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For those of you who haven't already seen it, I highly recommend you guys check out the article about TeamLiquid visiting Blizzard HQ. Lots of awesome information there. Link: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=121072
However, I was extremely disappointed when I read the following part:
Server isolation and its effect on the growth of ESPORTS: It will be definitely something that will be look at in the future, but at the moment there are no plans to allow people to access different servers with the same key due to lag and latency issues.
To me, this is simply game breaking. For those who are unaware, the way that the amateur WC3 and Starcraft communities have developed, Americans, Europeans, and Asian players all participating in the same leagues are very common. Team based leagues will feature teams from all over the place, and solo leagues are all the same.
More specifically, the American Warcraft 3 scene is very small when compared to Europe and Asia. The few American players that do compete at a high level practice almost entirely with Europeans and Asian players. Not having the ability to seamlessly connect to Europe or Asia will have a tragic impact on the scenes of each region. With much fewer players to compete against, each scene becomes increasingly stale.
It is certainly possible to fix this situation in its current state, but it is costly. Each league level player would essentially need to buy one copy of each game. Though I myself would be willing to do this given no other choice, I am sure many would not be so compliant. $150+ for a new game is unappealing.
I admit that so far I am very pleased with the current state of Battle.net2.0. It does an excellent job at fixing many of the problems that were present in both Warcraft 3 and Brood War. The match making system is solid. I believe that Blizzard has succeeded in creating a competitive atmosphere which almost entirely eliminates the need for LAN play. However, moves like this provide the community with a very important reason to develop alternatives. I for one oppose such things, as I believe they split the community. There are of course cases where such things do a lot of good for the community, however, such as ICCUP. Nonetheless, I dream of a Starcraft 2 scene where everyone is able to play on Battle.net. I would love to have a complete competitive scene where I can be poised to chat to my casual friends as well as my league team mates.
Forcing the segregation of the servers is simply too damaging to the scene and it needs to change. If the issue is the possibility of people sharing keys for the sake of saving money, I think a better solution would be a global verification process. I feel as though there are numerous ways to fix any issue that Blizzard could possibly have with people being able to freely switch between servers.
I admit that before reading the article, I was very relaxed about this issue. I had assumed that Blizzard would pull through in the end, but hearing an official statement regarding it has made me very worried. I know that Blizzard reads these boards, so I hope that they are also able to read this.
What are your guy's thoughts on this issue? Its a very big deal to me, and I'd assume the same holds true for many of the hardcore players here.
Poll: Do you support Blizzard's decision?No (559) 96% Yes (23) 4% 582 total votes Your vote: Do you support Blizzard's decision? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
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Blizzard, if this is Bnet 2.0, then why are you going backwards? If you REALLY wanted SC2 to be an e-sport, you would worry about this much more than achievements.
The competitive community WILL rebel, and it will be YOUR doing.
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that brings my piss to a boil
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2754 Posts
This is the route the majority of games of going now, for the last few years to be exact, but yeah, it sucks.
It's not just an SC2 thing.
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United States24813 Posts
It's essentially asking for people to figure out ways to make sc2 playable on private servers or lans... I mean you can't come up with a better excuse than this...
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I hope they change their minds. Maybe someone can figure out a hack to get on the other servers? One of the great things about poker is that you get to play with germans, euros, americans, ect. I know pokerstars italy has to have their own site but let's ignore that for the sake of my analogy. =)
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Woah... I thought it was just like this for the beta.
It would be unspeakably terrible if it doesn't change upon the actual release... It's annoying now how the tournaments are separate and you can't play with people from other severs but if it stays that way... ugh.
I mean maybe they could compromise and have the ladder seasons be just with people in your region but custom games can be played with anyone.
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This would be terrible :/
Separating the community is the one thing Blizzard SHOULDN'T do.
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2754 Posts
They won't change it. They started it with WoW, and there doing it for Diablo 3.
There has been plenty of debate about this topic with WoW, and they never budged.
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This is a retarded move by blizzard.
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On April 24 2010 12:54 FragKrag wrote:
This would be terrible :/
Separating the community is the one thing Blizzard SHOULDN'T do.
Exactly. Don't give us BS about uniting the community and then do this. If iccup can have global near-LAN latency, wtf is preventing you, with your 30 trillion dollars from doing it? Pathetic.
And Pardo is an arrogant moron.
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On April 24 2010 12:52 micronesia wrote:
It's essentially asking for people to figure out ways to make sc2 playable on private servers or lans... I mean you can't come up with a better excuse than this...
Absolutely agree. They should definitely have an international server with lan latency a la iCCup. It doesn't have to work for ladder - so as long as you can play custom games with anyone in the world, then I will be happy.
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I'm just going to lol @ the people who actually believed they gave a rat's ass about a united community.
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I'm guessing it will only be this way for release and rectified in the future when bnet 2.0 settles down and matures. To me this reeks of them not being confident in their new server structures to handle the load of the incoming player base.
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Yea this is a horrible idea. It will be very detrimental to the development of SC2 if players from different servers aren't able to interact with one another in order to share and develop new strategies.
Also, not everyone has shitty internet connection. I have been able to play games with people from Asia with minimal lag. Blizzard could simply just implement a filter that will only pair people up with others to reduce lag. Also, I'm not sure how ICCUP works but you can play with people from different continents with pretty minimal lag.
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oh all of a sudden im not some heretic preaching about how blizzard has no intrest in esports besides the monetary value that it feels exists. It doesnt have any, anyone in the scene will tell you they put WAY more money into esports than they ever get back, however it doesnt matter, the reason blizzard RTS games are so famous doesnt matter to them, they are more interested in making sure chinese and brazillians cant pirate their games.
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I don't get the "lag and latency issues". Couldn't Blizzard just pair up people from the same area (US, EU, Asia) during random match making? Then if you choose to play someone from a different region, it would be at your own risk.
Or do they want pro players to fish out money from their wallets so they can buy 3 copies of SC2.
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
Good news for me.
EG going to sit pretty well on that NA server I'd think.
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I don't see what they can gain from this, all I see is what the community loses.
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
Yup it's a total disaster. I don't understand how one of the core philosophies could be to support and develop esports and then in the same breath segregate and divide the community in 3 :\ . I really hope a lot more thought gets put into this decision, because having to find tricks and work arounds like iCCup/pgtour etc really should be a thing of the past. Does this mean i cant download maps/products from European/Asian Bnet either? Yikes.
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EPT
