Local WoW server a possibility?

[semaphore]

it wont happen, because if they bring it local, people will still be paying the same amount for the game time, and then people will still run pirated servers.

Exit iGame/Iburst.

CoD might work well, but lets say you get 20k players, there backhaul will not work so well. And im not being a pessimist , its reality. They will not invest in south africa.

 

[Sabre]

Thrilling a local WoW server with maybe 2000 people on it, very lonely and a bugger to get PUG's going. The more on the server the better, Europe may have higher pings but there many more people on the servers there.

 

[Lydon]

it wont happen, because if they bring it local, people will still be paying the same amount for the game time, and then people will still run pirated servers.

Exit iGame/Iburst.

CoD might work well, but lets say you get 20k players, there backhaul will not work so well. And im not being a pessimist , its reality. They will not invest in south africa.

No, I think you're trying to save face and dismally failing at it.

First, despite the article clearly stating who will pay for everything, you go on a rant about it not being financially viable for Blizzard.

Then, once you're proven wrong, you proceed to proclaim that iGame's hosting will be terrible due to their entire network being wireless (expressing just how little you know about iBurst and their network). That, too, was proven wrong.

Now apparently it won't happen because people will be paying the same? What on earth does that have to do with anything? The point is that a large number of people who are currently paying have said they will move over, and I've also heard a number of people who currently don't play because of latency issues that have said they will play on an official local server too.

Lastly, as said before, since you clearly have NO idea whatsoever regarding iBurst's supposedly completely wireless network, attempting to lecture everyone about their back haul capabilities and whatnot is turning you into even more of a laughing stock.

Thank goodness you won't be playing on the local server should it happen.

Thrilling a local WoW server with maybe 2000 people on it, very lonely and a bugger to get PUG's going. The more on the server the better, Europe may have higher pings but there many more people on the servers there.

The server will be open to international players too, so South Africans won't be the only ones using it. It could prove very viable for the rest of Africa, as well as possibly even Australians etc. I'm sure you'll get a few international players who don't mind the latency increase too.

We need to think long term. Blizzard would be very clever to have a presence on the African continent, as up until now we've been the untouched continent regarding broadband, gaming etc. Submarine cables are landing left, right and centre and more people are entering the ICT space. It's not all about short-term gain.

 

[Corgon]

Yeah, but how long is long term? It kind of has to be a short term gain as WoW really doesnt have much time left imo. Its already 4-5 years old, and Blizzard have stated that they are working on a new MMO. Maybe you/Iburst/iGame should rather invest in that MMO. That is way more long term, and more viable if you ask me.

Dont get me wrong, id be on the local WoW server in a heartbeat if it was up and running, and i do fully support the awesomeness of this idea. I just think you have to be realistic. Lets be honest here, i really dont think Blizz give a flying tonk about 20 000 little South Africans when their member base is over 11 million.

 

[davemc]

@Corgon :

When your plan is word domination, you have to actually take over as much of the world as possible. The marketing drives that Blizzard runs in Europe have not been run in Africa at all.

Blizzard will view Africa as a potential untapped market and will no doubt be planning to grow their dominance before real competition arrives.

 

[Pitbull]

Cargon got me thinking and he has a point.

However, what better way to sink lead into Africa than to lay the foundation with a very popular game that has a massive following ? Think about it. There is still people out there that don't know what WoW or Blizzard is. Now, get the infrastructure going with WoW, once the new MMO lauches then the infrastructure is there, relationships built with the players in such a project eg: iGame and who ever that other people are .

It's a win/win for everyone involved. I say Blizzard would lose a great oppertunity to let this WoW realm slide. With the next MMO around the corner they should be thinking ahead in terms of expanding their brand and not just holding on to the current base they have.

There is massive amounts of money to be made in Africa The whole world is realising it now and I sure hope Blizzard has the same ideas...

 

[poffle]

and on the plus side the seacom cable has just been laid so there will be MORE than enough bandwidth for the server. 1.28tbs worth if need be haha. I would love them to bring out a local one.

 

[Corgon]

Yeah, but the massive amounts of money to be made in Africa is getting the infrastructure up first.

They already have world domination where it counts, ie the first world countries. Maybe im ignorant but i just cant see too many players coming from anywhere else in Africa aside from South Africa, and if we only have 20 000 well i just dont know.

Im not saying dont try and make it happen by the way, im just trying to put myself in Blizzards shoes. They made from pure gold by the way

 

[Bcm]

I would start playing if there was a local server available... no doubt.

