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If they wanted to be fair about it, they would charge as follows:
Say in China it costs $20 a game In Europe+America, $60 In Singapore, $100
Then buy Singapore edition--->Can play on any server Buy U.S. edition---->Can play on US,Europe, China, can spend extra cash to play on Singapore
I'd be fine with a system like this.
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I would pay some money for cross region play, if blizzard is going to ride that dick.
I mean sure 10 years ago it was free, but it is a new consumer age and from a business point of view it seems okay to charge for cross region because basically they can.
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On June 17 2010 09:03 Muirhead wrote: If they wanted to be fair about it, they would charge as follows:
Say in China it costs $20 a game In Europe+America, $60 In Singapore, $100
Then buy Singapore edition--->Can play on any server Buy U.S. edition---->Can play on US,Europe, China, can spend extra cash to play on Singapore
I'd be fine with a system like this.
Indeed.
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On June 17 2010 08:52 Half wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2010 08:46 Takkara wrote:On June 17 2010 08:36 Half wrote: idunno I find it kind of depressing that you people are so willing to accept paying for it. Why not? I mean what's your alternative? You either pay for it, or you don't get it. You can raise holy hell and bitch and moan and try to avoid it getting added to other games, but that won't change the fact that for SC2 if they choose to charge you either pay or you don't get it. So you're already paying $140+ for the 3 games. What's another $10 if what you get is the one single feature you wanted the most out of the whole feature set. This is unlike something like chat. I don't see how they could ever microtransact chat. But, xregion is a database tweak. I can't see them doing that for free. WoW provides too many examples of this. But even still, why be so cheap about it? I get that it should be free, BW had it, 10 years ago, BNet 0.2, blah blah blah. But in the end, if you want it, and they're making you pay for it, they have you by the balls. For $10 I'm not going to split hairs if that's what it ends up being. There isn't any choice yet because pricing has not been determined. They're evaluating community response to determine adequate pricing. Every person that says "yeah whatever" is indirectly contributing to making us lose 10$. If every single person said "No wtf we won't pay for whats been a free feature for the past 15 years", then Blizzard won't charge for it. If everyone says "yeah whatever", then Blizzard will. You have no reason to not stand by your interests as a consumer. Blizzard isn't unethical or even greedy for charging for a feature most of you want to pay for. The question is why the fuck do you want to pay for it? Thats just being a tool pretty much .
Once again, I see myself siding with this guy. Listen, if you don't stand up for your rights then who will? The fees are getting out of hand. When you buy something you expect no hidden fees. Obviously many of you aren't financially dependent. It will all add up in the long-run.
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On June 17 2010 09:03 Half wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2010 09:02 Baarn wrote: Blizzard is a company that has a successful business model that they offer a product and charge for services. It's not like they are charging a sub each month for Starcraft 2. You want to do anything outside of playing the game on the region you bought then you gotta suck it up and pay more. It's heartbreaking I know. Any of you are welcome to go start your own game company and not have micro transactions for any of your products. Except the previously made several statements where we would be getting free service updates to b-net 2.0.
Yeah you get updates to battlenet 2.0 since that is part of the server platform. I really doubt that includes account migrations etc.
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Yes we would all not like to pay for cross realm play. I really dont want to, I just dont think its something we can fight. Because I am sure blizzard is going to withstand all the heat they get until we just give in and say "okay lets fucking pay for something thats free"
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Well let's not get crazy before there's actual information. Right now we're focusing on the game, the Battle.net infrastructure, etc. and making sure the launch goes smoothly. There's been no decisions or even design work done on how the cross-region licenses will work. We know that we're going to do them, but aside from that there aren't any details available. When we have some we'll definitely let you know.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25171934229&sid=3000&pageNo=4#69
In other words: don't jump to conclusions about microtransactions. It's still in development, and Blizzard has yet to decide anything.
