At GDC a couple weeks back, we had the chance to talk World of Warcraft with Game Director Tom Chilton and Production Director J. Allen Brack. We covered a range of topics, including what games these guys play when they're not playing WoW, what features they'd add into the game if they had unlimited resources, the ability to buy mounts from the store, armour dying and character customisation, dealing with a massive player base and more.

Of course, we had to ask the inevitable question (which they must love getting from Australians) - but were pleasantly surprised that they are still actively discussing it, so it's still a possibility. Said J. Allen Brack on the subject:

I would say it’s possible and that it’s something we talk about on a regular basis - and I will also say it’s something I have talked about this week. So it’s definitely just not a case of ‘yeah whatever’. It does get our attention and we do raise it up on a regular basis. If we can make it happen, we’ll make it happen.

Check out the full interview for all the other details!

Was it your aim to not mention what this mystical subject was so that we're forced to read the interview or did you assume everyone knew you were talking about local servers?

I thought you meant censorship.

Also it's interesting that he has pretty much alluded to banning of proxy servers by blizzard. If I remember correctly, people have been banned by blizzard on WoW for using proxy servers to get better ping. Really s***ty of then to do imo.

last edited by greazy at 16:32:13 07/Apr/10

Er, when the thread title is "Blizzard: Australian World of Warcraft servers still possible" and the AG article is "GDC 2010: Blizzard Interview", how'd you come up with Internet censorship?

title on qgl read Blizzard: Australian World of Warcraft... (Source: AusGamers News). Never realised it's longer when you view the thread.

ah yeah, that makes sense.

Good interview too!

AusGamers: I assume you can guess how Australians feel about that...?

Nice little snipe while wrapping things up trog :D

Heh they were really cool about the whole Australian thing; it's obvious they know how everyone here feels and I really felt like they understand our pain and aren't just sitting back doing nothing about it.

Have you had any discussions with them at all regarding deploying servers here?

I suppose getting some racks in a data centre would only be one of their worries? I'm not sure how they are set up really but I would imagine it'd require hiring and training staff to handle stuff out here? Or could sys admin guys do most of it remotely? Anyone? Bueller?

Going by Robbo's post in the Heroes of Newerth Open Beta thread - http://www.ausgamers.com/forums/general/thread.php/2878405

We have received some initial prices on hosting boxes in Australia:

Our boxes on average use 4,000-5,000 GB of data transfer a month, we get these boxes for roughly $200 USD each in EU/USA

Provider 1: $1250 per month for hardware, $11,250.00 per month for bandwidth per box, box would support 110 concurrent users

Provider 2: $1100 per month for hardware, $22,500 per month for bandwidth per box, would support about 220 concurrent users.

We have also made inquiries at Internode and are awaiting a quote back from them (it was requested last week Tuesday).

So as you can see, the economics of hosting boxes in AU is just not there currently.

If it costs $20K a month to host a server that can support 200 users for HoN, I'd hate to think how much it would cost to run a Oceanic WoW server that supports (wildly guessing) a 1000-2000 users all pulling data let alone the 15 or so Oceanic WoW servers they have already.

There's spending money to make money and then there's just being plain retarded with money

I wonder how much rack space would be required for a WOW server?

Surely its not THAT expensive, and being that they could expect to host 20-30k people on one server, its not like they wouldn't make the money back.

I think if they did it though, they wouldn't be so much buying race space in a data center, as setting up their own data center. Cos even one WoW "server" would be a whole cluster of physical machines.

reso I think we need to make it more confusing... users are hacking at it or something

You'd be better off hosting off the island for an austrailan mmo - somewhere like singapore or the malaysia, not far away compared to the us or eu. Minimal impact on ping comparatively, and considerably lower cost than hosting in au.

last edited by icewyrm at 20:40:36 07/Apr/10

TBH - there's basically no reason for them to do it other than silencing Australians that are complaining, and it's just not feasible cost-wise. The only way it would be worth doing is if a big GSP offered to host them for free as a value-add for their users. But we're talking a LOT of data centre space, a lot of bandwidth, power, etc - so I think the numbers just haven't made it worth it yet.

I'll host it on my media pc no worries.

God surely an excel spreadsheet wouldn't consume that much data.

Would Australians pay extra for local servers?
What if they partnered with a major ISP - lets just say it was Internode. I'm assuming bandwith for Internodes own customers they could do at minimal cost. Others could be charged at a higher rate if they wanted to play on those servers.

Yes, no...?

title on qgl read Blizzard: Australian World of Warcraft... (Source: AusGamers News). Never realised it's longer when you view the thread.

Did you try hovering over the link?
http://i43.tinypic.com/15i9gr5.png

Would you people please stop fuking saying all this bulls*** about how Australia is too economically f***ed in terms of bandwidth and hosting charges?

