They have Korean servers Why play with less Ping.. more lag when you can play closer to home and not experince this?
I think IP blocking is a good thing.. I really dont want to play with people not from my region... and as they say If you block 100 legit players and 10 farmers its worth the sacrifice.. you got your own servers go play there...
I would like if they block east europeans also.. Leage of legends became much better when we got ridd of them and split europe up into West and East. The quality was just much better, dident like to play with people who couldent comunicate in English..
I personaly dont like the Russians/east euros In EvE either... would be nice to get ridd of them there also...
If you don't know yet, let me tell you. K-Tera is only meant for Korean, and you need Korean ID card to register. And Korea is not the only country in Asia.
Plus not all Asians can speak and read Korean / Japanese.
And from what I know, in MMO, whatever my ping is, it doesn't affect yours right ? Don't like people who lag, don't play with them
To block them from game just because of your preferences is just..I am out of words
Playing Lineage2 back in the day.. I must say I hate farmers. I can understand were they are coming from. I can understand you dont feel its Right or Fair.. But the world is what the world is. East europeans can also make a living selling Virtual gods, that is why we are having problems with them here in europe. And yes my gaming experince would be better without these types of people. In a PvP game well organized farmers can be a reall problem.. EvE has mayor problems combating RMT transactions and Boting... mostly done by east europeans because I think CHina IPs are blocked just like Tera has done...
Its the sad truth of the world... I really blame this on Lazy Americans and Euro people who cant play a game like its suposed to be played and try to Buy themselves better by paying someone ells... Those are the people we should be blaming. And I promise you I will do my Outmost to PAWN crappy people in this game.. and send them your regards...
australia and NZ are able to play on the N/A servers... so no problem on my end... and my country was founded by convicts and criminals.. true story :P
Say it loud and proud my fellow aussie!! hehe but the only problem I've had with Ip block is Vindictus... and i thought we could get in with the EU release not to be i really wanna try that game 2
Boarder patroll! love that show! you Aussies know how to get things done.. OFc your IP should not be blocked....
Hey all. I might be able to shed some light on this.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm by NO MEANS an expert in the field. I am, however, a student of Information Security, 6 months out from completing a Master's degree in IT, with a concentration in Information Security and Assurance. In layman's terms, I'm a big ol' nerd.
Developers - the guys who make the games, need distributors (publishers, whatever they're called. I'm not in the video game business, I'm in the networking business). There's a whole other side to video games that have a lot to do with local laws. It''s not easy for a game to be released in different regions due to the legal issues. Take the European Union, for example. There are SO many laws that apply to IT that are very different than US laws.
Though it's easy for us to narrow our gaze, and see it only as a game; we need to look at the big picture, and realize that MMOs span various realms - Transmission of personally-identifiable information, local censorship laws, etc.. ...Not to mention the region's notion of "how can I get a piece of this pie?"
Distributors offer that service.
"So why don't they just 'hire' a distributor that can offer that service, and make the game 'compliant' to my region?" - Change management. Build a house of cards. Then, upon completion, remove a card toward the bottom and replace it with another. Though this is a poor analogy, project development is very similar. Development involves a lot of co-dependant programming. If you change one thing to be "compliant" with a region, then you're likely affecting all of the objects that were dependant. It's a nightmare. Maybe it's just a "texture" in the graphics of the game. Maybe it involves completely overhauling the way accounts are set up because of privacy standards (Let me tell you - that one alone is a nightmare. If you think the US is strict on PII, then you're in for a surprise!)
They likely want to focus on getting the game ready for its target audience. Right now, that the US market.
It also costs a LOT of money. Risk-vs.-reward decision making and cost-analysis basically dictates that they should wait to see if the game's even a success before they invest in other regions.
What if the game falls flat on its face? Not only have they 'wasted' development money on the US release, but they would loose a ton in meeting region-specific compliancy standards.
In short - the "big picture" says that if the game's successful, we'll see it hit our regions.
