Oceanic Server?

Enkil

Please add a server that is on an Oceanic / Australia timetable for maintenance and allow us to migrate to it......

Stormynature

As an Australian, I agree with you 100%!

As a realist, it will never happen.

The closest we have ever gotten to a real Triple A giving us an Oceanic server was SWToR and they shut it down.

BrassRazoo

Maybe the Microsoft Azure servers will be online in AU when it launches on Xbox One : )
If this will even matter, I don't know.

KerinKor

Years ago Blizzard wanted to set up an Aussie-based WOW server farm and clearly had the player numbers to make it viable, albeit not hugely profitable, because they saw commercial reasons for doing so.

They gave up after the AUS Government and Telstra made so many demands and wanted to apply stupid regulations it became financially impossible for Blizzard to do.

Bioware's with-hindsight-wildly-optimistic predictions of revenues to the gamble of setting up an Oceanic server as @Stormynature pointed out, but player numbers not regulators and greed ISPs put paid to that.

Jirki88

The sad reality is that the market for Australia/Oceania just can't support a server on its' own.

SWTOR tried to have one, as @Stormynature said, and it was shut down due to too low population.

GossiTheDog

Financially I can't see it being profitable at all, unfortunately.

Lausanna

Not sure if you guys saw this or not, but they changed maintenance on NA so you don't lose your Friday nights anymore at least.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/75114/regular-maintenance-days-times#latest

Hopefully that makes things a bit better for you guys!

DarkInvictus

Lausanna wrote: »

Not sure if you guys saw this or not, but they changed maintenance on NA so you don't lose your Friday nights anymore at least.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/75114/regular-maintenance-days-times#latest

Hopefully that makes things a bit better for you guys!

I was pretty happy when i saw that earlier this week, it shows that they do listen to the customer.
an oceanic/asian server would be good, or do people in japan, south korea, and china (who are all in the same rough time zone as us in australia and new zealand) not play online games or something??

phairdon

You would need a very strong market/player population in the Oceania/South East Asian area to justify a server for this side of the world.

Jirki88

DarkInvictus wrote: »

Lausanna wrote: »

Not sure if you guys saw this or not, but they changed maintenance on NA so you don't lose your Friday nights anymore at least.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/75114/regular-maintenance-days-times#latest

Hopefully that makes things a bit better for you guys!

I was pretty happy when i saw that earlier this week, it shows that they do listen to the customer.
an oceanic/asian server would be good, or do people in japan, south korea, and china (who are all in the same rough time zone as us in australia and new zealand) not play online games or something??

Japan, South Korea and China usually have different online games. They've got another tradition, another style, etc. Not to mention the censoring in China complicates a lot of things. But traditionally, western MMOs don't catch too many East Asian players.

DarkInvictus

Jirki88 wrote: »

Japan, South Korea and China usually have different online games. They've got another tradition, another style, etc. Not to mention the censoring in China complicates a lot of things. But traditionally, western MMOs don't catch too many East Asian players.

We'll that would explain it then. I admit I really don't know what goes on with them culturally and I know china censor stuff but I was under the impression their government was starting to loosen up a little.

aquaorange11

Doesn't even need to physically be in Aus, just call it their Oceanic server, throw it in LA, and schedule maintenance accordingly. Good enough for me.

GossiTheDog

DarkInvictus wrote: »

Jirki88 wrote: »

Japan, South Korea and China usually have different online games. They've got another tradition, another style, etc. Not to mention the censoring in China complicates a lot of things. But traditionally, western MMOs don't catch too many East Asian players.

We'll that would explain it then. I admit I really don't know what goes on with them culturally and I know china censor stuff but I was under the impression their government was starting to loosen up a little.

"In addition to banning games completely, several games have had their content screened to remove certain imagery deemed offensive or unfavorable. Common examples include skeletons or skulls being either fleshed out or removed entirely. Cases of which can be seen the Chinese version of the popular online game, World of Warcraft."

I think Elder Scrolls Online would need some work for China!

dawnhawk

One of the biggest issues with Chinese censorship in mmos has always been "bones". The mmo that shall not be named had to reskin...well everything from the marker when a player died, to an entire race of player characters...to an entire expansion involving a certain psychotic lich out for world domination.