The way business covers INTERNATIONAL OPERATION is by factoring in those places where they can do business cheaply SUCH AS AMERICA and those places where parts of business cost more say due to tax... or in this case BANDWIDTH COSTS IN AUSTRALIA and they BALANCE OUT.

They have the f***ing cashflow to do it when you factor in the OVERALL business model. If you sit there and look at the reasons and costs just for Australia of course its going to make f*** all sense.

Look at the big picture / entire business model and also understand that not just Australians but the entire f***ing Oceania region would be positively effected by the roll out, not to mention the countless Australia ISPs (and gaming providers like game arena) that would give them s*** at cost price to just to make it happen.


Stop making excuse for them. They are a fuking giant. If they wanted Australian servers, they could make it happen. The last reason that it's not happening is MONEY. Money is one thing that have f***TONNES of.

Christ...

Stop making excuse for them. They are a fuking giant. If they wanted Australian servers, they could make it happen. The last reason that it's not happening is MONEY. Money is one thing that have f***TONNES of.

so what? microsoft could outfit every one of their offices with gold toilets, but it'd be dumb to do so just because they have the money.

It makes zero sense for them to do it - it's not like Australian WoW players are shedding their subscriptions because of performance issues.

lol gamer
you're saying they should enter into a bad investment just because their existing investment is able to cover the bad one

If you sit there and look at the reasons and costs just for Australia of course its going to make f*** all sense.

and that's _exactly_ how you need to look at things

I wish I lived in your world gamer. Where corporations do things that don't make financial sense, purely out of the goodness of their hearts.

Having money doesn't mean they will do it. Sure, I'd love an actual oceanic based server, but im not crying over my 400 ms. I don't even pve, so its all good for me, and pve is responsive as always.

I would say it’s possible and that it’s something we talk about on a regular basis - and I will also say it’s something I have talked about this week. So it’s definitely just not a case of ‘yeah whatever’. It does get our attention and we do raise it up on a regular basis. If we can make it happen, we’ll make it happen.

Thats the least affirmative response you get from blizzard. They stopped saying "No" to things when they introduced the idea of expansions after saying "No paid expansions, covered in your monthly subscription" in really early beta.

Also hilarious response gamer, sadly someone owns these companies. If i was the sole owner of blizzard activision, and some manager said "We wasted a bunch of money making some aussies happy" I'd be asking them to leave my company.

Look at you all saying 'it makes no sence'. It makes PERFECT sence.

It's about providing the best service to their customers.

At the moment they have a problem. Lag, international internet problems f*** with providing a good service to their customers.

I've already highlighted that they have the resources availiable to provide the same level of service they already give to their UK, US and ASIAN customers as they could to us. Yet they dont.

All of you sitting there saying 'ohhhh but they have nooo reeeaaasssoonnn too' are full of s***. They have every reason to expand their service level to the same high standards they already provide to most of their customers to their neiche/tertiary customers PROVIDING THEIR BUSINESS MODEL SUPPORTS IT --- WHICH !!!! IT!!!! DOES!!!!

This whole attitude of 'it makes no sence because it doesnt make them more money' is absolute bulls*** and it pains me to hear it come from your mouth Trog, since your the one that gets to chat with these f***ers. They need to realise that we love their game but they are losing us (ME) because we cant compete at the top teir of contect like the other fuking users can. Anyone who has tried to reach 2000+ in arena will completly understand what im talking about here and anyone that had their raids effected by massive INTERNET lag (not talking about server lag) will also be able to relate.

So pissed off... so i'll ad one more comparison to hopefully help my argument...

It's like internode saying 'well there is no point putting in more adsl2 dslams where we already have maxed out ADSL1 dslams ... because we already have maxed out customers on our adsl1 hardware exchanges'

They up their SERVICE and PRODUCT provisioning to their customers because their total business plan can support it and it provides a better SERVICE LEVEL.

I reckon you have ragequit a few games in your time gamer.

It's about providing the best service to their customers.

No it isn't. It's about spending untold millions of dollars to provide a slightly improved experience to what customers are already getting, when it's crystal clear that customers are basically happy with the service they're getting provided. Because if they weren't they'd be unsubscribing in droves.

If you're happy enough to keep paying like every single WoW player I know is (even though that aren't actively playing the game, wtf) then I don't think this is something that we can bitch about. If every Australian WoW player unsubscribed en masse, you'd have a case.

This whole attitude of 'it makes no sence because it doesnt make them more money' is absolute bulls*** and it pains me to hear it come from your mouth Trog, since your the one that gets to chat with these f***ers. They need to realise that we love their game but they are losing us (ME) because we cant compete at the top teir of contect like the other fuking users can.

