The way I see it, it's not just about splitting up guilds. It's about isolating friends. Online gaming has allowed friendships to form regardless of lines on a map. One of my best online friends recently moved back to his home country of England. Thus far we've had no problem playing together on a U.S. WoW server. He purchased, through another friend of ours, U.S. copies of both the original game and BC.
We've gamed together for years across many titles and genres. I find these isolationist views offensive and contradictory to the very nature of the internet.
The most important part of reading is reading between the lines.
I've got numerous friends allover the world from US-AU-MY-TU-DE-BE-UK-LV-CA-SE-NO etc, in the past i've hosted a Freelancer (and other games) server in Holland for us to play on +/- 67 players on a 100mbit line. It's REALLY REALLY hard to let everyone play without lag i found it to be impossible. The routing from allover the world is rather tricky, from NL to most of the US states suck enormously but from US to SE you are able to get some decent speeds/latency. And i've tried several asian games which also give me crap latency or even routing problems not being able to even reach the servers.
I can't blame the MMO companies for not offering international servers US-EU or otherwise, you can offcourse buy the clients overseas but low latency isn't guaranteed causing more problems then they'd like to and offcourse bad publicity.
And offcourse you can buy LOTRO US or EU client but don't come complaining about lag that's 1 thing that's guaranteed (and don't say it's not) I've played WoW on US and EU servers and latency problems made me go back to the EU servers, solo wasn't really a problem but raid were out of the question. I'd say they made the right choice and if someone wants to play overseas they should be given the oppurtunity but all problems are theirs.
Turbine never learn, they screwed up with ac2 badly, at that time they blamed it on MS, when they only sold 50k of ac2 copies due the geographical issues.
Now they doing the same mistake with lotro, of course they will sell more then ac2, but what they doing is making ALOT of guilds to quit.
Ive been following LOTRO, but i knew soon or later turbine will come up with something to screw a great game, lets wait for more.
Turbine never learn, they screwed up with ac2 badly, at that time they blamed it on MS, when they only sold 50k of ac2 copies due the geographical issues.
Now they doing the same mistake with lotro, of course they will sell more then ac2, but what they doing is making ALOT of guilds to quit.
Ive been following LOTRO, but i knew soon or later turbine will come up with something to screw a great game, lets wait for more.
excuse me, what mistake? The fact that Lotro has two diffrent publishers, each in one region, is not a mistake. Unless your willing to claim that Ncsoft, Blizzard and turbibe are all making, by total coincidence ofcourse, the exact same mistake.
Turbine never learn, they screwed up with ac2 badly, at that time they blamed it on MS, when they only sold 50k of ac2 copies due the geographical issues.
Now they doing the same mistake with lotro, of course they will sell more then ac2, but what they doing is making ALOT of guilds to quit.
Ive been following LOTRO, but i knew soon or later turbine will come up with something to screw a great game, lets wait for more.
excuse me, what mistake? The fact that Lotro has two diffrent publishers, each in one region, is not a mistake. Unless your willing to claim that Ncsoft, Blizzard and turbibe are all making, by total coincidence ofcourse, the exact same mistake. no the fact of use ip blocks and things like that to prevent people from playing with friends all over the world, blizzard never did that, even with separated servers you were always able to buy any version of the game no matter where you are.
Hmm, this is a quite intresting subject. I've got numerous friends allover the world from US-AU-MY-TU-DE-BE-UK-LV-CA-SE-NO etc, in the past i've hosted a Freelancer (and other games) server in Holland for us to play on +/- 67 players on a 100mbit line. It's REALLY REALLY hard to let everyone play without lag i found it to be impossible. The routing from allover the world is rather tricky, from NL to most of the US states suck enormously but from US to SE you are able to get some decent speeds/latency. And i've tried several asian games which also give me crap latency or even routing problems not being able to even reach the servers. I can't blame the MMO companies for not offering international servers US-EU or otherwise, you can offcourse buy the clients overseas but low latency isn't guaranteed causing more problems then they'd like to and offcourse bad publicity. And offcourse you can buy LOTRO US or EU client but don't come complaining about lag that's 1 thing that's guaranteed (and don't say it's not) I've played WoW on US and EU servers and latency problems made me go back to the EU servers, solo wasn't really a problem but raid were out of the question. I'd say they made the right choice and if someone wants to play overseas they should be given the oppurtunity but all problems are theirs.