I'm in Japan. It does suck, but if it's a good game, we'll see
australia and NZ are able to play on the N/A servers... so no problem on my end... and my country was founded by convicts and criminals.. true story :P
Say it loud and proud my fellow aussie!! hehe but the only problem I've had with Ip block is Vindictus... and i thought we could get in with the EU release not to be i really wanna try that game 2
Boarder patroll! love that show! you Aussies know how to get things done.. OFc your IP should not be blocked....
plus we are in the future.. we can tell you whats gonna happen before it does -_-
And the Cyber-criminal thing - well, they're not lying.
OF COURSE not everyone from these regions are cyber-criminals. The phrase is a bit... off, too. I'm sure it has more to do with gold-farming, powerleveling, etc.. Just a bad choice in words.
When I lived in Korea, I personally have been to and seen some WoW Farming sites. It's what kids did after school. Non-stop grinding. They were EVERYWHERE.
Hey all. I might be able to shed some light on this.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm by NO MEANS an expert in the field. I am, however, a student of Information Security, 6 months out from completing a Master's degree in IT, with a concentration in Information Security and Assurance. In layman's terms, I'm a big ol' nerd.
Developers - the guys who make the games, need distributors (publishers, whatever they're called. I'm not in the video game business, I'm in the networking business). There's a whole other side to video games that have a lot to do with local laws. It''s not easy for a game to be released in different regions due to the legal issues. Take the European Union, for example. There are SO many laws that apply to IT that are very different than US laws.
Though it's easy for us to narrow our gaze, and see it only as a game; we need to look at the big picture, and realize that MMOs span various realms - Transmission of personally-identifiable information, local censorship laws, etc.. ...Not to mention the region's notion of "how can I get a piece of this pie?"
Distributors offer that service.
"So why don't they just 'hire' a distributor that can offer that service, and make the game 'compliant' to my region?" - Change management. Build a house of cards. Then, upon completion, remove a card toward the bottom and replace it with another. Though this is a poor analogy, project development is very similar. Development involves a lot of co-dependant programming. If you change one thing to be "compliant" with a region, then you're likely affecting all of the objects that were dependant. It's a nightmare. Maybe it's just a "texture" in the graphics of the game. Maybe it involves completely overhauling the way accounts are set up because of privacy standards (Let me tell you - that one alone is a nightmare. If you think the US is strict on PII, then you're in for a surprise!)
They likely want to focus on getting the game ready for its target audience. Right now, that the US market.
It also costs a LOT of money. Risk-vs.-reward decision making and cost-analysis basically dictates that they should wait to see if the game's even a success before they invest in other regions.
What if the game falls flat on its face? Not only have they 'wasted' development money on the US release, but they would loose a ton in meeting region-specific compliancy standards.
In short - the "big picture" says that if the game's successful, we'll see it hit our regions.
I'm in Japan. It does suck, but if it's a good game, we'll see
while you have a valid point, thats for box copies... generally anything purchased digitally online cant be restricted and so on... oh and while you have some valid points this is from the tera website
"
We block IP addresses used by hackers
En Masse will block IPs based on region. Asia, Africa, Russia, and the Middle East are included on the block list. While we appreciate that there are players in these regions who would enjoy playing on En Masse servers, it's unfortunate that the vast majority of Internet traffic we see from these regions are from cyber-criminals relating to account theft, gold-farming and other hacking behavior."
so as you can see it really hasnt come down to legal issues.. it's plain and simple they dont want certain people in the N/A Release :P
That's actually incorrect - the online purchase portion at least. They're still subject to regulations in that region. I know this is true with regard to the IT-related ones (EU Directives on information assurance and data privacy, for example), but I'm sure there's a whole crapload of other types - like censorship, etc.. I can't speak with any certainty on those other potential issues, though.
I think that this was just poor wording on their part. I have to agree that a majority of the "cyber criminals" come from these regions. I've seen the gold-farming sites. I know how big they were several years ago - and I'd bet they're just as popular now.