Now think about how many skeletons are in ESO...mobs...hanging from nooses in random trees...dangling by chains attached to their skulls over chasms. It's unlikely (at this point in time) that Zenimax would devote the time and effort to bringing the game to a Chinese distributor and go through the censorship board.

But...really, it's not just China.

Ever wonder why the drug names are made up weird things in Fallout? (Australia)
Or why you see Iron Crosses in more WW2 based shooter games instead of other...more inflammatory symbology? (German)
Or why every time a game involves any type same-sex marriage there are a MILLION threads/comments about it everywhere and have been for the last...oh...decade? (US)

Even the color of blood is occasionally something that needs to be thought about.

Every country has it's cultural taboos that game designers need to get around if they want to market globally. Some of those require censorship boards, some don't. I wasn't nearly as surprised by the M rating as ZOS implied they were. ^.^

babylon

Jirki88 wrote: »

The sad reality is that the market for Australia/Oceania just can't support a server on its' own.

SWTOR tried to have one, as @Stormynature said, and it was shut down due to too low population.

No the population on the Oceanic PVE server was fine - it was actually in the top range of server population - it was shut down due to the whining from the PVP server guys. Even the RP server had a better population than the PVP server (there were three Oceanic servers - PVE, RP, and PVP)...if they'd just shut up and not whined the Oceanic servers would still exist, because all but the PVP server was doing fine.

They shut down all three Oceanic servers because of them.

Stormynature

@babylon Unfortunately the SWToR CM who made the announcement disagrees with you in part. Text as follows:

Hey everyone,

I have an update for you on our long term plans for the APAC servers. Before I do that though I want to let you know up front that we still have quite a bit of work to do to make this happen so I cannot provide any timeframes for you today.

We know that when we asked you, the community, for your opinions on what we should do, we received quite a variety of suggested solutions. Some people wanted to be able to transfer to higher populated North American servers, some suggested merging the three existing APAC servers into one large APAC server, and then there were a host of other ideas as well. However, the one common theme from the suggestions, which we heard clearly, is that everyone wants the opportunity to play on higher populated servers. With this in mind, we have evaluated all of the options and determined that the best solution, that will offer the best long term play experience, is to merge the APAC servers with higher populated North American servers.

Getting to the point of being able to merge the servers is going to be a multistep process. First off we need to update our Free Character Transfer System to include the game changes that we have made recently along with the upcoming changes in Game Update 2.0 and the Digital Expansion: Rise of the Hutt Cartel. We will then offer Free Character Transfers to anyone currently playing on an APAC server to a North American server of the same gameplay type, specifically:
Mastar Dar’Nala (PvP) will transfer to The Bastion (PvP)
Gav Daragon (RP-PvE) will transfer to Begeren Colony (RP-PvE)
Dalborra (PvE) will transfer to The Harbinger (PvE)
We will also need to update our server merge technology at which point we will ultimately merge each of the APAC servers into the corresponding North American servers as indicated above. We are moving as quickly as we can to make this happen, but we want to make sure this is a smooth transition, so it will take some time.

Why did we decide not to merge the three APAC servers into one large APAC server? We decided this for two main reasons. 1. The issue in doing this is that two play-styles (PvE, PvE-RP, or PvP) would need to sacrifice their desired play-style in order to have one server with a higher population. We feel that it is important that each player is allowed to continue to play SWTOR in their preferred play-style. Therefore, accommodating all the existing play-styles was a primary goal. By allowing you to move to a NA West server, you will be able to keep your play-style. 2. The move to North American servers better delivers on our ultimate goal of providing the best play experience, with the most possible players, long term.

babylon

Stormynature wrote: »

@babylon Unfortunately the SWToR CM who made the announcement disagrees with you in part. Text as follows:

Yeah well official speak lies.

What happened was as I said - the whining from the PVP server guys got us all shut down.

They should've just offered the PVP server guys the option to individually transfer to the Oceanic PVE server or to individually transfer them to a US PVP server, but they didn't, just couldn't be bothered doing the work.