It's not a question of latency, it's a question of IP blocking to prevent people accessing the game outside their "region". So even if you buy a US client as an EU citizen you still wont be able to play on US servers becuase your IP will be blocked. That is what the problem appears to be. It's all about £$£$ and codemasters.
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
Hmm, this is a quite intresting subject. I've got numerous friends allover the world from US-AU-MY-TU-DE-BE-UK-LV-CA-SE-NO etc, in the past i've hosted a Freelancer (and other games) server in Holland for us to play on +/- 67 players on a 100mbit line. It's REALLY REALLY hard to let everyone play without lag i found it to be impossible. The routing from allover the world is rather tricky, from NL to most of the US states suck enormously but from US to SE you are able to get some decent speeds/latency. And i've tried several asian games which also give me crap latency or even routing problems not being able to even reach the servers. I can't blame the MMO companies for not offering international servers US-EU or otherwise, you can offcourse buy the clients overseas but low latency isn't guaranteed causing more problems then they'd like to and offcourse bad publicity. And offcourse you can buy LOTRO US or EU client but don't come complaining about lag that's 1 thing that's guaranteed (and don't say it's not) I've played WoW on US and EU servers and latency problems made me go back to the EU servers, solo wasn't really a problem but raid were out of the question. I'd say they made the right choice and if someone wants to play overseas they should be given the oppurtunity but all problems are theirs.
It's not a question of latency, it's a question of IP blocking to prevent people accessing the game outside their "region". So even if you buy a US client as an EU citizen you still wont be able to play on US servers becuase your IP will be blocked. That is what the problem appears to be. It's all about £$£$ and codemasters.
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
I don't think they are going to block Autoblock IP adresses because they have said they are giving acces to US soldiers stationed overseas.
Hmm, this is a quite intresting subject. I've got numerous friends allover the world from US-AU-MY-TU-DE-BE-UK-LV-CA-SE-NO etc, in the past i've hosted a Freelancer (and other games) server in Holland for us to play on +/- 67 players on a 100mbit line. It's REALLY REALLY hard to let everyone play without lag i found it to be impossible. The routing from allover the world is rather tricky, from NL to most of the US states suck enormously but from US to SE you are able to get some decent speeds/latency. And i've tried several asian games which also give me crap latency or even routing problems not being able to even reach the servers. I can't blame the MMO companies for not offering international servers US-EU or otherwise, you can offcourse buy the clients overseas but low latency isn't guaranteed causing more problems then they'd like to and offcourse bad publicity. And offcourse you can buy LOTRO US or EU client but don't come complaining about lag that's 1 thing that's guaranteed (and don't say it's not) I've played WoW on US and EU servers and latency problems made me go back to the EU servers, solo wasn't really a problem but raid were out of the question. I'd say they made the right choice and if someone wants to play overseas they should be given the oppurtunity but all problems are theirs.
It's not a question of latency, it's a question of IP blocking to prevent people accessing the game outside their "region". So even if you buy a US client as an EU citizen you still wont be able to play on US servers becuase your IP will be blocked. That is what the problem appears to be. It's all about £$£$ and codemasters.
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
Sorry i missed the part where it said that IP ranges were being blocked, i've never experienced something like that myself.
Seems weird do can't remember seeing that happen before and i've played alot of mmo's that had servers in several countrys.
Sure it kinda 'breaks up the guilds/friendships' but there are other ways to stay in contact then play a game.