I just think the use of the word "cyber-criminals" is just not right. I agree with what they are saying, but I don't think that it was done "Politically Correct" enough for some. I think the points I made earlier have a lot to do with it too, they just chose a poor way of describing their reasoning.
They have Korean servers Why play with less Ping.. more lag when you can play closer to home and not experince this?
I think IP blocking is a good thing.. I really dont want to play with people not from my region... and as they say If you block 100 legit players and 10 farmers its worth the sacrifice.. you got your own servers go play there...
I would like if they block east europeans also.. Leage of legends became much better when we got ridd of them and split europe up into West and East. The quality was just much better, dident like to play with people who couldent comunicate in English..
I personaly dont like the Russians/east euros In EvE either... would be nice to get ridd of them there also...
If you don't know yet, let me tell you. K-Tera is only meant for Korean, and you need Korean ID card to register. And Korea is not the only country in Asia.
Plus not all Asians can speak and read Korean / Japanese.
And from what I know, in MMO, whatever my ping is, it doesn't affect yours right ? Don't like people who lag, don't play with them
To block them from game just because of your preferences is just..I am out of words
I'm a computer tech went to school for network information systems and yes your lag DOES affect other players. Laggers have ruined more than a few games in north america. Like I said I don't go into other regions and try to play becuase I don't want ot ruin their experience. If you have a 200 ping connecting to the server your damn right I want you ip blocked, I don't want warping people that I have to try to pvp. Companies have the right to ban any region they choose and I support the cause. After watching game after game destroyed by 200 plus pingers(espeically shooters) I'm over it I want to play with english speaking players with low ping and honestly I don't care if that inconviences people outside of the intended region.
Hmm...just out of curiousity, I tried to register and get into CBT with Tera EU, and interestingly so far have no issue.
From their FAQ, only Russia and CIS countries got IP blocked.
Yes, there is an IP block for certain countries for TERA in Europe. The following countries won't be able to access our Frogster servers for TERA in Europe: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Byelorussia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine.
No mentions of anyone is cybercriminals..good.
I am in Asia and currently downloading the client. Hoping that I will be able to play this game, hopefully with decent ping
I'm gonna call BS on you, considering I have been living in Korea for the past four years and frequent PC-bangs (Internet Cafes) enough to say that they are not "everywhere" as you claim.
Hell, given the inherent Korean arrogance and fear of the English language, I find it hard to believe more than a very small percentage of players -- especially young ones, the majority of whom spend upwards of 15 hours a day between school and academy and more or less flee English whenever they can -- spend hours and hours farming on North American servers.
In fairness, Koreans often make better grinders than, say Americans. It goes back to the whole 15 hours a day of study (or 12+ hour workdays, often without overtime). Take high schoolers who study until the afternoon and then have mandatory "self-study" until 10 PM. That's about six or seven hours per day that they spend staring at books -- sitting for five hours at a computer playing a game non-stop doesn't seem so bad.
Now, that being said, I find the region blocking thing for preventing "cyber criminals" a very, very Korean style of thinking. Even reading the condescending tone that they take, "It's unfortunate..." blah blah blah, and then cast generic blame and pre-emptive punishment at the problem. You could say that Koreans, too, can't play on the North Americans servers due to the Asian ban, but I actually cannot imagine those who made the decision even considered that there were people other than Koreans in Korea who might have wanted to play -- and why would Koreans, the superior people, wish to play with anyone not as Korean as they?
A nice comparison would be the recent case of a Korean citizen born in Indonesia (married to a Korean and longtime resident of Korea) who was denied entrance to a public bath house in Busan. Why? Because she would make the water dirty and give everyone AIDS. Mind you, Korea holds top grades for science and math; there really are doctors everywhere, at least in the cities. When the woman called the police, it actually turns out that she had to leave -- Korea has no law against that form of discrimination and until only very recently, yelling ethnic slurs or abusing someone based on their race was permissible. (This from a country where if I say something bad about you in a newspaper or online -- and my accusation is TRUE and I have evidence to back it up, you can still sue me.)
