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I'm a gamer from Singapore, and have been playing Blizzard games since the days of WarCraft 2 (Yes, every single one of the games). Obviously, I was overjoyed at the announcement of WoW.
The server regionlisation thing came up. But okay, I'll find some way to get over it, and that was through game cards. Next, they limited CE stock to only large companies like EB Games which refuse to ship to countries outside of the United States; but hey, I managed to get myself a US CE too.
So imagine my surprise when the accounts creation page had this requirement of a US CC even if you did not intend to use a CC for payment. Ostensibly, I was unable to create my account and I'm now a proud owner of a couple of coasters.
Do they even realise how assinine this is? First they told us server regionalisation; but we found ways to get over it. Next they gave pathetic excuses (It's for your own good due customer service and such - tell that to the GM who never even answered me after 4 hours though I was playing at 10 pm local time on the US Beta Server) and outright lies (We've worked with guilds to ensure that they will not be affected by server regionalisation - I'm not a kid and I know when you lie).
So now we're faced with this?! Do they know that there are perhaps Americans affected by this? How? Well I assume not every single American has a credit card. So those poor souls are no different from me, sitting in front of their computers with coasters.
I know this is beating a dead horse, but really, Blizzard, I see other companies do it well, but you, with far more resources available, fail to do a worldwide launch. This is utter betrayal of your fans outside of the US. I'm sorry to say that you've dropped so low that the bottomline is your only concern (It's obvious you sold the WoW rights to regional companies to make money off loyalties).
Apologies to you, dear Blizzard, but I'm sticking with Flagship Studios right now. Bill Roper did something right, and I'm willing to bet that someone who willingly leaves a company he helped set up to do what he believes in will make better games than an empty company with a reputation but without a spirit no longer.
It's all about money. Vivendi will make more money if they wait a while and mark up the price that the games will sell for overseas. All of the excuses that have been given has just been a bunch of smoke. It has nothing at all to do with latency.
Also, anyone else notice that the US server amount is the exact same amount that they used for the OB?
I'm with Pai Mai (yay!) - it's Vivendi's problem, not Blizzard. Poor guys can't help it if they get heavy-handed into releasing without unique and important features, no worldwide release, etc. At least they can say, "I told you so." when Vivendi asks why the community is unhappy.
Oh wait, Vivendi doesn't listen to the community...
That probably explains why VU Games is in the red for the past few years. (Probably not this year though)
We see the Half Life 2 fiasco. Not to mention that the Half Life 2 CE by VU Games sucked horribly compared to the one by Valve. Not only that, thanks to Securom, those who bought the physical game instead of preloading through Steam need to have the CD in the drive bay while playing whereas the former doesn't. I don't want to talk about the authentication servers either.
On one hand we could argue that Blizzard has been talking about localized servers etcetera for a long time - so we are not even supposed to play the game.
On the other hand - I really saw this as as way of keeping 90%+ of the player population localized but allow enthusiasts to get around the system - as with basically all other games released.
But I bet they will get this one in the face. What about people that do not have a credit card in the US? They cannot play the game. The billing address will not match their home address unless they lie. What about people visiting the US and buying a game in the store? Nowhere, and I reiterate, nowhere on the box does it say that you need to reside in the us and have a credit card to play the game. So I guess things will look brighter in a couple of days with game cards etc. But we will have to wait and see...
After the European release, Blizzard has announced they will give the option to people to still play on the American servers. Probably not fair to people that live in an Asian country and don't understand most languages there, but I don't think it will take much longer.
They're just another group of people that will have to wait a little longer due to circumstances.
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