/OT/
And about WoW from UK or NL is quite a difference, geographical it doesn't quite explain why do, when i was playing on the US servers i had 200-300ms latency playing solo with noone around, raiding made my latency rise wellover 500 even the 5 man instances gave me 400-500, on really bad days i was lucky with 700-900 (sometimes 1000+) making it really hard for a priest to heal in time. And no it's not my internet connection 20/2mbit. On the EU servers i had 50-100 on 40 man raids really a big difference.
Hmm, this is a quite intresting subject. I've got numerous friends allover the world from US-AU-MY-TU-DE-BE-UK-LV-CA-SE-NO etc, in the past i've hosted a Freelancer (and other games) server in Holland for us to play on +/- 67 players on a 100mbit line. It's REALLY REALLY hard to let everyone play without lag i found it to be impossible. The routing from allover the world is rather tricky, from NL to most of the US states suck enormously but from US to SE you are able to get some decent speeds/latency. And i've tried several asian games which also give me crap latency or even routing problems not being able to even reach the servers. I can't blame the MMO companies for not offering international servers US-EU or otherwise, you can offcourse buy the clients overseas but low latency isn't guaranteed causing more problems then they'd like to and offcourse bad publicity. And offcourse you can buy LOTRO US or EU client but don't come complaining about lag that's 1 thing that's guaranteed (and don't say it's not) I've played WoW on US and EU servers and latency problems made me go back to the EU servers, solo wasn't really a problem but raid were out of the question. I'd say they made the right choice and if someone wants to play overseas they should be given the oppurtunity but all problems are theirs.
It's not a question of latency, it's a question of IP blocking to prevent people accessing the game outside their "region". So even if you buy a US client as an EU citizen you still wont be able to play on US servers becuase your IP will be blocked. That is what the problem appears to be. It's all about £$£$ and codemasters.
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
I don't think they are going to block Autoblock IP adresses because they have said they are giving acces to US soldiers stationed overseas. lol funny thing is europeans money is good for DDO on USA servers but for LOTRO isn't. yes you can play DDO from euro with euro credit card and euro adress on US servers. why its diferent with LOTRO?
Hmm, this is a quite intresting subject. I've got numerous friends allover the world from US-AU-MY-TU-DE-BE-UK-LV-CA-SE-NO etc, in the past i've hosted a Freelancer (and other games) server in Holland for us to play on +/- 67 players on a 100mbit line. It's REALLY REALLY hard to let everyone play without lag i found it to be impossible. The routing from allover the world is rather tricky, from NL to most of the US states suck enormously but from US to SE you are able to get some decent speeds/latency. And i've tried several asian games which also give me crap latency or even routing problems not being able to even reach the servers. I can't blame the MMO companies for not offering international servers US-EU or otherwise, you can offcourse buy the clients overseas but low latency isn't guaranteed causing more problems then they'd like to and offcourse bad publicity. And offcourse you can buy LOTRO US or EU client but don't come complaining about lag that's 1 thing that's guaranteed (and don't say it's not) I've played WoW on US and EU servers and latency problems made me go back to the EU servers, solo wasn't really a problem but raid were out of the question. I'd say they made the right choice and if someone wants to play overseas they should be given the oppurtunity but all problems are theirs.
It's not a question of latency, it's a question of IP blocking to prevent people accessing the game outside their "region". So even if you buy a US client as an EU citizen you still wont be able to play on US servers becuase your IP will be blocked. That is what the problem appears to be. It's all about £$£$ and codemasters.
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
I don't think they are going to block Autoblock IP adresses because they have said they are giving acces to US soldiers stationed overseas.
I do not know, I have been looking to see if there is any mention of blocking IP. However, they did say the following;
" If you are a European player and purchase the game from a retailer based in North America you will not be able to activate your Product Key on the Turbine billing system. The reverse is also true: Copies of LOTRO intended for the European market cannot be registered with Codemasters from a country outside of the territories they serve."
Now to me that says they must have some process in place to determine where you are located in the world in order to prevent you from even activating your NA key should you not live inside the US/Oceania region.
They stated that servicemen should contact them so that Turbine can assist them in registering their game.
Well afaik the WoW keys cannot be used freely atm, bought in EU cannot register on US and likewise.