Ultimately, my advice is to avoid giving your money or your time to Korean game companies. Occasionally they produce something good; but even Blizzard, SoE, or some of the other companies in the past accused of bad customer service at least pretend that you are human -- if only one made out of dollar bills and tears.
Let me brings back the chronoscroll again, if eme implement it to battle gold sellers, by giving players a legit way to buy gold, now with this region block, it just shows me that they wana sell the golds themselves.
although there response to op's ticket did list particular geographical area's. the chronoscroll is being used to hopefully limit the amount of US/EU bots and goldsellers. and with bot's/ goldsellers being the main reason the game is struggling in korea, they are making an attempt to ease the concerns of the NA/EU player base.
More than one company seems to have the attitude that only people in the US counts, and possibly if they feel nice, Canadians.
I agree, IP blocking is just wrong, as long as you pay and follow the NDA you should be allowed to play just like everyone else.
A bit of misplaced anger and a sense of entitlement there. Unless the US recently acquired Eurpoke, the UK, South America and Australia, that first claim is not only false but absurd. On your second point, if the cost of doing business in a region makes it so that it's not profitable to do business in that region then a provider won't do business there. They've done their studies and ran their reports and evidently the ones that pay (legitimately) and follow the NDA were far surpassed by the ones incurring a range of expenses across multiple departments. Maybe they just did their study or watched the numbers at a bad time, but there was more than likely a sound reason for someone to make the call to not try for revenue in a particular region.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Maybe they're going to have different servers that you can play on?
If people in China can play on servers based in either China or the US, then most of the ones that want to play on the US servers will be gold farmers (interpreted broadly to include sites that sell powerleveling, etc.), precisely because they're the ones who need to get stuff on US servers in order to sell it to Americans. People in China who only want to play the game would presumably pick the servers based in China.
It's one of those misonceptions that is worked up, fed, and groomed by our own fans of the industry..
Just like the idea that neighborhoods with minorities make it "unsafe", or a "hood", people assume that games with predominantly asian or south american populations are full of hackers, gold spam and abuse..
I'm sure the discrimination is deeply rooted in some incident or incidents of the past (such as most gold spam being written in poor english which obviously MUST mean they are foreign, although I have seen americans form worst english sentences on forums plenty), but that's all it would take for an uninformed being to form a solid opinion..
Just as the racism of today, it's baseless and just another way to provide conflict where there is none..
Asians hack no more or less than your average European or American trash..
Well hackers can come from anywhere, but lets face it , not many gold farmers are american, not really worth putting in hours and hours of your time to get $10 out of it, where in a country where the cost of living is much less then the US it is worth their time to sell gold.
But I do agree not allowing regions to play with other regions is a good thing, and like many said, lots of times there is a lot of legal reasons ect... so they just cant really do it.
But having said that they could of went a better way at explaining why these regions are blocked from NA access.
Let me brings back the chronoscroll again, if eme implement it to battle gold sellers, by giving players a legit way to buy gold, now with this region block, it just shows me that they wana sell the golds themselves.
although there response to op's ticket did list particular geographical area's. the chronoscroll is being used to hopefully limit the amount of US/EU bots and goldsellers. and with bot's/ goldsellers being the main reason the game is struggling in korea, they are making an attempt to ease the concerns of the NA/EU player base.
The game fail in Korea is mainly.due to the lack of contents at higher levels, especially at Max. Level. That's why eme waited for the latest contents and level cap increase to 60 , before they release the Eng version.
aion, another game plague by gold farmer too in Korea, have no problem. Wow, the most gold farmers I've ever see in a game, is still.going strong, even n.a aion suffer is due.to the contents of the game, the grind at level 30 plus without contents available, and the rng system.
so is gold farmers a nuisance, yes, but they won't bring down a game. Eme just need to be more vigilance and ban those farmers, instead of blaming and blocking the whole region.
hopefully another publisher can bring the English version over to Asia.
