BTGames: WoW launching locally

[rainynight65]

Email from BTGames:

WORLD OF WARCRAFT SET TO LAUNCH IN SA WITHIN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS.

The Good

Although we have yet to receive an official date, Vivendi South Africa has finally confirmed that they have received the go ahead to launch World of Warcraft locally within the next few weeks.

The Bad

Unfortunately for US subscribers the local version will only work on the EU server. When asking why we would no be getting the US version we were told that it was due to Vivendi South Africa logistics moving from Vivendi Australia to Vivendi UK. All prepaid cards will also only be available for use on the EU server.

The Ugly

Sadly if you are already playing on the US server you will not be able to migrate your characters from to the EU Server.

And the very very SAD L

At present there are no plans to incorporate a SA server.

 

[Kalvaer]

Well really no good at all, Only reason I would even consider moving to a new server is if it was based in South Africa. I'd even start from scratch again, but well I guess I'll be staying on my US server

But its a start.. almost 2 years late, but this is Africa

 

[BeLgaRiOn]

Finally, we can get game cards locally! Awesome , excepting the fact that 90% of the people who actually will/are playing WoW have already bought the game from overseas. BTW, www.take2.co.za has been selling WoW EU for about 2 months now.

 

[zippy]

LOL. what a joke. available in South Africa in the next few weeks. How many have already bought from take2 and are level 60.

 

[Moorbeta]

LOL. what a joke. available in South Africa in the next few weeks. How many have already bought from take2 and are level 60.

Look on the bright side...hopefully it'll be out b4 the Burning Crusade is released, coz then ppl who want to make new chars using the new races can start in SA .

personally..I doubt the SA server will ever be released as no defnite plans/dates have been set, but hey..there may be a shimmer of hope afterall

 

[MrG]

I have a U.S version and have a Level 55 Mage and Level 27 Priest, I dont want to lose them so... when the expansion comes out, will I be able to buy it locally and install it ontop of my U.S version?

 

[BeLgaRiOn]

I have a U.S version and have a Level 55 Mage and Level 27 Priest, I dont want to lose them so... when the expansion comes out, will I be able to buy it locally and install it ontop of my U.S version?

I had a level 60 toon and a level 36 toon I had to leave behind on the US servers when I moved to EU. I'm not regretting it at all. EU has been the best move for me. I doubt you'll be able to use the expansion on top of your US version as it most likely will be an EU local release. It makes so much more sense for the local release to be EU because of similar timezones .

 

[Kalvaer]

Time zones dont have much to do with it (even if it is conveniant), its the publishers who want to milk thier clients.

The US version is published by different companies than the UK version, the profits of each version goes to the company involved, so if the US version was sold in the UK, the US publisher would still get the money, which is in turn used to pay for the servers.

 

[MrG]

Guess I will just need to get my hands on a U.S version of the expansion, which shouldnt be that hard

 

[zippy]

I had a lvl 60 character on US servers. Moved to EU. no regrets. Now you can get into battlegrounds quicker, because there are more players on. Also, no more end-game instances runs starting at 2 am.

Also find the Europeans are little more relaxed and in it for the fun. More SA players than when I played on US servers.

Language can be interesting though. My first experience with a group was when I ended up in a grp of 4 warriors from the Scandinavian countries(i was also a warrior). We did princess the pig in Elwynn Forest about 4 times. "So we kill again ??" LOL

 

[AntiThesis]

Last time I checked with Blizzard there were no plans past, present or future (short-long term) for launching an actual SA server. They were quite emphatic about it.

 

[killswitch]

I wonder how many player's there would be on a WOW SA server. I dont mean that negatively or sarcastically... its just a thought.

 

[Scooby_Doo]

I wonder how many player's there would be on a WOW SA server. I dont mean that negatively or sarcastically... its just a thought.

Not many?

 

[killswitch]

Well cos what im thinking is... think about the AV, AB, and WSG matches going on on a SA server. All this going on the same time that people are doing raids, questing, arbing around, etc. You'd need loads of players to populate a server and loads of them to be playing at the same time.

I was just wondering whether SA would have a population large enough to support and promote a very active WOW server.

 

[Vaughan]

The servers cap out at 2000 people on at once and i am sure we would have at least 3000-4000 people here if they could play on their 56k modems.

 

[Darthmoose]

Just some more info regarding Blizzard setting up a local realm for South Africa.
Blizzard is still contemplating setting up a realm in Australia which has 10x more subscribers than we do. Also, cost of local infrastructure is way cheaper in Australia than here. Because of our high bandwith costs and low subscriber base we wont see a local realm happening here anytime soon, so give up the idea.
Remember each Blizzard realm generates 200gb+ of traffic a month.

 

[guest2013-1]

Same story to why there is no Local Battle.net servers, this topic has been flogged around and discussed for ages (since 1997 at least) and I've been in contact with Blizzard themselves, they just don't see any value added to them for hosting anything in SA.

Yay Telkom

 

[Darthmoose]

Same story to why there is no Local Battle.net servers, this topic has been flogged around and discussed for ages (since 1997 at least) and I've been in contact with Blizzard themselves, they just don't see any value added to them for hosting anything in SA.

Yay Telkom

You are absolutley right, if bandwidth was cheaper here, this would change.. once again YAY Telkom!

 

[soul reaperx]

there will be 2 little on a S.A server. Even so there was a S.A server i would have stil rather go to the eu cause there will atleast have more player that are active etc.