I cannot in good conscience get in their face about not having local servers, because I honestly believe it doesn't make a difference. It's different with FPS gamers ; I am always up in FPS developers s*** saying "why the f*** don't you guys have dedicated servers already" and have been for as long as I can remember - because with an FPS game, local servers are necessary or the game is basically unplayable.

Until all my WoW buddies come to me saying "well, s***, I had to stop playing WoW because it became unplayable" then I'll continue to pass on concerns that people would like local servers, but I'm not going to stand up and start shouting about it because frankly I think it'd make me look like a dick.

Wow comes pretty damn close to RA3 and Natural Selection in terms of 'greateste gaming experiences and furfillment/joy of all time' when i recall the efforts I put in to gain gladiator title (and reach the top 100 in arena) and the many many months i put away to try and push this only to have to eventually (despite trying deny this was the cause) give in to the simple fact - despite paying an extra $25 for the best premium 'lowping' service availiable at the time - that I would never reach a higher level then I was at due to latency and nothing else.

RNG I can handle. Latency, I cant do anything about. So yes, i feel pretty damn passionatly about this. I have the experience and history, especially with wow to comment on this.

That's interesting gamer.. Explain to me then how many AU/NZ based Arena teams manage to hit the top 1-2% if you claim we're effectively screwed because of location? "poor workman" "blaming tools" etc. There's a decent number of people who actually get the Gladiator titles in this region, we've got several guilds who are close to the forefront of progression and have been over the 5 years the game has been available.

I guess what I'm trying to say gamer is that I'm really not buying your argument.

Look at you all saying 'it makes no sence'. It makes PERFECT sence.

nope
saying it's so doesn't make it so

It's like internode saying 'well there is no point putting in more adsl2 dslams where we already have maxed out ADSL1 dslams ... because we already have maxed out customers on our adsl1 hardware exchanges'

nope, it's like internode saying "we should put broadband infrastructure at mt dare because the 3 people there only have dialup - it would cost us 2.5 million dollars, but we made 135 million dollars profit across all of our operations, therefore it makes sense"

Mt Dare might have 3 people, but they would only have 1 computer, and no-one would know how to use it :p

pretty much jims analogy is spot on.

and do I hate incorrect analogies.

Mt Dare might have 3 people, but they would only have 1 computer, and no-one would know how to use it :p

it would've been funny if we'd rocked up and found the dude browsing porn online ;)

iit gamer is wrong

Who'd a thunk it? Its like facepalm and thermite had a lovechild.

nope, it's like internode saying "we should put broadband infrastructure at mt dare because the 3 people there only have dialup - it would cost us 2.5 million dollars, but we made 135 million dollars profit across all of our operations, therefore it makes sense"

wait a minute

if that's stupid then what does that make the NBN

^ a pork barrel?

lol @ "I would say it’s possible and that it’s something we talk about on a regular basis"

It's like some junkies asking their crack dealer to cut them a little slack, c'mon you know we're good for it.

if that's stupid then what does that make the NBN

the way of the future

..speaking of incorrect analogies

Explain to me then how many AU/NZ based Arena teams manage to hit the top 1-2%

Provide stats of the total number of AU/NZ players trying for gladiator status and stats of those that actually got it otherwise sit the f*** down.

a slightly improved experience to what customers are already getting, when it's crystal clear that customers are basically happy with the service they're getting provided. Because if they weren't they'd be unsubscribing in droves.

When you hold a f***ing monopoly on a game engine and the best mmo availiable at the moment your casual users (thats who your talking about here) obviously arnt going to fuking un-sunscribe.

That DOESNT MEAN you shouldnt seek to provide the best service to all your customers.

I honestly believe it doesn't make a difference. It's different with FPS gamers

No. It's not. It's exactly the f***ing same and saying that just shows your ignorance and perhaps lack of experience with the wow engine and this matter in general and perhaps in games outside fps gaming.

Put 4 years into wow at the higher brackets of pve and pvp progression and then come back and try and say that. Alot of the game has been redisgned to help - which is why darkjedi's post means f*** all. For example there used to be a time where you had to wait for your 'global cooldown' before you could hit your interup. Now you can interupt at any time, despite global cooldown being up.

Despite those changes you'll always be at a significant disadvantage for numerous reasons that are obvious.

Anyone who has competed in DOTA tournies over the internet then gone and to lan for the finals will tell you playing over those two mediums in a game that are measured in SECONDS not tens of seconds is VERY different.

nope
saying it's so doesn't make it so

How unusual, jim being a f***witt and contributing nothing but dumbs*** comments

nope, it's like internode saying "we should put broadband infrastructure at mt dare because the 3 people there only have dialup - it would cost us 2.5 million dollars, but we made 135 million dollars profit across all of our operations, therefore it makes sense"

No it's not. Your trying to dilute my analogy by stretching it to extremes so it becomes something of ridicule. As f***ing usual.