Personally I am glad they IP block some regions. I hate playing twitch based online games with people who have dial up half way across the world. I do love playing with people across the world, I find it interesting. (I loved playing FFXI with Japaneese people) But not at the expense of my own gameplay being completely ruined. Especially in a game that I pay a monthly fee for.
Getting rid of a high % of RMTs is just a bonus.
(>^_^)> MMO Veteran <(^_^<) Currently Playing: Tera Online
It's one of those misonceptions that is worked up, fed, and groomed by our own fans of the industry..
Just like the idea that neighborhoods with minorities make it "unsafe", or a "hood", people assume that games with predominantly asian or south american populations are full of hackers, gold spam and abuse..
I'm sure the discrimination is deeply rooted in some incident or incidents of the past (such as most gold spam being written in poor english which obviously MUST mean they are foreign, although I have seen americans form worst english sentences on forums plenty), but that's all it would take for an uninformed being to form a solid opinion..
Just as the racism of today, it's baseless and just another way to provide conflict where there is none..
Asians hack no more or less than your average European or American trash..
Someone should write the ACLU just to see what they say.
Honestly though, your hearts in the right place but it isn't descrimination based upon race, it's based upon activity. There are a few issues being discussed at once.
Gold Farmers. Google "(popular game) gold" and see how many hits you get. Then compare the price of the gold in USD with what the average US citizen would make making minimum wage. I'm not going to say that there aren't people that farm gold here but they are losing money and since the gold selling industry is huge... I'm not going to say that it all comes from China but it does come from places around the world that can access US MMO servers while also having a currancy lower than ours else there would be no money to make.
Cyber crime. It's a FACT that a lot of cyber crime comes from Russia and outlying areas. Ask the FBI, CIA and hey ask Frogster. Frogster is providing TERA to that part of the world and they are also blocking them.
Game Hacks. Yes, this can be done by anyone, anywhere in the world and every single one should be kicked in the jewels.
En Masse will block IPs based on region. Asia, Africa, Russia, and the Middle East are included on the block list. While we appreciate that there are players in these regions who would enjoy playing on En Masse servers, it's unfortunate that the vast majority of Internet traffic we see from these regions are from cyber-criminals relating to account theft, gold-farming and other hacking behavior."
so as you can see it really hasnt come down to legal issues.. it's plain and simple they dont want certain people in the N/A Release :P
What an egregious bunch of racist zenophobes. Intrestingly they are happy to do bussines with a company whos principles are convicted criminals, hypocrites too eh?
They could have just said they block the regions because of legal reasons, or licensing.
Instead, they use hacking and gold farming as excuses.
I am just hoping GW2 or TSW won't do the same mistake.....
gw1 doesnt. The whole protecting distribution rights thing is BS and does not help anyone. When i was in Korea, if i was IP block then i just did not play. I did not go and buy a copy in a language i did not understand. It cost them customers the idiots.
Comments
Playing Lineage2 back in the day.. I must say I hate farmers. I can understand were they are coming from. I can understand you dont feel its Right or Fair.. But the world is what the world is. East europeans can also make a living selling Virtual gods, that is why we are having problems with them here in europe. And yes my gaming experince would be better without these types of people. In a PvP game well organized farmers can be a reall problem.. EvE has mayor problems combating RMT transactions and Boting... mostly done by east europeans because I think CHina IPs are blocked just like Tera has done...
Its the sad truth of the world... I really blame this on Lazy Americans and Euro people who cant play a game like its suposed to be played and try to Buy themselves better by paying someone ells... Those are the people we should be blaming. And I promise you I will do my Outmost to PAWN crappy people in this game.. and send them your regards...
Boarder patroll! love that show! you Aussies know how to get things done.. OFc your IP should not be blocked....
Hey all. I might be able to shed some light on this.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm by NO MEANS an expert in the field. I am, however, a student of Information Security, 6 months out from completing a Master's degree in IT, with a concentration in Information Security and Assurance. In layman's terms, I'm a big ol' nerd.