I don't see a problem here really, i bought my US client on Ebay(if i remember correctly) and EU client at the local store.
I can't imagine they won't allow to restrict the choice between servers, only through client version purchase.
You miss understand;
WoW keys are not free roaming so if you purchased an EU key you can only use it on EU servers. If however you chose as an EU citizen to purchase a US key for US $ you COULD register it and play on US servers and be charged in US $, even though you live outside of the United States.
You do not have this choice in LOTRO. Even if you buy, as a European living in EU, an American key you CAN NOT activate that key anywhere not even in America, they will prevent you from doing this. Unless you are a serviceman in the US forces, then you have to contact Turbine so that you can register it from/play outside the US.
Well afaik the WoW keys cannot be used freely atm, bought in EU cannot register on US and likewise.
I don't see a problem here really, i bought my US client on Ebay(if i remember correctly) and EU client at the local store.
I can't imagine they won't allow to restrict the choice between servers, only through client version purchase.
You miss understand;
WoW keys are not free roaming so if you purchased an EU key you can only use it on EU servers. If however you chose as an EU citizen to purchase a US key for US $ you COULD register it and play on US servers and be charged in US $, even though you live outside of the United States.
You do not have this choice in LOTRO. Even if you buy, as a European living in EU, an American key you CAN NOT activate that key anywhere not even in America, they will prevent you from doing this. Unless you are a serviceman in the US forces, then you have to contact Turbine so that you can register it from/play outside the US.
Yes i know about wow since i played on US servers also
But why aren't we becomming service men then (army ppl i assume?) How will they check on this?
Or get a friend in the US to get you a key? And pay through him?
excuse me, what mistake? The fact that Lotro has two diffrent publishers, each in one region, is not a mistake. Unless your willing to claim that Ncsoft, Blizzard and turbibe are all making, by total coincidence ofcourse, the exact same mistake.
The mistake is that Turbine doesn't offer us any choise. The very fact that they are actively trying to prevent people in Europe playing on US servers where they get higher ping, and where most of the activity is at unconvenient times for them, suggest that there would be some other very good reason why people in Europe would want to play on US servers.
It may be better customer service. Or it may be the fact that on version run by Codemasters there are 3 languages wich are not only allowed, but encouraged by translating the game client, all put on same servers, thus making it impossible for half of your allies understand what you are talking about, and making it impossible for you to understand what they are talking about. Or it may be something else. But whatever it is, the way I see it, if they need to actively block us from connecting to Lotro US servers, then there must be some reason why we would want to connect.
And Blizzard isn't making this mistake, because altough they make getting version for your location easier than getting some other version, they are allowing people to buy whatever version they want to play.
I don't really see how it is a mistake,look at Turbine's perspective. By blocking US/EU players, and thus forcing them to play on Codemasters version, they can charge a higher price for the game when they sell (or sold in this case) the game to Codemasters.
The examples I gave were actually poor examples, come to think of it. Since NCsoft US and NCsoft EU are the same company, as well is Blizzard. a better example would be Cabal Online. Cabal Online was run by two diffrent companies in US/EU, so the EU version had to block US players, as it would steal players from the US version.
Same thing with WOW ... and nobody is blaming them for doing it in the first place
Way way wrong, a lot of us complained about this! Ok if they split servers and publishers, meaning 90% of the europeans buying the euro version. That would be fair enough, but actually blocking the possibility to import the game and play with your oversea friends is just plain bullshit and a very very bad business decision. I really despise companies doing things like this. People complain about SOE, well let me tell you, at least they don't split communities in this way! (ok they may do other bad things like the NGE).