 

[RoosTa]

Lets say we had a definite 20 000 players. We need to now split this between PVE/PVP servers and since majority would go carebear, having a PVP server would be out of the question. This means you lose yet another 5-8000 players to EU. Now the 20 000 is a mere 12-15000 of which only 25% (3-4000) of them would log on at peak times during the week and possible maximum of 50% (6-8000) over the weekend. Majority of the EU servers usually have 10-15 000 people online at a time. So the player experience will not be as good as the EU servers.

Also the prospects at playing with lower latencies will be completely negated, since BG's will have to be connected to EU servers anyways. So therefor your packets would still have to travel 250-300ms to EU in order to PVP. So having a local server will only improve your PVE experience and TBH, no one's really had a problem with latencies and PVE. (Seacom will hopefully stop the 'shaping' of ADSL, but there are much cheaper alternatives to unshaped available)

Sorry, but I think this initiative is too late. 3 years ago I would've supported this 100%, but now there are just too many people playing on US/EU servers that have invested a lot of time on their characters and guilds. It would be a long while before there would be a good number of players on this server.

Edit: Forgot to mention the fact that there are also 2 factions: Horde and Alliance. If you have unbalanced factions, it creates an even worse experience.

 

[Juice]

Maybe we have the critical mass and that would be awaesome, but I would imagine a server here will have to be paired with a huge 'homecoming' drive. I play on US servers and it will take a lot to convince me to move 6 high-level characters to an SA server, ESPECIALLY if I have to pay $25 a character to transfer. And that is also assuming that it will be possible if you take in to account that the version of WoW that is retailed in SA is the EU version and you can't transfer a character from US to EU servers...

Too many questions, but if we can have a local server where I can transfer my US characters to free of charge and I can then pay in Rands, that would be fantastic!

Juice

 

[Pitbull]

I'll just buy a new account and start afresh

 

[Juice]

*shudder*

 

[semaphore]

No, I think you're trying to save face and dismally failing at it.

First, despite the article clearly stating who will pay for everything, you go on a rant about it not being financially viable for Blizzard.

Then, once you're proven wrong, you proceed to proclaim that iGame's hosting will be terrible due to their entire network being wireless (expressing just how little you know about iBurst and their network). That, too, was proven wrong.

Now apparently it won't happen because people will be paying the same? What on earth does that have to do with anything? The point is that a large number of people who are currently paying have said they will move over, and I've also heard a number of people who currently don't play because of latency issues that have said they will play on an official local server too.

Lastly, as said before, since you clearly have NO idea whatsoever regarding iBurst's supposedly completely wireless network, attempting to lecture everyone about their back haul capabilities and whatnot is turning you into even more of a laughing stock.

Thank goodness you won't be playing on the local server should it happen.



The server will be open to international players too, so South Africans won't be the only ones using it. It could prove very viable for the rest of Africa, as well as possibly even Australians etc. I'm sure you'll get a few international players who don't mind the latency increase too.

We need to think long term. Blizzard would be very clever to have a presence on the African continent, as up until now we've been the untouched continent regarding broadband, gaming etc. Submarine cables are landing left, right and centre and more people are entering the ICT space. It's not all about short-term gain.

Iburst cant even keep its customers happy, i had iburst for a year, and within that year there was countless issues, network issues, latency issues. ENDLESS problems, i had full signal i used pretty much live about 1KM from a base station.

Secondly the numerous people coming on here bitching about how expensive the the game time is will still force them to run emu servers. Do you really think blizzard will reduce the cost of there game time? They will still want to make the same revenue from there international counter parts. Latency is an issue but it is all dependent on what server you play on. There are numerous EU realm based servers which give excellent pings without the use of that game max server.

1. Bronzedragon flight (400ms - shaped 384 / 220ms - unshaped 2mbit) Pop: High
2. Ravenholdt (350-450ms shaped / 190 - 330ms unshaped 2mbit) Pop: high
3. Azuremyst (400-550ms shaped / 130 - 350ms unshaped 2mbit) Pop: High

And why on this earth would a player living in EUROPE, want to play on a server located on the ass end of the world, tip of africa. No one will. You might get the odd few, but not the load that you would require.

And go look on a daily basis you will see Iburst having peering link issues. Blizzard will not let there game sit on a network like that, its too volatile currently. Maybe with the cables being released that will change. Time will tell.

 

[Juice]

The cost of game time has little to do with piracy. People pirate because they choose to. It's not like you need to play WoW or starve...