Developers - the guys who make the games, need distributors (publishers, whatever they're called. I'm not in the video game business, I'm in the networking business). There's a whole other side to video games that have a lot to do with local laws. It''s not easy for a game to be released in different regions due to the legal issues. Take the European Union, for example. There are SO many laws that apply to IT that are very different than US laws.
Though it's easy for us to narrow our gaze, and see it only as a game; we need to look at the big picture, and realize that MMOs span various realms - Transmission of personally-identifiable information, local censorship laws, etc.. ...Not to mention the region's notion of "how can I get a piece of this pie?"
Distributors offer that service.
"So why don't they just 'hire' a distributor that can offer that service, and make the game 'compliant' to my region?" - Change management. Build a house of cards. Then, upon completion, remove a card toward the bottom and replace it with another. Though this is a poor analogy, project development is very similar. Development involves a lot of co-dependant programming. If you change one thing to be "compliant" with a region, then you're likely affecting all of the objects that were dependant. It's a nightmare. Maybe it's just a "texture" in the graphics of the game. Maybe it involves completely overhauling the way accounts are set up because of privacy standards (Let me tell you - that one alone is a nightmare. If you think the US is strict on PII, then you're in for a surprise!)
They likely want to focus on getting the game ready for its target audience. Right now, that the US market.
It also costs a LOT of money. Risk-vs.-reward decision making and cost-analysis basically dictates that they should wait to see if the game's even a success before they invest in other regions.
What if the game falls flat on its face? Not only have they 'wasted' development money on the US release, but they would loose a ton in meeting region-specific compliancy standards.
In short - the "big picture" says that if the game's successful, we'll see it hit our regions.
I'm in Japan. It does suck, but if it's a good game, we'll see
plus we are in the future.. we can tell you whats gonna happen before it does -_-
And the Cyber-criminal thing - well, they're not lying.
OF COURSE not everyone from these regions are cyber-criminals. The phrase is a bit... off, too. I'm sure it has more to do with gold-farming, powerleveling, etc.. Just a bad choice in words.
When I lived in Korea, I personally have been to and seen some WoW Farming sites. It's what kids did after school. Non-stop grinding. They were EVERYWHERE.
It goes back to the whole risk-vs.-reward thing.
while you have a valid point, thats for box copies... generally anything purchased digitally online cant be restricted and so on... oh and while you have some valid points this is from the tera website
"
We block IP addresses used by hackers
En Masse will block IPs based on region. Asia, Africa, Russia, and the Middle East are included on the block list. While we appreciate that there are players in these regions who would enjoy playing on En Masse servers, it's unfortunate that the vast majority of Internet traffic we see from these regions are from cyber-criminals relating to account theft, gold-farming and other hacking behavior."
so as you can see it really hasnt come down to legal issues.. it's plain and simple they dont want certain people in the N/A Release :P
That's actually incorrect - the online purchase portion at least. They're still subject to regulations in that region. I know this is true with regard to the IT-related ones (EU Directives on information assurance and data privacy, for example), but I'm sure there's a whole crapload of other types - like censorship, etc.. I can't speak with any certainty on those other potential issues, though.
I think that this was just poor wording on their part. I have to agree that a majority of the "cyber criminals" come from these regions. I've seen the gold-farming sites. I know how big they were several years ago - and I'd bet they're just as popular now.
I just think the use of the word "cyber-criminals" is just not right. I agree with what they are saying, but I don't think that it was done "Politically Correct" enough for some. I think the points I made earlier have a lot to do with it too, they just chose a poor way of describing their reasoning.
I'm a computer tech went to school for network information systems and yes your lag DOES affect other players. Laggers have ruined more than a few games in north america. Like I said I don't go into other regions and try to play becuase I don't want ot ruin their experience. If you have a 200 ping connecting to the server your damn right I want you ip blocked, I don't want warping people that I have to try to pvp. Companies have the right to ban any region they choose and I support the cause. After watching game after game destroyed by 200 plus pingers(espeically shooters) I'm over it I want to play with english speaking players with low ping and honestly I don't care if that inconviences people outside of the intended region.