Edit: Let me also add that Blizzard promised international servers before release and they have yet to live up to that over two years later! And in their case they can't even blame it on some sort of business deal with another publisher since they publish the game in both the US and Europe! Also Mythic/GOA did the very same thing with DAoC at launch, as Turbine/CM is doing now, but I think they have relaxed the rules now. Still very very poor of Turbine/CM!!!!!
http://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19175&highlight=codemasters "If you are a European player and purchase the game from a retailer based in North America you will not be able to activate your Product Key on the Turbine billing system. The reverse is also true: Copies of LOTRO intended for the European market cannot be registered with Codemasters from a country outside of the territories they serve." We were told we could import and play on any server and now this. You can kiss goodbye to my pre-order, for a game I was really looking forward to playing. And thanks for destroying it for all of us who have long established international guilds and friends worldwide. This is a really smart move.......not. Thanks for the huge kick in the nuts. Un feckin' believable. Geez I didn't even mind paying for both versions, why block; who loses out? I see a lot of cancellations due to this short-sighted and deeply sad decision to split the MMO community. http://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19215
YOU MEAN THE USA AND EU HAVE DIFFERENT MEDIA FORMATS?@?#!@?#!?
All these DVD'S i ordered from EUROPE ARENT GOING TO WORK?@#!?@!?
HUH I cant plug my PS2 into a wall there.
man its hard to believe a country so far away from america has some differences.
Their mind is made up, if you do not like it, don't support them and don't play. Find a different MMO to play, I am sure LOTRO is going to sell fine regardless.
Personally feel it is an ok move to keep it split. My reason is in past games with US and EU , usually turns into a political shouting match over the Iraq war . Think because the EU has such a strong anti-war movement right now it is a logical step to ensure that the game is not a political haven for U.S, bashing.
Yes you may have a minority of cross continent guild mates , but for the most part that is about 2% of the player base. I think Segrigation is wrong , but for the sake of the game I think it is appropiate to keep peoples mind on the game and not political motives.
I can't even count how many times I was ask where was I from and I would say America, and I get over 300 Anti-U.S bashes thrown at me .
Americans and Europeans have very different attitudes on society and the way things work.
Europeans are more easy going and understand team work gets tthings done.
Americans tend to cry more and always worry abotu themselves.
Americans also tend to be very biggoted in regards to different people. The minute they saw someoen type in french or german the flame wars would begin. ( i generalize but its ture)
Turbine is doing you guys a great service by keeping you off n/a servers.
I can't really fault turbine here because WoW does this too. WoW seems to be chugging along just fine with this so hopefully there is some way around this for EU players that want to play with their guildies on US servers and vice versa.
Americans and Europeans have very different attitudes on society and the way things work.
Europeans are more easy going and understand team work gets tthings done.
Americans tend to cry more and always worry abotu themselves.
Americans also tend to be very biggoted in regards to different people. The minute they saw someoen type in french or german the flame wars would begin. ( i generalize but its ture)
Turbine is doing you guys a great service by keeping you off n/a servers.
edi** the poster above has it too.
eh ?
It is more like "Americans are tired of being bashed because of our government"
Americans and Europeans have very different attitudes on society and the way things work.
Europeans are more easy going and understand team work gets tthings done.
Americans tend to cry more and always worry abotu themselves.
Americans also tend to be very biggoted in regards to different people. The minute they saw someoen type in french or german the flame wars would begin. ( i generalize but its ture)
Turbine is doing you guys a great service by keeping you off n/a servers.
edi** the poster above has it too.
eh ?
It is more like "Americans are tired of being bashed because of our government" I think our government and political systems sucks anyway.
If it were easy to move i would do it in a heartbeat.
On the plus side canada isnt too far away, so when i want a dose of real ill go visit there.
Comments
We've gamed together for years across many titles and genres. I find these isolationist views offensive and contradictory to the very nature of the internet.
The most important part of reading is reading between the lines.
Hmm, this is a quite intresting subject.
I've got numerous friends allover the world from US-AU-MY-TU-DE-BE-UK-LV-CA-SE-NO etc, in the past i've hosted a Freelancer (and other games) server in Holland for us to play on +/- 67 players on a 100mbit line. It's REALLY REALLY hard to let everyone play without lag i found it to be impossible. The routing from allover the world is rather tricky, from NL to most of the US states suck enormously but from US to SE you are able to get some decent speeds/latency. And i've tried several asian games which also give me crap latency or even routing problems not being able to even reach the servers.
