Bioware Discrimination

[Thurmer]

Heres the main thread from the official forums, http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=409269

To sum it up the developer posts have stated that launch will be limited to certain regions to ensure the highest quality player experience. That most of the Southern Hemisphere has been pushed aside so other users can have the best experience possible while we are denied having any? Personally I find it disgraceful and quite infuriating especially as I have been following the game since its announcement and I have been a loyal Bioware fan and customer since I was 12.

What do you guys think about this?


Ps. Baldurs Gate 2 is still my favorite game of all time.

Pps. Apologies since this issue isn't exactly new but I did a quick forum search and couldn't find any other topics but I'd safely assume there has been one or two.

 

[Vault101]

well I dont like MMO's so its not like I would want to play it

but Australia has gotten alot of other stuff...Im not used to a game not coming here (aside form censorship reasons)

 

[Thurmer]

were still going to get it but its going to be well after the initial launch of the game.

 

[veloper]

MMO servers are an investment and expensive to maintain. TOR may not sell as well as they hope.

They are playing it safer first in the areas where they can expect to have the most customers. You cannot really blame EA-Bioware for that.
Bash their games instead.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Brazil is only now going to get WoW formally released, seven years after launch. =p

That said, often in terms of video games Australia gets lobbed together with Europe due to both territories using the PAL TV system. And that said, I'm fairly sure you can still import a copy of TOR through Amazon or some other site. You'd just have to put up with the lag of playing on European or American servers.

 

[Zhukov]

I suppose I would be kind of annoyed if I was interested in the game.

However, I really don't see why a delayed launch in some parts of the world is worth all the hilarious tears and rage.

 

[Kargathia]

Brazil is only now going to get WoW formally released, seven years after launch. =p

That said, often in terms of video games Australia gets lobbed together with Europe due to both territories using the PAL TV system. And that said, I'm fairly sure you can still import a copy of TOR through Amazon or some other site. You'd just have to put up with the lag of playing on European or American servers.

And the minor detail of living a good 8-10 hour worth of time zones away from the people you're playing with.

 

[Smurf McSmurfington]

Oh come on it's not like they're not going to release it outside Europe and NA, ever, it'll just be delayed.
Personally, I wouldn't care even if I lived outside the two supported regions, since this is a mumorpuger and therefore not worth bothering with in my eyes.

 

[Woodsey]

1) Its not discrimination
2) Most of their player-base will be located in the areas they have chosen
3) The only comment on how long it will take for other territories to be introduced has been: "obviously we want to include as many people as possible as soon as possible"
4) If you're that desperate they have no plans to lock people out based on their CC location, so you can still import the game and sub, although you may suffer from not having any servers close to you

 

[ThriKreen]

Yeah, it's simple logistics. Customer support, getting enough NOC members to maintain the servers, bandwidth costs, etc. Once it stabilizes for one region and iron out any issues, they will expand to others.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

It's pretty understandable what they're doing.
They'll most likely bring it to those areas when, or rather if it does well, but if it takes off and is popular enough to sustain itself and they don't bring it over to those countries then by all means, pick up a rifle.

Not that I care about TOR.
It looks like WoW but shit and coated in a shitty Star Wars coat of paint, not that I dislike Star Wars.

Basically it seems people are overreacting, but they probably shouldn't get their hopes up that much anyway.

 

[Ghengis John]

Personally I find it disgraceful and quite infuriating especially as I have been following the game since its announcement and I have been a loyal Bioware fan and customer since I was 12.

How old are you now? I mean if you're 14 it wouldn't exactly impress.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

so why dont you play on other servers then? i played DDO on american servers for a long time because they went F2P years before ours (and had an actual RP community)

 

[Shuswah_Noir]

While I'll always be annoyed or disappointed when Australia misses things like this with no openly explained thought process from the companies, I understand the logistics/finance/sales issues enough to not have a hissy over it. Even if per capita Australia got the highest sales world wide, it still wouldn't equal the overall numbers of larger countries.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

World of Warcraft and several other MMOs have done the same thing. It's too expensive to launch this type of game everywhere at the same time, especially when you can't be sure that it will be a success. If the NA and Asia markets aren't going to buy into your game, then it's likely nobody else will, either. So it's better just to test the waters there, first.

Has nothing to do with discrimination, it's just basic financial common sense.

this, it's a game that absolutely thrives on online, so why would you send it everywhere right away?

that is just setup for bankrupt failure without testing or knowing the audience.