Hmm...just out of curiousity, I tried to register and get into CBT with Tera EU, and interestingly so far have no issue.
From their FAQ, only Russia and CIS countries got IP blocked.
Yes, there is an IP block for certain countries for TERA in Europe. The following countries won't be able to access our Frogster servers for TERA in Europe: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Byelorussia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine.
No mentions of anyone is cybercriminals..good.
I am in Asia and currently downloading the client. Hoping that I will be able to play this game, hopefully with decent ping
I'm gonna call BS on you, considering I have been living in Korea for the past four years and frequent PC-bangs (Internet Cafes) enough to say that they are not "everywhere" as you claim.
Hell, given the inherent Korean arrogance and fear of the English language, I find it hard to believe more than a very small percentage of players -- especially young ones, the majority of whom spend upwards of 15 hours a day between school and academy and more or less flee English whenever they can -- spend hours and hours farming on North American servers.
In fairness, Koreans often make better grinders than, say Americans. It goes back to the whole 15 hours a day of study (or 12+ hour workdays, often without overtime). Take high schoolers who study until the afternoon and then have mandatory "self-study" until 10 PM. That's about six or seven hours per day that they spend staring at books -- sitting for five hours at a computer playing a game non-stop doesn't seem so bad.
Now, that being said, I find the region blocking thing for preventing "cyber criminals" a very, very Korean style of thinking. Even reading the condescending tone that they take, "It's unfortunate..." blah blah blah, and then cast generic blame and pre-emptive punishment at the problem. You could say that Koreans, too, can't play on the North Americans servers due to the Asian ban, but I actually cannot imagine those who made the decision even considered that there were people other than Koreans in Korea who might have wanted to play -- and why would Koreans, the superior people, wish to play with anyone not as Korean as they?
A nice comparison would be the recent case of a Korean citizen born in Indonesia (married to a Korean and longtime resident of Korea) who was denied entrance to a public bath house in Busan. Why? Because she would make the water dirty and give everyone AIDS. Mind you, Korea holds top grades for science and math; there really are doctors everywhere, at least in the cities. When the woman called the police, it actually turns out that she had to leave -- Korea has no law against that form of discrimination and until only very recently, yelling ethnic slurs or abusing someone based on their race was permissible. (This from a country where if I say something bad about you in a newspaper or online -- and my accusation is TRUE and I have evidence to back it up, you can still sue me.)
Ultimately, my advice is to avoid giving your money or your time to Korean game companies. Occasionally they produce something good; but even Blizzard, SoE, or some of the other companies in the past accused of bad customer service at least pretend that you are human -- if only one made out of dollar bills and tears.
Edit: Changed to soften Korean views of English.
My pleasure
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."
Hans Margolius
although there response to op's ticket did list particular geographical area's. the chronoscroll is being used to hopefully limit the amount of US/EU bots and goldsellers. and with bot's/ goldsellers being the main reason the game is struggling in korea, they are making an attempt to ease the concerns of the NA/EU player base.
I've got the straight edge.
A bit of misplaced anger and a sense of entitlement there. Unless the US recently acquired Eurpoke, the UK, South America and Australia, that first claim is not only false but absurd. On your second point, if the cost of doing business in a region makes it so that it's not profitable to do business in that region then a provider won't do business there. They've done their studies and ran their reports and evidently the ones that pay (legitimately) and follow the NDA were far surpassed by the ones incurring a range of expenses across multiple departments. Maybe they just did their study or watched the numbers at a bad time, but there was more than likely a sound reason for someone to make the call to not try for revenue in a particular region.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Maybe they're going to have different servers that you can play on?
If people in China can play on servers based in either China or the US, then most of the ones that want to play on the US servers will be gold farmers (interpreted broadly to include sites that sell powerleveling, etc.), precisely because they're the ones who need to get stuff on US servers in order to sell it to Americans. People in China who only want to play the game would presumably pick the servers based in China.