Who'd a thunk it? Its like facepalm and thermite had a lovechild.

You know the easy thing for me to do is to shut the f*** up and not share my opinion. It's certianly easier then havinb to put up with all the fuking gays that enhabit these threads between the 'chunky' decent stuff.

I'm not going to do that though because thats what these threads are all about. The sheer fact there is 1 vs a bazzilion of people in this thread just goes to show you have the typical f***witts with no experience in what they are talking about trying to counter argue something.

I respect those that get on here and have their opinions but not when they are just headhunting for 'gamer' posts to counter argue against. Like Jim in his inifinate immaturity does serially.

if that's stupid then what does that make the NBN

Exactly. When looking at a service model you dont pick those customers that cost the most and say 'we'll cut them from service' - unless your a fuking insurance company I suppose.

Most companys would look at those customers that are effected and choose to put the most time into them.

Blizzard has made small design changes to things such as

- timezone (so its night/day at proper times) - for 'oceana' servers
- very minute combat system changes (with no wonder - when they expected people to interupt 100% of the time on 2second time windows 15-30 times during the course of some boss fights in TBC)
- the store now ships to australia (took them a year but they can finally now ship us a keychain authenticator which costs $15au but postage is still $60 .. gg)

and I give them credit for those changes however when you start talking about a centralised server model like blizzard has and then start talking about e-sports and work pve progression rankings and then start saying that customers have equal oppertunity despite their location just isnt true

I'd love actual Oceanic servers, but if those quoted prices for HoN servers are translatable to WoW, there's ZERO chance if I was in charge of deciding whether to do it or not would I authorize it.

It's not even close to being feasible at those prices.

BTW, even with our high ping Oceanic players can still perform pretty well.
The guild Adept got the US 1st, World 4th kill of 10man Heroic LK. Yes, they basically poop-sock their way to it, but they're obviously good enough to balance out their higher pings.

I'm willing to bet most people in this thread couldnt name 3 f***ing things that latency like ours in Australia put us as at destinct disadvantage because of.

Here is my list...


1. Melee classes maintaining a perfect position ontop (or behind/aside) of a target and yet you receive the 'target no in range' error when attempting to hit them. The same goes for ranged classes that keep a good 10 yards from a melee target just to be hit by them.

2. Interupts. A hasted 1 second spell such as a flash of light had just under a second a normal 300-500ms latency to a US server would mean we've already lost near 50% of the cast time to interupt this spell. With spells becoming faster and haste effect being stacked these days, fast cast spells are becoming a healers bread and butter in wow.

3. Fighting the server. When you tell a spell or ability to cast it sends a signal to start that spell to the server, this signal then is either denied to allowed by the server. This is part of what helps wow seam so 'smooth' during gameplay. The problem with this is the below

below is a 1 second spell being cast by a LPB

|-|

below is what a aus HPB person sees as the spell being cast

_|-|

where _ is the delay in latency between aus HPB and server. So the spell is casting at 0ms on the server and finished at 1000ms. An aus pseron sees that spell being cast at 500ms (500ms latency) and then finishing at say 1500ms). This of course attempts to make the experience 'relative' for the HPB comapred to the LPB and does a decent job however a 'clash' exists in various sitations where the server says something is 'denied' when it really isnt (evident when trying to interupt a quick spell, despite getting the interupt off, but the spell isnt interupted).

This is more obvious when you are a caster and you want to chain cast spells (to maximise your dps)

this is a 2sec fireball for example

|--|

this is what happens for australians

.|--|.|--|

500ms delay where client tells server i want to cast ... 2 second spell cast on server ... 500ms delay of client telling server i want to cast etc.

This ends up costing 1 'fireball' every 4 casts. (crude example). this was addressed by attempting to allow the client to send 'i want to start fireball now' messages to the server every press... despite the global cooldown.

So quite often youll see casters having to use 'stop casting' macros to 'cancel' their cast and cast another fireball when their fireball is only 1.5seconds through casting in order to correctly 'chain' fireball casts in order.

(tryin to explain this to non wow players or experienced pve'ers is f***ing hard but ill try - sigh)





I played wow while in America and it's amazing how different movement and overall combat is in both a pve and pvp setting because of this obvious problem. Various things we're brough into the game to try and handle this such as 'snares' but do very little when you cant actually touch the target to snare it. The amount of spamming you need to do in australia to 'battle' with the server in order to reduce the effects of being a HPB is beyond a joke.

Of course Australians are at a disadvantage.

I have a shockingly high amount of /played time (around 570 days on my Priest), and we're 10/12 in Heroic 25man ICC. I'm also one of the developers of SimulationCraft so I have a pretty good understanding of mechanics including latency.