 

[guest2013-1]

@ Semaphore
Then you are truly enlightened and knowledgeable because you currently know what local networking professionals and distributers, not to mention Blizzard, do not. If it was not viable, do you think iGame would be throwing money at it?

Do you think they just woke up one morning and were like “hey, let’s call up Blizzard and ask if we can host a WoW server” without doing any research? They obviously know what it costs to run a network, so I think it would be pertinent to not write this whole thing off as implausible without really looking into what they are trying to do. You may just end up looking silly.

I'd have to disagree strongly with you tinman:

yes, I think they woke up one morning thinking that. Whatever research they have done before the point of asking Blizzard permission is not enough. I don't base my opinion on anything other than their previous track record. End of story.

If they can prove a well researched project that they won't half-ass and screw up then I'd be willing to listen, but mistake after mistake leads me o the same conclusion semaphore has. Blizzard won't accept the proposal because iGame don't know what they're getting themselves into.

a peering server would be nice though, so I'd chalk a victory up on that one if they get that far, at least then we'll be able to assess true numbers of SA people connecting to WoW and would have logs/proof of play to lobby for a local server....

 

[burn]

I'm absolutely addicted to WoW. But even though I pay extra for unshapped bandwidth and my latency is still too **** to even think of being anything but ranged DPS

I would problably, even considering the disadvatanges, not switch to a local server. I have so many great friends and a great guild on my current server. I've been on it since release. I know my server and the people on it and its intricate workings. What sells nicely on AH, who the noobs in general chat are, etc....

My server is like a community to me and that is one of the major reasons I keep logging in each day. Guess, I could get the same on a new realm but probably won't even bother to try...

 

[Matosha]

OHHHH Yaaaaa!!

I sware... If this thing goes up ill jizz in my pants

 

[pope24]

What would be cool is if they could do this semi-local server, which would provide a local portal to the EU servers and allow the latency between us and them to be managed properly. Part of the problem is that we have no control over how our traffic gets to the EU, but if we were logging in through a locally hosted system and the traffic to the EU was being monitored and managed then it could make a big differnence.

I do think that more peoplle would start playing if there was a local server but I think we would need to get enough people for at least 3 servers before it became really viable to start up local servers.

 

[Lydon]

Iburst cant even keep its customers happy, i had iburst for a year, and within that year there was countless issues, network issues, latency issues. ENDLESS problems, i had full signal i used pretty much live about 1KM from a base station.

Secondly the numerous people coming on here bitching about how expensive the the game time is will still force them to run emu servers. Do you really think blizzard will reduce the cost of there game time? They will still want to make the same revenue from there international counter parts. Latency is an issue but it is all dependent on what server you play on. There are numerous EU realm based servers which give excellent pings without the use of that game max server.

1. Bronzedragon flight (400ms - shaped 384 / 220ms - unshaped 2mbit) Pop: High
2. Ravenholdt (350-450ms shaped / 190 - 330ms unshaped 2mbit) Pop: high
3. Azuremyst (400-550ms shaped / 130 - 350ms unshaped 2mbit) Pop: High

And why on this earth would a player living in EUROPE, want to play on a server located on the ass end of the world, tip of africa. No one will. You might get the odd few, but not the load that you would require.

And go look on a daily basis you will see Iburst having peering link issues. Blizzard will not let there game sit on a network like that, its too volatile currently. Maybe with the cables being released that will change. Time will tell.

What part of it will run on a fixed line network do you still not understand? Your wireless issues have absolutely nothing to do with how a local fixed-line WoW server will run, Mr Know-It-All.

Secondly, I'm still baffled as to why you keep harping on about price? If 7000 people that Blizzard know about are currently paying, why would they have an issue paying the same for a better service? Yet again, I don't think you know what's going on. Billing changes and whatnot are irrelevant as nothing in that department will change. The only thing that will change is that people will be able to select a locally-hosted realm from the list.

Thirdly, if you think those pings are "excellent," then clearly you have no idea what you're talking about Go tell someone in the US or Europe that and you're be nominated for comedian of the year.

I'm done humouring you. I think we've established that a) you're stubborn, as you're continually attempting to prove yourself right when you've been proven wrong many a time and b) you have no idea what you're talking about whatsoever. From iBurst's network being completely wireless to pings up in the hundreds of ms apparently being excellent Rather leave the technical talk to the professionals

I'm continually amazed at how people think they're knowledgeable enough to preach to iGame whether or not they're capable when they know nothing about their proposal. Blizzard would not be considering it if it were a joke proposal.