The Oceanic server actually does have a decent population and market.

wingnamrwb17_ESO

The oceanic server for swtor is unplayable. It got even higher ping and lag when comparing to na server.

awkwarrd

Enkil wrote: »

Please add a server that is on an Oceanic / Australia timetable for maintenance and allow us to migrate to it......

Nah, can we please stop with the "im aus, gimme server"
The only game that would ever have started something big in aus would have been blizzard, and they just didn't go for it, and every game after that, that has tried, has just been poor.

You can see ZOS struggling with the EU server, that isn't even in EU yet, so yeah.. i wouldn't ever get my hopes up that ESO considers Oceanic as a good decision to expand on.

SWTOR is a diff story, everyone was keen on that, coz it was starwars!
But the game had so many problems, nothing got fixed.. like ever..
So yeah, not an AUS problem there, people just don't put up with crap.

LoL has an Oceanic server now, has been going for a while, but it's fairly different from the American server, and thing's don't work properly sometimes.

Aus servers will suck until Aus can get a better internet system that isn't heavily dictated by the govt and money.
Even the cheaper ISP's that challenge Telstra are starting to go all greedy and weird.

Lausanna wrote: »

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/75114/regular-maintenance-days-times#latest

Thanx was just going to post this too.

Cauthorn

Pretty wrapped that they changed the maintenance to a Thursday evening (oz time)!

Wreaken

Jirki88 wrote: »

The sad reality is that the market for Australia/Oceania just can't support a server on its' own.

SWTOR tried to have one, as @Stormynature said, and it was shut down due to too low population.

Incorrect.

It has been proven multiple times over in the past 7 years that the Oceanic Demographic English speaking population is just as big as America, just far more spread out across islands.

The real reality is, it requires strong marketing and advertising in this demographic which no company has been able to pull off or put the money in to pulling it off due to being spread across several different governments, where EU and USA fall under one government.

When a company finally becomes a true producer for this demographic and can cover several different government agencies, you will start too see servers here, because the producer is responsible for server setup, maintenance and support levels.

Most people don't realize this, but most of the problems for setting up servers here stem from a legal point of view and countries having different regulations towards doing business. That is why, you usually see a different branch of a company in USA and EU. ZOS however, have chosen their own path with the mega-servers housed in the states and therefore have chosen to do it all on their own, that is their call and business model choice.

With all that being said, the sad fact is that Fantasy based MMORPG's in the western market are simply not as highly successful anymore as they used to be due to a multitude of variables and issues that stem from player behavioural attitudes and culture all the way through to it being a seriously saturated industry with a common trend of games being catered towards the casual market and in doing so has very little longevity. Not to mention, stricken with the trend of being incomplete on release and the players willing to pay for a broken product.

Had this game had more time in beta, half these problems and server side issues would not be creating the amount of downtime we are seeing and the downtime due to maintenance would of been very minimal, however, they rushed it out in my honest opinion and it could of used another 3 months in beta to fine tune and work a lot of these issues out. If they had done that, the game would of been almost rock solid on release, give or take your common bug here and there, but people would not be complaining for the most part.

As the saying goes, get it right the first time because first impressions are usually the last for the masses.

Stormynature

Wreaken wrote: »

Incorrect.

It has been proven multiple times over in the past 7 years that the Oceanic Demographic English speaking population is just as big as America, just far more spread out across islands.

The real reality is, it requires strong marketing and advertising in this demographic which no company has been able to pull off or put the money in to pulling it off due to being spread across several different governments, where EU and USA fall under one government.

@Wreaken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oceanian_countries_by_population

38,143,070 people

America 2010 - Edit: Sorry Canada I was too lazy to add you in

317,493,212 people


What countries are you adding into this mix to justify your numbers?

wingnamrwb17_ESO

Stormynature wrote: »

Wreaken wrote: »

Incorrect.

It has been proven multiple times over in the past 7 years that the Oceanic Demographic English speaking population is just as big as America, just far more spread out across islands.