Yes, it's annoying, but at the same time it's still possible to perform well enough to have an enjoyable experience on the whole and to accomplish the tasks set out for you.

And it still makes NO sense at all from a financial point of view for Blizzard or Activision or Vivendi to have Oceanic servers if those prices quotes earlier for HoN servers are applicable to WoW.

p.s. I also play a Shadow Priest. i.e. I have DoTs and my main nuke is a short duration channeled spell. Trust me, I know what latency is like...

gamer, you're a complete tard
you come in frothing and foaming at the mouth and when people provide arguments against what you're saying you just froth even harder and lamely gloss over their comments claiming they are contributing nothing. for example you silently discount posts where I've replied with nothing but cordiality and helpfulness, and then cry when I say something in this thread that you don't like, and then claim that's all I ever do. what a crock

several of the things you've said in this thread are easily argued against such as reasonable business practices and whether hit-scan fps games are more affected by latency than auto-target mmo games, yet your response is just 'look at all the people arguing against me, you are all idiots'

if you don't like people pointing out the flaws in your comments, cop it sweet

Ok, I'll adopt gamer's wall of quotes strategy for my reply, since I am bored.

1. Melee classes maintaining a perfect position ontop (or behind/aside) of a target and yet you receive the 'target no in range' error when attempting to hit them. The same goes for ranged classes that keep a good 10 yards from a melee target just to be hit by them.

Hasn't happened to me once in the past 6 months since I've been playing again, on my priest or on my paladin. Maybe you just need a better net connection?

2. Interupts. A hasted 1 second spell such as a flash of light had just under a second a normal 300-500ms latency to a US server would mean we've already lost near 50% of the cast time to interupt this spell.

Sounds like a fool's errand even trying to sit there and interupt that. Why not try silencing the healer, stunning the healer, cc'ing the healer. All much better alternatives to sitting around crying about how you can't interupt a super fast hasted flash heal. I don't really do arena so I find it hard to care, but surely you'd just adapt to your situation instead of constantly trying the same thing that doesn't work, and the raging about it.

3. Fighting the server. When you tell a spell or ability to cast it sends a signal to start that spell to the server, this signal then is either denied to allowed by the server. This is part of what helps wow seam so 'smooth' during gameplay.

Well I was going to reply to this, but it seems you already found the solution by yourself.

So quite often youll see casters having to use 'stop casting' macros to 'cancel' their cast and cast another fireball when their fireball is only 1.5seconds through casting in order to correctly 'chain' fireball casts in order.

There you go, problem solved! And how much cheaper was that then setting up Australian servers! Even better, install something like Quartz and it'll divvy up your cast bar to show you the latency, so you know exactly when your spell is actually finished casting and you can move/re-cast/whatever.

Sure, Australian servers would be nice, but I really couldn't care that much if we never get them. The game is still perfectly playable, and its easy enough to adapt to any small problems the lag creates.

Part of deploying a proprietary server like the battle.net and wow servers is securing the platform from the outside but also securing it from the inside. Having passwords is not the only method they use. Blizzard would want Tier1 level security on the facility to restrict who has physical access to hardware and networking equipment, which would cost heavily for security guards and surveillance systems.

It's not as simple as building some servers and hooking them up to the local network. Blizzcon is 2 days. They spend 2 weeks prior setting up 1 local server for the LAN play, and that server is a realm relay which just pipes the users into the Blizzard alpha PTR. Given that Blackrock-US is approximately 20 servers all up. To replicate realms to a colocation here would overtake their capacity for racks and power very quickly. I would stab at an easy $20 million for Blizzard to do what they need to do here properly. Being that Blizzard would overwhelm any colo in Australia, I would see them either partnering up with a large ISP like Internode or iiNet or possibly Telstra or building their own facility here which removes any chances of some insider attack from another customer colocated host. Each layer of complexity would cost more and more plus will require maintenance fees which could build up to negate the profit coming from the Australian player base.

Gamer: It would be cheaper for them to move you to the US so you can shut the f*** up about latency.

That is more of an answer I was looking for. Cheers pARODY.

One other thing. Anyone know how many people per server til they say it's "full"? Could all the aussies play on 1 realm or would they need a few?

I dunno where you got the whole "60 bucks postage for an authenticator" idea either.
I bought 2 of them a good year ago now (yes they shipped to Aus) and it cost no more than 25-30 dollars (including postage)

When the authenticators first came out it was $60P&H for a single authenticator. I'm guessing they've sorted the delivery charges to something a bit more reasonable.

I have an unused Authenticator if anyone wants one. I got one but used my iphone instead.

One thing I'm confused about is how easily (seemingly) Mythic managed to pull off Oceanic servers at the launch of Warhammer Online, while it's still a battle for Blizzard?

It was nice having a ping of 20ms while playing Warhammer Online. Unfortunately the game wasn't very good.

