So a touchy subject got brought up on the Blizzard WoW forums again - a player from Ragnaros, a LAN server was complaining that when he got matched with anyone outside his region, they would immediately vote to kick him.
It got into a fight about discriminating against players from certain regions and making assumptions based on where players are from - but then someone went and pointed out something a little uncomfortable;
By a lot of metrics, the discrimination based on region is justified in gaming; or at the very least the available data would suggest people aren't just being assholes pointlessly. While I can't use the sources one of the posters in the thread used (as Blizzard has since locked and deleted the thread as it turned into a monkey shit fight), the general gist was that many of the preconceptions players have about certain regions seem to bear fruit.
Back when Punkbuster still published their ban waves regularly, nearly 70% of all bans and blocks were issued vs. RU players and sites originating in RU or former Soviet Block countries. The next most significant portion was vs. CN/KR, with the US and EU trailing, and AR and AUS/OCN being statisically insignificant. The same apparently holds true for Fairfight and other anti-cheat services.
As noted by even Blizzard themselves, something like 95% of all botting, gold selling and account theft in their games originates from the CN/KR region, with the rest of the world making up that last bit. In fact, it's such a huge thing in CN that gold selling and botting is actually considered a legitimate part of China's economy - the source quoted the various gold selling/cheating services operating out of China as being worth $1 BILLION, WITH A "B", US DOLLARS annually.
LAN is frequently seen as being exceptionally poor at video games, and my PERSONAL experience as well as their track record in many games supports this - their guilds in MMOs lag significantly behind Asian, EU , RU and NA guilds. They're so non-competitive in RTS/MOBA/Fighting/Shooting games etc. that they frequently only get to attend international events at all because of the "Pity/Losers" card. As noted in the beginning of the post, players will often just immediately leave or vote to kick anyone from an LAN server in their party in order to avoid dealing with them. The only exception to this seems to be CS:GO - where LAN teams regularly dominate.
On the flip side of the generalization coin, Asia is generally considered the king of Fighting games and strategy games, while NA is the king of shooters and EU holds their ground on shooters, strategy and tends to dominate sports games.
On the one hand, it seems wrong to accept the discrimination. But on the other, we readily accept it in things like sports, education, social attitudes etc. Why wouldn't the same hold true for gaming?
It got into a fight about discriminating against players from certain regions and making assumptions based on where players are from - but then someone went and pointed out something a little uncomfortable;
By a lot of metrics, the discrimination based on region is justified in gaming; or at the very least the available data would suggest people aren't just being assholes pointlessly. While I can't use the sources one of the posters in the thread used (as Blizzard has since locked and deleted the thread as it turned into a monkey shit fight), the general gist was that many of the preconceptions players have about certain regions seem to bear fruit.
Back when Punkbuster still published their ban waves regularly, nearly 70% of all bans and blocks were issued vs. RU players and sites originating in RU or former Soviet Block countries. The next most significant portion was vs. CN/KR, with the US and EU trailing, and AR and AUS/OCN being statisically insignificant. The same apparently holds true for Fairfight and other anti-cheat services.
As noted by even Blizzard themselves, something like 95% of all botting, gold selling and account theft in their games originates from the CN/KR region, with the rest of the world making up that last bit. In fact, it's such a huge thing in CN that gold selling and botting is actually considered a legitimate part of China's economy - the source quoted the various gold selling/cheating services operating out of China as being worth $1 BILLION, WITH A "B", US DOLLARS annually.
LAN is frequently seen as being exceptionally poor at video games, and my PERSONAL experience as well as their track record in many games supports this - their guilds in MMOs lag significantly behind Asian, EU , RU and NA guilds. They're so non-competitive in RTS/MOBA/Fighting/Shooting games etc. that they frequently only get to attend international events at all because of the "Pity/Losers" card. As noted in the beginning of the post, players will often just immediately leave or vote to kick anyone from an LAN server in their party in order to avoid dealing with them. The only exception to this seems to be CS:GO - where LAN teams regularly dominate.
On the flip side of the generalization coin, Asia is generally considered the king of Fighting games and strategy games, while NA is the king of shooters and EU holds their ground on shooters, strategy and tends to dominate sports games.
On the one hand, it seems wrong to accept the discrimination. But on the other, we readily accept it in things like sports, education, social attitudes etc. Why wouldn't the same hold true for gaming?