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Bashiok posted again in that sc2gdf thread:
On June 17 2010 Bashiok wrote: Well let's not get crazy before there's actual information. Right now we're focusing on the game, the Battle.net infrastructure, etc. and making sure the launch goes smoothly. There's been no decisions or even design work done on how the cross-region licenses will work. We know that we're going to do them, but aside from that there aren't any details available. When we have some we'll definitely let you know. So they didn't even get started on crossrealm features yet.... I'm filing this one under: "Blizzard hits bottom, digs"
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On June 17 2010 09:17 Dreadwave wrote:Bashiok posted again in that sc2gdf thread: Show nested quote +On June 17 2010 Bashiok wrote: Well let's not get crazy before there's actual information. Right now we're focusing on the game, the Battle.net infrastructure, etc. and making sure the launch goes smoothly. There's been no decisions or even design work done on how the cross-region licenses will work. We know that we're going to do them, but aside from that there aren't any details available. When we have some we'll definitely let you know. So they didn't even get started on crossrealm features yet.... I'm filing this one under: "Blizzard hits bottom, digs"
hits lava, keeps digging....
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
On June 17 2010 09:02 Baarn wrote: Blizzard is a company that has a successful business model that they offer a product and charge for services. It's not like they are charging a sub each month for Starcraft 2. You want to do anything outside of playing the game on the region you bought then you gotta suck it up and pay more. It's heartbreaking I know. Any of you are welcome to go start your own game company and not have micro transactions for any of your products.
No. Releasing a service with less features than the original and charging more is heartbreaking.
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This really should have been the plan all along but its a step in the right direction and im happy that they are listening to the community.
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Once again we have a ton of random people making assumptions about the service requiring a fee before Blizzard even decides themselves. Hilarious!
Edit: To add my personal thoughts, I knew it'd be a feature to be discussed eventually. I had no doubts they'd add it in, regardless of how many people believed they wouldn't.
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Yeah, it would be a slap in the face. What's worse is many consumers don't know any better.
Here Bill comes again with a remark. What makes you think they won't charge a small fee for cross-regional play smart ass? Unless they make it abundantly clear then there will be something to talk about.
You can let them walk all over you for all I care, but I won't let some corporate schmuck try to walk all over me.
Have fun purchasing your first car. Not everyone is a good negotiator. Car windows, steering wheels, brakes, etc. come in the initial pricing. GPS and other 'luxury' features cost extra. We expect to get the basic features of the original B.Net in the original price. The car dealer tells you before you buy your car, every basic feature might cost extra. It won't be in the initial price. Keyword is might. Do you not see anything wrong with that picture?
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On June 17 2010 08:59 Polis wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2010 08:49 Drin wrote: I think it is great that they are actually commenting on the situation, even providing some hope that it might be free.
While it may be true that they are looking into paid services/options, there's no direct mention of that. Being an optimist, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they want to region-lock people during the first few months to avoid server overload. If you think about it, the last full retail game they launched (vanilla WoW) was absolutely plagued with launch issues due to server strain. The blizzard name is even more popular now, and while an RTS is probably not going to draw the same numbers, there is no doubt that SC2 will sell a ton of units on the first day.
As angry as people are regarding the lack of cross-realm support (which is obviously the far greater issue in the long term) there would be even more people angry if they couldn't log on and play with the game they just purchased.
Why would people switch to one server in SC2? That function is only used when you want to play something specific/somebody specific from other server. It had never happen whit any other of the BN games, WOW is a mmorpg so there are diferent reason on why people want to join x server that Diablo/SC/WC players don't have.
Well if people do not have any reason to join a particular server, then there would be no need for cross realm choice to begin with, bar the occasional tournament etc. Reasons for choosing a specific server include:
- community size/skill level - if players perceive that they can improve quicker by playing on a particular server, they very well may do so.
- online communities - if people are segregated based on region, members of international communities such as TL may all agree to join one particular server, so they can play with each other.
- tournament/league activity. If a particular server has far more sponsored tournaments, players may want to play on that server as there would be more professional activity there.