Good question.. I'm not sure how the WAR servers were built or hosted. I think once the game didn't do as well as it hoped that they merged many of the servers and cut their losses.

and we're 10/12 in Heroic 25man ICC

What guild are you in?

EDIT: omg priest info

last edited by eXemplar at 17:07:43 08/Apr/10

eXemplar: I'm Delmortis from Ascension on Jubei'Thos. Used to be Althor from the Spinebreaker server. (Yes, that trinket was named after me).

One thing I'm confused about is how easily (seemingly) Mythic managed to pull off Oceanic servers at the launch of Warhammer Online, while it's still a battle for Blizzard?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but mythic hand "oceanic" servers only by name. They were actually located in America or wherever.

It's not a battle for blizzard, it's a battle for wow players. If they wanted, they snap their necks and magically have servers up and running in an instant. But I'm pretty sure as everyone else has pointed out, they don't want to.

I wonder what the server, data and power requirements for a wow realm would be?

Yes, that trinket was named after me

Your kidding?!

Mantra: nope. I've done a fair bit of Priest (mostly Shadow) theorycrafting and I'm one of the developers of SimulationCraft (thus Abacus).

A bunch of ICC items were named after various theorycrafters.

Daym! You've come up in the world since OO and From the Ashes :)

Hey Gamer, Rohk wins, he's got a trinket named after him :P

Also, I'm sure Ruhk entirely forgets we were in the same guild...

I remember Mantra :P

And my QGL/FPS shooter game name is Rukh ;P

I go by Delmortis or Althor in WoW though.

Doesn't Flumps play on Jubei'Thos now too?

I got sick of using the blue trackers because they are generally filled with useless moderation posts, so I created my own RSS feed that grabs all the sticky posts from the Cataclysm forum and puts them into an RSS feed for me. Nice and cut down with just the info I want.

linkies

Yahoo pipes can do some interesting stuff.

I don't play anymore... I got bored.

Now I play eve... I'm much better at spreadsheet simulators ;)

While its true FPSes rely on latency much more than an MMO, for many in WoW are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to timing their combinations in both PVP and raids over an American player.

Also, i have to question why our bandwidth costs are so high?
If Origin could put up an Oceanic Ultima Online server a decade ago, when bandwidth costs were at their highest, then why cant Blizzard put up any?
Maybe they are looking for bandwidth in the wrong places.

Wow, you're delmortis, I used to play on jubei but I never knew that was you.

Since I started back though I've been on dath'remar. I went care bear, couldn't stomach the thought of levelling another character up from 1 to 80 on a pvp server, just way too frustrating.

If Origin could put up an Oceanic Ultima Online server a decade ago, when bandwidth costs were at their highest, then why cant Blizzard put up any?

I'd imagine the requirements (bandwidth and hardware) for a UO server back in the day would have been far, far, far, far, far less than for WoW now.

Thankyou for the this interview, As an avide wow player for many years I feel i need to at least voice my feelings on this topic.

The passion and sentiments put forward by gamer .. while being perhaps somewhat brash and abrassive .. ARE PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY HOW I FEEL AS WELL.

it seems to me that the majority of you who have commented on what he has said either a) don't play wow, and as such don't matter. b) do play wow but not a great deal of the more intense end of the game ie. arena, progression or c) are the kind of person happy to just take whats given.

countless are the times I have dreamed of being able to play wow with low latency .. I've never played with anything under about 370ish minimum .. and usually more like 450.

I main a warrior who is a melee class, positional latency as i call it .. is my bane .. the game is an inherintly mobile game .. for pvp I need to be within range of my target in order to hit it, or use the majority of my abilities. Latency is a direct modifier to the difficulty of this. I am not inclined to go any further into the detail of how this effects me simply because its complicated, suffice to say, combating positional latency requires an extreme amount of concentration in the form of prediction.

I feel that comparing wow to fps games is stupid .. they are not the same .. imo fps is pure twitch and spacial awareness and so i can see how those who play them mostly, consider wow to be requiring far less in terms of quality ping. I don't agree with this, but i'm not going to try to explain why .. its pointless .. i think that gamer has attempted to do this and its fallen on deaf ears.

In the last 5 years I think its been .. that i have been playing .. I've given blizzard more than $1000 of my money and while I have def gotten my moneys worth in time played, I feel that this is a substancial amount of money .. and that perhaps considering the amount in comparison to .. any other game .. we might be talking about an undertaking or investment that is surpassing .. any other game

I don't care about how viable it is for blizz to set up an aus server .. I just want them to do it .. simple.

I've been saying it for years .. I would be more than happy to pay extra for it.

i'll start out by saying 'Yes, i completely understand why Blizzard aren't hosting servers in aus' and I don't expect them to given the massive costs compared to their current hosting solutions.