I can't blame the MMO companies for not offering international servers US-EU or otherwise, you can offcourse buy the clients overseas but low latency isn't guaranteed causing more problems then they'd like to and offcourse bad publicity.
And offcourse you can buy LOTRO US or EU client but don't come complaining about lag that's 1 thing that's guaranteed (and don't say it's not) I've played WoW on US and EU servers and latency problems made me go back to the EU servers, solo wasn't really a problem but raid were out of the question. I'd say they made the right choice and if someone wants to play overseas they should be given the oppurtunity but all problems are theirs.
Turbine never learn, they screwed up with ac2 badly, at that time they blamed it on MS, when they only sold 50k of ac2 copies due the geographical issues.
Now they doing the same mistake with lotro, of course they will sell more then ac2, but what they doing is making ALOT of guilds to quit.
Ive been following LOTRO, but i knew soon or later turbine will come up with something to screw a great game, lets wait for more.
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
Thank God I didnt pre order !
Game sucks anyhow, would have been a decent MMO back in 2002-2003. Turbine is so uncreative, this game is just a cheap version of WOW.
Turbine=Screwups, nuff said/
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
I don't think they are going to block Autoblock IP adresses because they have said they are giving acces to US soldiers stationed overseas.
___________________________________________
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
Sorry i missed the part where it said that IP ranges were being blocked, i've never experienced something like that myself.
Seems weird do can't remember seeing that happen before and i've played alot of mmo's that had servers in several countrys.
Sure it kinda 'breaks up the guilds/friendships' but there are other ways to stay in contact then play a game.
/OT/
And about WoW from UK or NL is quite a difference, geographical it doesn't quite explain why do, when i was playing on the US servers i had 200-300ms latency playing solo with noone around, raiding made my latency rise wellover 500 even the 5 man instances gave me 400-500, on really bad days i was lucky with 700-900 (sometimes 1000+) making it really hard for a priest to heal in time. And no it's not my internet connection 20/2mbit. On the EU servers i had 50-100 on 40 man raids really a big difference.
/OT/
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
I don't think they are going to block Autoblock IP adresses because they have said they are giving acces to US soldiers stationed overseas. lol funny thing is europeans money is good for DDO on USA servers but for LOTRO isn't. yes you can play DDO from euro with euro credit card and euro adress on US servers. why its diferent with LOTRO?
Many games manage to offer international log-ins without any problems. I play WoW from the UK on a US server with an average of 200ms ping, no problem. I have played many games and by choice nearly always play on US servers if allowed.
I feel for the friendships and guilds that will lose out, and I feel for the people who loved the game but will now reconsider their purchase due to this segregation.
I don't think they are going to block Autoblock IP adresses because they have said they are giving acces to US soldiers stationed overseas.
I do not know, I have been looking to see if there is any mention of blocking IP. However, they did say the following;
" If you are a European player and purchase the game from a retailer based in North America you will not be able to activate your Product Key on the Turbine billing system. The reverse is also true: Copies of LOTRO intended for the European market cannot be registered with Codemasters from a country outside of the territories they serve."
Now to me that says they must have some process in place to determine where you are located in the world in order to prevent you from even activating your NA key should you not live inside the US/Oceania region.
They stated that servicemen should contact them so that Turbine can assist them in registering their game.
Well afaik the WoW keys cannot be used freely atm, bought in EU cannot register on US and likewise.
I don't see a problem here really, i bought my US client on Ebay(if i remember correctly) and EU client at the local store.
I can't imagine they won't allow to restrict the choice between servers, only through client version (activation key) purchase.
WoW keys are not free roaming so if you purchased an EU key you can only use it on EU servers. If however you chose as an EU citizen to purchase a US key for US $ you COULD register it and play on US servers and be charged in US $, even though you live outside of the United States.
You do not have this choice in LOTRO. Even if you buy, as a European living in EU, an American key you CAN NOT activate that key anywhere not even in America, they will prevent you from doing this. Unless you are a serviceman in the US forces, then you have to contact Turbine so that you can register it from/play outside the US.
