a very very dangerous prescedent in suggesting (falsely) that loading stuff into a computers memory is copywright infringement.
-
-
-
-