But gamer is correct - in high end arena, ping makes a big difference, and anyone who is saying that the ping doesn't make a difference for an MMO is wrong and is simply not playing the game at a level that you would notice.

Playing a feral druid, I have to be behind the target to shred. Now i use the Internode WoW gateway so my ping is ~250-300ms which isn't bad, but there are still times i get the "you must be behind your target" when im dead on their back. Another time you really notice the lag is when using feral charge. You end up yards away from the target instead of dead on their back. And I notice the improvement when going from no gateway to gateway'd wow, but its still not perfect.

My brother (who got Rank 1 (RGlad) in 5's last season) said he was about at the skill cap for his class on his ping. On a tougher battlegroup he wouldn't have been able to win it purely due to some of the reasons gamer listed. 500ms is an exaggeration, but even using tunnels 250ms seems to be about as low as it can go, and that is enough to make a difference. The reaction times you require in FPS games are only a few ms faster than what you require in top end pvp.

But as others have mentioned, Australians are obviously happy to continue to pay their subscription to play on US based servers, so why would they change it ?

I go by Delmortis or Althor in WoW though.

oh hey I raided with you last night (pug 25 TOC that fell apart on Anub due to leaving emo's). I'm Aeioula (NE druid).

last edited by Strik3r at 11:21:35 28/Apr/10

but even using tunnels 250ms seems to be about as low as it can go

I use telstra dsl 2 here in Brisbane with a lower ping subscription and I sit on about 180-190ms at all times including in 25 man raids.

Without LP i sit on about 250ms with the TCPAckFrequency registry change.

I am completely happy paying the extra $8 a month to LP to play Warcraft at a lower latency it does make a difference.

I would also be happy to pay the extra 48 a month to Blizzard to put a server out here in Australia. But I see it as a pretty simple business decision for them. Income > costs. Until it is financially viable for them to put a server here I would suggest enjoying the other benefits to living in Australia like enjoying our golden polution free beaches, sunshine, democracy and lack of R18+ game classfication(had to say it).

If you want to play Warcraft with a 50ms connection i suggest you move to the USA and buy yourself a gun to keep safe over there.

I just want to chuck out a big "THANK YOU" for those people who stepped forward and showed your support of what I was trying to get across. I don't always have the right attitude/words to do so, but you guys sure do.

(Esp thanks to Gloth who registered an account just to say his bit/support my comments)



last edited by gamer at 15:18:37 29/Apr/10

Christ I still play on blackrock...
Would switch to a oceanic realm, but I don't want to pay (what was it?) ~$30 per character to transfer.

Frostmourne - Tsunami here

I don't think anyone ever said WoW servers hosted locally wouldn't be a good thing. I'm sure everyone who plays WoW in Australia would love the lower pings, but no matter how much it would help you in Arena or how much it would improve your game, its still not going to happen if its not a good business move for Blizzard. End of the day, they're a business, they're not going to, out of the kindness of their heart, throw hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars into setting up the infrastructure needed to host servers locally here. If all the Australian WoW players suddenly stopped playing WoW and refused to play till we had local servers, maybe it would then become a good business move to put servers here, but thats not going to happen, so they really have no reason to do it.

You can argue with all the passion you want, but business is business.

Quotes by Khel

I don't think anyone ever said WoW servers hosted locally wouldn't be a good thing.

but I really couldn't care that much if we never get them. The game is still perfectly playable, and its easy enough to adapt to any small problems the lag creates.

Riiighhtt...

The main point is we need people who are going to interview wow devs etc to have a f***ing clue and be fighting the fight to at least try.

I think the wow players among us understand just the same if not more (due to their years of devotion) about how insurmountable the odds are that we'll get any services presented to Australia.

That's no reason not to try and to ask the hard questions during interviews when your meant to represent us.



last edited by gamer at 18:54:03 29/Apr/10

Yeah, I don't really care that much if we get them, I'm happy to keep playing the game the way it is, but its not like I'd stand in the way of them or actively rally against getting them, of course it would be better to have local servers. I just don't see it as an issue that makes or breaks my experience with the game. And since theres realistically jack all chance of getting them, I figure its easier to just adapt to how things are.

I'm not anti-local server or anything. Would it be better? Absolutely. Do I need them to play the game? No, not really. Thats just me personally though, I'm not speaking for every WoW player in Australia, people who want to top the rankings in Arena and stuff are probably in a different boat, but once again thats such a tiny percentage of people that even if they quit playing WoW altogether, it'd be like a drop or water in the ocean for Blizzard,it would have no noticeable impact at all. So they're not going to spend the money setting up servers to cater for those people.

^^ QFT.. but i couldn't be bothered quoting so... this is awkward.