I believe it was "a majority of the traffic from these regions playing on a different region than their own"
I mean there is a TERA for the regions that are blocked for you guys to play.
Yeah it might be a hassle for the few of you who want to play with your friends from NA, how about Proxys?
It's one of those misonceptions that is worked up, fed, and groomed by our own fans of the industry..
Just like the idea that neighborhoods with minorities make it "unsafe", or a "hood", people assume that games with predominantly asian or south american populations are full of hackers, gold spam and abuse..
I'm sure the discrimination is deeply rooted in some incident or incidents of the past (such as most gold spam being written in poor english which obviously MUST mean they are foreign, although I have seen americans form worst english sentences on forums plenty), but that's all it would take for an uninformed being to form a solid opinion..
Just as the racism of today, it's baseless and just another way to provide conflict where there is none..
Asians hack no more or less than your average European or American trash..
Well hackers can come from anywhere, but lets face it , not many gold farmers are american, not really worth putting in hours and hours of your time to get $10 out of it, where in a country where the cost of living is much less then the US it is worth their time to sell gold.
But I do agree not allowing regions to play with other regions is a good thing, and like many said, lots of times there is a lot of legal reasons ect... so they just cant really do it.
But having said that they could of went a better way at explaining why these regions are blocked from NA access.
although there response to op's ticket did list particular geographical area's. the chronoscroll is being used to hopefully limit the amount of US/EU bots and goldsellers. and with bot's/ goldsellers being the main reason the game is struggling in korea, they are making an attempt to ease the concerns of the NA/EU player base.
The game fail in Korea is mainly.due to the lack of contents at higher levels, especially at Max. Level. That's why eme waited for the latest contents and level cap increase to 60 , before they release the Eng version.aion, another game plague by gold farmer too in Korea, have no problem. Wow, the most gold farmers I've ever see in a game, is still.going strong, even n.a aion suffer is due.to the contents of the game, the grind at level 30 plus without contents available, and the rng system.
so is gold farmers a nuisance, yes, but they won't bring down a game. Eme just need to be more vigilance and ban those farmers, instead of blaming and blocking the whole region.
hopefully another publisher can bring the English version over to Asia.
RIP Orc Choppa
Personally I am glad they IP block some regions. I hate playing twitch based online games with people who have dial up half way across the world. I do love playing with people across the world, I find it interesting. (I loved playing FFXI with Japaneese people) But not at the expense of my own gameplay being completely ruined. Especially in a game that I pay a monthly fee for.
Getting rid of a high % of RMTs is just a bonus.
(>^_^)> MMO Veteran <(^_^<)
Currently Playing: Tera Online
Someone should write the ACLU just to see what they say.
Honestly though, your hearts in the right place but it isn't descrimination based upon race, it's based upon activity. There are a few issues being discussed at once.
Gold Farmers. Google "(popular game) gold" and see how many hits you get. Then compare the price of the gold in USD with what the average US citizen would make making minimum wage. I'm not going to say that there aren't people that farm gold here but they are losing money and since the gold selling industry is huge... I'm not going to say that it all comes from China but it does come from places around the world that can access US MMO servers while also having a currancy lower than ours else there would be no money to make.
Cyber crime. It's a FACT that a lot of cyber crime comes from Russia and outlying areas. Ask the FBI, CIA and hey ask Frogster. Frogster is providing TERA to that part of the world and they are also blocking them.
Game Hacks. Yes, this can be done by anyone, anywhere in the world and every single one should be kicked in the jewels.
Just not worth my time anymore.
What an egregious bunch of racist zenophobes. Intrestingly they are happy to do bussines with a company whos principles are convicted criminals, hypocrites too eh?
gw1 doesnt. The whole protecting distribution rights thing is BS and does not help anyone. When i was in Korea, if i was IP block then i just did not play. I did not go and buy a copy in a language i did not understand. It cost them customers the idiots.