Apr 7 2014, 07:16 PM, updated 12y ago
QUOTE
Almost two years after its release, Blizzard has announced that Diablo III will be getting local servers here in Australia.
“We’ve listened to community feedback and set a goal of improving the game experience for Diablo players in Australia and New Zealand,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “By deploying local game servers to the region in time for the release of Reaper of Souls, we aim to make slaying demons more fun—for the heroes, at least. Malthael’s in for a world of hurt.”
The servers were put in place in preparation for the release of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, which is released 25 March. They are available now and are being hosted in a data centre located in Sydney.
Does this mean Blizzard is committing to local servers for all its titles? Not exactly, but Blizzard did state the following.
“Blizzard Entertainment is committed to providing our players around the world with the best possible experiences,” claimed Blizzard. “We will continue to explore optimal server solutions for all of our franchises in each region.”
“We’ve listened to community feedback and set a goal of improving the game experience for Diablo players in Australia and New Zealand,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “By deploying local game servers to the region in time for the release of Reaper of Souls, we aim to make slaying demons more fun—for the heroes, at least. Malthael’s in for a world of hurt.”
The servers were put in place in preparation for the release of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, which is released 25 March. They are available now and are being hosted in a data centre located in Sydney.
Does this mean Blizzard is committing to local servers for all its titles? Not exactly, but Blizzard did state the following.
“Blizzard Entertainment is committed to providing our players around the world with the best possible experiences,” claimed Blizzard. “We will continue to explore optimal server solutions for all of our franchises in each region.”
QUOTE
Following community reports from Australian Diablo 3 players having noticed their in-game connection quality had markedly improved, publisher Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed in an official announcement that it has indeed deployed local game servers for Diablo 3 in Australia, ahead of the upcoming launch of the Reaper of Souls expansion.
“We’ve listened to community feedback and set a goal of improving the game experience for Diablo players in Australia and New Zealand,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “By deploying local game servers to the region in time for the release of Reaper of Souls, we aim to make slaying demons more fun—for the heroes, at least. Malthael’s in for a world of hurt.”
Located in a Sydney datacentre, the servers are now running local Diablo 3 game instances started by Australian players. An official FAQ explains that Australian players still default to the North American region, and connect through Battle.net service there -- so friends lists and saved character etc will remain the same -- but when a game is launched, the server instance is now spawned on the new Sydney-based hardware, offering local players a much smoother game experience.
Notably, the arrangement still allows Australian and North American players to play together (or Asia and Europe via ‘global play’), with the server instance being established locally to whichever player started the game. Limited availability of the Australian hardware might still see some Australian players spawning US-hosted servers, with the exception of death-is-permanent hardcore characters, which Blizzard says will be restricted to local servers only, with a queuing system if they’re full.
Australian gamers have been begging Blizzard for local servers for its various PC games for many years, so it’s great to see some love coming to Diablo 3. As for its other games, the publisher remains tight-lipped, only saying “we will continue to explore optimal server solutions for all of our franchises in each region”.
The forthcoming MOBA/ARTS title Heroes of the Storm seems a likely candidate, and perhaps StarCraft 2 if we’re lucky. World of Warcraft, not so much, as it would still require enough local players to sustain a viable game world/economy, and to justify the publisher's hosting expense. Who knows though, maybe they'll surprise us.
The new servers are active now for players to enjoy, so jump in and report back with your experiences in the Comments section.
“We’ve listened to community feedback and set a goal of improving the game experience for Diablo players in Australia and New Zealand,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “By deploying local game servers to the region in time for the release of Reaper of Souls, we aim to make slaying demons more fun—for the heroes, at least. Malthael’s in for a world of hurt.”
Located in a Sydney datacentre, the servers are now running local Diablo 3 game instances started by Australian players. An official FAQ explains that Australian players still default to the North American region, and connect through Battle.net service there -- so friends lists and saved character etc will remain the same -- but when a game is launched, the server instance is now spawned on the new Sydney-based hardware, offering local players a much smoother game experience.
Notably, the arrangement still allows Australian and North American players to play together (or Asia and Europe via ‘global play’), with the server instance being established locally to whichever player started the game. Limited availability of the Australian hardware might still see some Australian players spawning US-hosted servers, with the exception of death-is-permanent hardcore characters, which Blizzard says will be restricted to local servers only, with a queuing system if they’re full.
Australian gamers have been begging Blizzard for local servers for its various PC games for many years, so it’s great to see some love coming to Diablo 3. As for its other games, the publisher remains tight-lipped, only saying “we will continue to explore optimal server solutions for all of our franchises in each region”.
The forthcoming MOBA/ARTS title Heroes of the Storm seems a likely candidate, and perhaps StarCraft 2 if we’re lucky. World of Warcraft, not so much, as it would still require enough local players to sustain a viable game world/economy, and to justify the publisher's hosting expense. Who knows though, maybe they'll surprise us.
The new servers are active now for players to enjoy, so jump in and report back with your experiences in the Comments section.
How it works is, whenever an australian or new zealander create a game, it's hosted on the new D3 servers located somewhere in their immediate area.
So they are getting latencies as good as under 60ms or so.
But they can still play with Americas region of players, but when they do, their pings will go back to how it was, if the host is from the US or another country outside AU/NZ.
In summary
What this means is, their latency connected to the US didn't change from before, but whenever they create games themselves now, their latency is much better. Americas players still can join their games, and their latency is still good.
So how does this affect us Malaysians (even our friends in Singapore, and Thailand). Well, i tested this by having my aussy friend host a game, and joined his. My latency dropped from 250ms down to 170ms ..... so that is a significant drop in latency making for a much smoother gameplay.
The question then is, why wasn't SEA countries within the vicinity of the new AU/NZ d3 server included to be allowed the same access to that new server ? Using the same mechanics that au/nz players now enjoy ?
I'm not saying they necessarily have to create a new server in Singapore or Malaysia just for us, but why can't we join the existing AU/NZ one ? Because it's obvious it would greatly help us as well ?
Also it doesn't mean under our current conditions D3 isn't playable it is. But the matter at hand is that it could be even better, but why aren't they giving us access to make it so ?
Bottomline .... are SEA players yet again being side lined ? Or do they intend to improve the capacity of the D3 AU/NZ server to allow for SEA players to enjoy a lower latency when hosting games as well ? To my understanding their server capacity is very limited now, so they even have a queueing system in place.
There is a lack of awareness about this matter, so i made this thread to bring to everyones attention so they can put it to a vote, and this can be forwarded to blizzards attention
To put things into perspective this is an image comparing us to au/nz players when hosting a game, and what latencies they now get roughly compared to us
The picture speaks for itself
PS: please keep in mind this is not a hate thread against au/nz players. I'm glad that they managed to persuade blizzard to cater to them. This is merely an awareness thread to also ask blizzard for the same consideration for us, seeing as there are many D3 players in the SEA region who want this sort of latency and mechanism as well. If AU/NZ players weren't expected to cr8 chars on the Asia server for faster latency, why should we be expected to ?
This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 7 2014, 08:16 PM
Quote
?
0.0403sec
0.82
6 queries
GZIP Disabled