I like US servers, kicking the asses of a small minority locally over and over isn't much of a challenge, I'd rather play with/against the guilds I've played other games with in the past, lag or no lag

1. Players in the US... 100,000s if not Millions.
2. Players in Australia 100,000 if your lucky.
3. Bandwidth, hosting, salaries etc etc no cost benefit if anything more expensive. Yes we have Oceanic and Latin America servers but they are hosted with the US based servers for economy of scale.
4. If your that upset vote with your feet and leave the game, if WoW population dropped significantly that they had to start shutting down servers instead of adding them they they would start to listen.

No one is saying that it wouldn't be nice to have < 100ms pings but the reality is it will never happen in the short term. Hell some of the Americans that I play with have 200ms+ pings because they have s***ty internet just like we do here.

WoW is past it's prime IMO and since aussie servers have never happened so far, I doubt they ever will. Just use lowerping or something like that and curse telstra for being f*****s.

The main point is we need people who are going to interview wow devs etc to have a f***ing clue and be fighting the fight to at least try.

It's not that Blizzard is filled with clueless noobs who don't understand how wonderful it would be for you to get 60ms pings to their server. They've done the maths and have realised that it simply isn't cost effective to put a server here.

I think the wow players among us understand just the same if not more (due to their years of devotion) about how insurmountable the odds are that we'll get any services presented to Australia.

Devotion? Hah! Take your feelings of entitlement and f*** yourself to death with them. Do you bitch and moan about your devotion to Coles, Westfield or Today Tonight?

---

There's one very simple reason that Australia doesn't generally get directly provisioned for MMO servers. As a potential market we're basically non-existent in the grand scheme of things, and the people who greatly suffer from it are a tiny percentage of that.

wow this is awesome. never played the game but i think my double spelled paladin special troll would beat your checkmate queen/rook hook any day.

from an outsiders point of view the analogies of basic business strategy seems to override any jedi fat kid temper rants.

i see your schwartz is as big as mine!!!

Play a rogue in arenas and tell me your not at a disadvantage to Americans :)

i can deal without Australian servers if they let us have proxies, the moment they ban proxies you're going to see a massive decline in aus subs

The main point should be raider, we shouldnt have to pay for a second service (proxy) just to play the game with a minimum acceptable latency (<250ms).

I'm late on this thread here but I agree with gamer 100%. I played WoW since the beginning but a source of constant frustration was positional issues in PvP playing my rogue. They changed Mutilate to accomodate this but constantly being out of range when you're right on your opponent's ass (on your screen at least) is the most frustrating thing!

Even as a Mage in the Battlegrounds, watching my Pyros apparently hit targets first only to see some Yank getting all the killing blows was fricking annoying!

I loved the game and can only imagine how amazing it must be to play it with a true 6ms ping - especially in PvP.

Maybe it doesn't make financial sense to put servers in Aus, but what about putting some in Singapore and tapping into the South-East Asian market as well? Maybe that would be win/win for Australians, Kiwis, Indonesians, Malayasians etc.?

And gamer - mate I know EXACTLY what you mean. I felt the same way but it's impossible to get this through to the casual style of player.

The main point should be raider, we shouldnt have to pay for a second service (proxy) just to play the game with a minimum acceptable latency (<250ms).

what gives you this undeserved sense of entitlement to the point where you expect a profit seeking company to commit to a hugely cost-ineffective capital investment just so you can have a marginally improved user experience?

also, how lol would it be if gamer was being his own wingman itt.

What bothers me is that Blizz haven't introduced some of features, these lower ping services include.
I hear most of them get their speed increases from disabling packet caching and routing traffic through more direct and bandwidth heavy paths.

Well, I agree with gamer, he should be cut some slack. I can tell he is a dedicated wow gamer and has had a lot of wow experience.

Theoretically - When you begin to insinuate a situation where a gamer who has spent roughly 3 years of wow playing, adding the fact that an addicted wow player would on average spend 50% of their lives playing wow and every night your pvping and arenaing and you die and you know the reason you've died is not so much skill vs skill but higher latency vs lower latency, over time this frustration will build up and each day you keep hoping that things will change and then your hope is squashed because Blizzard doesn't think its economically the best business choice to make.

f*** that f*** them, but you can't really blame them.

I Do not think anyone has mentioned the new proposed plans Telstra has made that could fix everyones problems. They are building fiber optic cables under the sea directly from Aus - US....10x faster or something. thats 450ms to about 150ms

But its an 8 year project. So the gamers today will probably have a family then and don't need to escape reality.

You guys might forget that although businesses here factor in the costs of local hosting in to their budgets, on the scale of equipment Blizzard want leased it becomes out of the realm of being competitive compared to what they've grown used to paying back home.

Remember, American companies are greedy :p

gamer = hunter

whinging bitch nubs who think they're pvp veterans and blame their loss on latency, flock together