- time-zones and periods with low activity. Say you want to play at any time of the day, or say you work a night shift and play during non-peak hours, you may want to join a server in which people would be playing during that time of the day.
- population issues post release. Say that one server has a far smaller population a few weeks after launch, for any of the reasons listed above or others. People buying the game would avoid the less populated region if they knew, slightly similar (although not very) to what happens with unpopular servers in WoW. And if no-one ends up playing on a set of servers, say the SEA ones, blizzard would most likely lose the money they have invested there.
- Maintenance/stability issues. If one region is having constant stability issues due to the data centre there, people may avoid that region if it develops a bad reputation. Also people may switch servers if there is maintenance, although that would probably be temporary.
Some of these issues do not relate to the launch day scenario I mentioned of course, but they do highlight reasons why people may want to choose a specific region over another. And if enough (read: too many) people choose one region in particular come launch day, there could be server/stability issues.
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Awesome. I'm actually in New Zealand during release, can anyone verify for me which region this is counted in?
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On June 17 2010 08:04 Synwave wrote: I'll lay even odds it will be some nickel and dime pay to play concept. Add a region for 5 bucks or something to that effect.
Well I'm going to be the optimist here and say that it might be a pay once for an upgrade thing... maybe???
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On June 17 2010 09:27 Tone_ wrote: Awesome. I'm actually in New Zealand during release, can anyone verify for me which region this is counted in?
It would be counted as the South-East-Asia region, which includes New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and perhaps a few other countries I forgot.
Also as bioshock said, it seems the region-locking will be based on the license attached to the copy you purchase (which is based on the purchase region) and not the address in your battle.net account. So if you buy the game in NZ, you will only be able to play the game on SEA servers, as it currently stands. To play on the NA servers, you would have to buy a NA copy.
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Heres my idea on how a free version could work, originally posted on b-net. Free for people who buy full edition of the game.
Basically, on your SC2 license page, it says "Region: [current region]". You can click on that region and it brings you to another page where it displays a generic disclaimer about lag, and then below it are a bunch of shiny web 2.0 boxes that say U.S, EU, Asia, etc, etc. A full priced version of the game has all the regions lighted up. To change, you click, confirmation window -processing-, then you got it. Maybe limit changes to like 5 times per week to limit abuse, w/e.
If you bought a cheaper edition of the game, then other regions with different pricepoints have a muted grey lock and are greyed out. Hovering your mouse on them it says "You're account is not authorized to play on this region, do you wish to upgrade?". Clicking on it brings you to a billing/payment page where you can upgrade.
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On June 17 2010 08:38 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2010 08:19 ryanAnger wrote:On June 17 2010 08:10 StarStruck wrote: It's funny because this was never a problem over 10 years ago lmao. Ten years ago there weren't nearly as many people playing the game (any game for that matter) than there are/will be today. That has nothing to do with it. Don't put words in my mouth. The fact of the matter is they got a rid of a lot of features that were second nature to the old B.Net. You icannot argue that. It's only a cash grab now.
I wasn't putting words in your mouth, I'm just suggesting that the reason this is no longer second nature is due to the significantly larger player base, and server instability as a result.
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On June 17 2010 09:24 StarStruck wrote: Yeah, it would be a slap in the face. What's worse is many consumers don't know any better.
Here Bill comes again with a remark. What makes you think they won't charge a small fee for cross-regional play smart ass? Unless they make it abundantly clear then there will be something to talk about.
You can let them walk all over you for all I care, but I won't let some corporate schmuck try to walk all over me.
Have fun purchasing your first car. Not everyone is good negotiator. What makes you think they will? It's all, once again speculation. Just like the speculation that Battle.net 2.0 would require a subscription. Just like the speculation that major tournaments would have to play on the official Battle.net servers. Just like the speculation that there would be no chat channels. Do I even need to continue? Bashiok even says himself NO details are known other than the fact that they want it. Please don't call me out for deciding to evaluate the facts when we get them, not before. What's the point of getting ahead of yourself worrying about stuff that has no evidence will ever happen?
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