The real reality is, it requires strong marketing and advertising in this demographic which no company has been able to pull off or put the money in to pulling it off due to being spread across several different governments, where EU and USA fall under one government.

@Wreaken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oceanian_countries_by_population

38,143,070 people

America 2010 - Edit: Sorry Canada I was too lazy to add you in

317,493,212 people


What countries are you adding into this mix to justify your numbers?

Oceanic timezone consist more than those 'oceania' countrues. You are an idiot to use it to prove nothing.

Nooblet

aquaorange11 wrote: »

Doesn't even need to physically be in Aus, just call it their Oceanic server, throw it in LA, and schedule maintenance accordingly. Good enough for me.

Downtime will dwindle in length and frequency once bugs and stability issues get addressed as they do with all MMOs. So I'm assuming itll be less of a factor when that happens.

Stormynature

Oceanic Timezone was not the point I was querying. Oceanic Demographic English speaking population is just as big as America is however what I querying, unless of course you would argue that indonesia, malaysia hong kong, japan (or similar other countries in the timezones) should be considered as primarily English speaking demographic - I would accept that a large population segment of the Phillipines does speak English as well a large amount of military personnel from the US based in the region -- but the numbers don't match.

Jade1986

The simple solution, make an Asian server. They would make boat loads of money from the Asian MMO crowd (like blizzard did) and you would have a pretty good connection to it.

babylon

laced wrote: »

The simple solution, make an Asian server. They would make boat loads of money from the Asian MMO crowd (like blizzard did) and you would have a pretty good connection to it.

No, Oceanic area has a better connection to the US than it does to anywhere in Asia. Something went down in the ocean a while back (some Asia earthquake) and has never been replaced - Asia is a no-go. We need a server in NZ or Sydney.

Jade1986

babylon wrote: »

laced wrote: »

The simple solution, make an Asian server. They would make boat loads of money from the Asian MMO crowd (like blizzard did) and you would have a pretty good connection to it.

No, Oceanic area has a better connection to the US than it does to anywhere in Asia. Something went down in the ocean a while back (some Asia earthquake) and has never been replaced - Asia is a no-go. We need a server in NZ or Sydney.

Oh wow, didn't know that. That really sucks Because Japan has some EPIC internet quality....however, an Asian server would still be good for everyone because ZoS could make more money, and POSSIBLY HIRE MORE STAFF .... ( being an optimist here =P )

babylon

laced wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

laced wrote: »

The simple solution, make an Asian server. They would make boat loads of money from the Asian MMO crowd (like blizzard did) and you would have a pretty good connection to it.

No, Oceanic area has a better connection to the US than it does to anywhere in Asia. Something went down in the ocean a while back (some Asia earthquake) and has never been replaced - Asia is a no-go. We need a server in NZ or Sydney.

Oh wow, didn't know that. That really sucks Because Japan has some EPIC internet quality....however, an Asian server would still be good for everyone because ZoS could make more money, and POSSIBLY HIRE MORE STAFF .... ( being an optimist here =P )

It would be great if we could be allied with Asia population-wise, but it just doesn't work because of the infrastructure. So the two areas are sadly split up, and usually neither of us gets what we need - servers with low ping like the US gets to have.

Ri_Dariit

DarkInvictus wrote: »

I was pretty happy when i saw that earlier this week, it shows that they do listen to the customer.
an oceanic/asian server would be good, or do people in japan, south korea, and china (who are all in the same rough time zone as us in australia and new zealand) not play online games or something??

This one plays in Rising Sun Zone and sees some "locals" playing. Not many, but names are give-away in Romanjii words. Many don't talk much.
Ri'Dariit also knows as mentioned by other players MMO's mostly different and cell-phone based in area and use f2p model so not very attractive for them to spend time on Nirn.

bandage106rwb17_ESO

All they needed to do was place the NA server in LA, currently it's located in central US(New York) so we're hovering around 230-260 optimally. If they moved it to LA we could shave off maybe 50-70ms, infact I see no reason they'd put it in central US who exactly does it benefit having it in central besides from Americans alone, Europeans shouldn't even be playing on the NA server regardless because they have their own server.