WoW keys are not free roaming so if you purchased an EU key you can only use it on EU servers. If however you chose as an EU citizen to purchase a US key for US $ you COULD register it and play on US servers and be charged in US $, even though you live outside of the United States.
You do not have this choice in LOTRO. Even if you buy, as a European living in EU, an American key you CAN NOT activate that key anywhere not even in America, they will prevent you from doing this. Unless you are a serviceman in the US forces, then you have to contact Turbine so that you can register it from/play outside the US.
Yes i know about wow since i played on US servers also
But why aren't we becomming service men then (army ppl i assume?) How will they check on this?
Or get a friend in the US to get you a key? And pay through him?
The mistake is that Turbine doesn't offer us any choise. The very fact that they are actively trying to prevent people in Europe playing on US servers where they get higher ping, and where most of the activity is at unconvenient times for them, suggest that there would be some other very good reason why people in Europe would want to play on US servers.
It may be better customer service. Or it may be the fact that on version run by Codemasters there are 3 languages wich are not only allowed, but encouraged by translating the game client, all put on same servers, thus making it impossible for half of your allies understand what you are talking about, and making it impossible for you to understand what they are talking about. Or it may be something else. But whatever it is, the way I see it, if they need to actively block us from connecting to Lotro US servers, then there must be some reason why we would want to connect.
And Blizzard isn't making this mistake, because altough they make getting version for your location easier than getting some other version, they are allowing people to buy whatever version they want to play.
The examples I gave were actually poor examples, come to think of it. Since NCsoft US and NCsoft EU are the same company, as well is Blizzard. a better example would be Cabal Online. Cabal Online was run by two diffrent companies in US/EU, so the EU version had to block US players, as it would steal players from the US version.
Way way wrong, a lot of us complained about this! Ok if they split servers and publishers, meaning 90% of the europeans buying the euro version. That would be fair enough, but actually blocking the possibility to import the game and play with your oversea friends is just plain bullshit and a very very bad business decision. I really despise companies doing things like this. People complain about SOE, well let me tell you, at least they don't split communities in this way! (ok they may do other bad things like the NGE).
Edit: Let me also add that Blizzard promised international servers before release and they have yet to live up to that over two years later! And in their case they can't even blame it on some sort of business deal with another publisher since they publish the game in both the US and Europe! Also Mythic/GOA did the very same thing with DAoC at launch, as Turbine/CM is doing now, but I think they have relaxed the rules now. Still very very poor of Turbine/CM!!!!!
Thought I had a basic understanding of the term 'World wide web'....mmm guess not.
Maybe Turbine are hoping that if they limit the size of the real world we won't notice the tiny game world it took them five years to whittle down.
All these DVD'S i ordered from EUROPE ARENT GOING TO WORK?@#!?@!?
HUH I cant plug my PS2 into a wall there.
man its hard to believe a country so far away from america has some differences.
Yes you may have a minority of cross continent guild mates , but for the most part that is about 2% of the player base. I think Segrigation is wrong , but for the sake of the game I think it is appropiate to keep peoples mind on the game and not political motives.
I can't even count how many times I was ask where was I from and I would say America, and I get over 300 Anti-U.S bashes thrown at me .
I like pie !
Americans and Europeans have very different attitudes on society and the way things work.
Europeans are more easy going and understand team work gets tthings done.
Americans tend to cry more and always worry abotu themselves.
Americans also tend to be very biggoted in regards to different people. The minute they saw someoen type in french or german the flame wars would begin. ( i generalize but its ture)
Turbine is doing you guys a great service by keeping you off n/a servers.
edi** the poster above has it too.
It is more like "Americans are tired of being bashed because of our government"
I like pie !
It is more like "Americans are tired of being bashed because of our government" I think our government and political systems sucks anyway.
If it were easy to move i would do it in a heartbeat.
On the plus side canada isnt too far away, so when i want a dose of real ill go visit there.