Mythic to Provide US and Europe Simultaneous Release [Archive]

Dungeoneer

06-06-2006, 03:32 AM

Read the full article here (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/article/war-news/mythic-and-goa-partner-to-storm-europe.html).

Mythic Entertainment, a leading developer and publisher of massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG’s), today announced Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) will be published and operated across Europe by GOA, the France Telecom-owned publisher of online games. GOA has successfully operated Dark Age of Camelot in Europe with Mythic since 2001. WAR is based on Games Workshop’s popular Warhammer fantasy war game and features next generation Realm vs. Realm (RvR) game play that will immerse players in a world of perpetual conflict. WAR will arrive on the PC simultaneously in the US and Europe in the fall of 2007.

After doing a whois on war-europe.com you get the following information:
Registrant:
Contact Administratif (WAR-EUROPE-COM-DOM)
France Telecom
8 10 place du marechal Juin
Issy les Moulineaux, FR 92130
FR
+33 1 55 54 11 46
+33 1 55 54 12 40
contact.administratif@goa.com

Domain Name: WAR-EUROPE.COM
Status: PROTECTED
Hm.. there is also this:

http://www.thenationalshow.com/Mobile/SpeakerDetail.aspx?ID=61

As such Eugene manages Mythic's relationships with it's worldwide network of distributors and licensors, including Vivendi Universal Games in North America, Wanadoo/GOA in Europe, Buff Entertainment in Korea and Movida in Japan. He is currently executing Mythic's plans for the 2007 launch of Mythic's new MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (www.warhammeronline.com) (http://www.warhammeronline.com)).

Hmmm...

EDIT: Until we have an official confirmation, this is a RUMOR! Please treat it like that.

EDIT 2: http://www.war-europe.com/ It is official.

Pertan

06-06-2006, 03:40 AM

Krayt

06-06-2006, 03:50 AM

Bah ! So it looks like they will be doing the same thing WoW did and have a different version of the game for NA, EU etc so we wont be able to play where we want ie: NA player on night shift cant play on Euro server.:(

dutch_gamer

06-06-2006, 03:51 AM

This makes no sense to me. I thought that Mythic told us on this forum that they would not let GOA hold the servers in Europe this time. They mentioned they would be holding the servers themselves with a new office in Europe.

I am must say I am not too happy about them setting things up in France and with GOA. I fear this will mean that Europe will be far behind with patches once again and will also have very laggy servers. This will mean I will be forced to play on the American servers again because they tend to be better. But this will again kill my ability to really participate in RvR because of the time difference. One would think that GW would want very good service in Europe because that is where they are situated themselves. It would make far more sense if the servers were actually in the United Kingdom instead of France. /shrugs

Nidragon

06-06-2006, 03:51 AM

Also the Italian Community is in turmoil because they have seen that the website www.warhammeronline.it has been taken by GinoFelino of Gamesrevolt, which is the society that managed DAoC Italy and made it fail.

Can you say something about it?

I've seen on "Whois" that the site is owned by Halifax...

Dungeoneer

06-06-2006, 03:54 AM

I can't confirm anything. You should take this all as a rumor, until we get some official word.

I would prefer Mythic Europe myself.

Crysalis

06-06-2006, 04:04 AM

You can still buy your version from which ever countries servers you wish to play on.

I will be buying my game from the US like I have always.

Even though im English.

Dungeoneer

06-06-2006, 04:08 AM

Sure, Crysalis. If you can pay per credit card - with is totally unusable in many parts of europe.

dutch_gamer

06-06-2006, 04:08 AM

I can't confirm anything. You should take this all as a rumor, until we get some official word.

I would prefer Mythic Europe myself.

True, but the whois already tells us what we need to know. Unless someone has claimed the website as a hoax, but I am doubting that.

I have tried to find information about Mythic telling us that they would be having their own office this time. I have been unable to find this. It seems the thing I remembered was just a guess from a poster on here because they wanted to it themselves for Imperator. I just don't understand why the servers can't be run the same way as SoE did with EQ1.

I just for once would like to have a choice what server to play on, without being forced to only a certain set of servers because of where I buy my copy of the game. I am always forced to play on American servers because the European ones just blow chunks. That way I can play on a stable server but will miss most of the actual RvR. This because real RvR or anything else won't happen till after 3 AM my time.

Even when I am forced to once again play on the American servers, I hope they will not BLOCK certain creditcards from Europe as Blizzard did. I was forced to jump through hoops just to play on the American servers with WoW.

Fana

06-06-2006, 04:25 AM

I will refuse to play on any WAR servers hosted in France myself. Have done it in DAoC and in WoW and it just makes for a terrible experience with frequent disconnets and tons of lag thanks to France crap internet backbone and Opentransit operator. If its hosted in France for us in the EU i will get the US version.

Crysalis

06-06-2006, 04:28 AM

Sure, Crysalis. If you can pay per credit card - with is totally unusable in many parts of europe.

You dont need a credit card you only need a visa/visa delta card, I used my bank debit card.

Hopefully they will even offer a download client options, so you wont even have to worry about shipping, but we wont know about that for quite some time yet.

Seldaren

06-06-2006, 04:38 AM

Hmmm... that is odd. As Mythic had said they were going to be doing their own thing in Europe this time around and would not be using GOA.

Maybe something changed somewhere?

Seldaren

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 04:43 AM

Mythic created Mythic Europe some time ago (1-2 years). However I don't believe it ever really took off (beyond a quick look round for offices). GOA are a great company who work damn hard. I have the pleasure of knowing a couple of their staff and they're dedicated, fun and love what they do :)

edit: have a look at www.war-europe.com now :D

Dungeoneer

06-06-2006, 04:45 AM

http://www.war-europe.com/

Website is live. It is official.

Fana

06-06-2006, 04:48 AM

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 04:51 AM

It's not certain that they'll be on opentransit again; I think that was a pretty common complaint from EU DAoC players. Just wait until they announce a few more details Fana (and have faith) :)

Fana

06-06-2006, 04:56 AM

It's not certain that they'll be on opentransit again; I think that was a pretty common complaint from EU DAoC players. Just wait until they announce a few more details Fana (and have faith) :)

I would like to hope so but you see, GOA is owned by France Telecom, so the chanses that they will host it outside of France are slim to none. And if its hosted in france then Opentransit will be involved.

EDIT: Oh and hi NC :o

Gahn

06-06-2006, 05:12 AM

Stupid move if u ask me, 90% of Eu player base of Daoc won't EVER play on France Telecom hosted servers again.
Oh well, wtb Us cd key and feck the rest :D

Freigeist

06-06-2006, 05:19 AM

Well, that's no good News for Europe, as far as i can say that. I hope GOA will do a better job than in the past. GOA or the French Telekom is notorious for their bad connections.

Especially in the localisation they need skilled people. WAR is a game with a world, full of stuff, allready translated to the different languages. If somebody don't know the setting and whose translation allready made, there is a genuine risk that they will translate stuff new and wrong. So i hope mythic keep an eye on that and maybe let those people, who allready did the website translation, work on the futher localisation. (GOA's early translation of DAoC, at least in the german version, was terrible, until they booked another non-french and non-goa Company)

Crysalis

06-06-2006, 05:23 AM

Does this also mean there will be a staggered release over continents?

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 05:24 AM

Does this also mean there will be a staggered release over continents?

Check the Q&A on the war-europe.com site.

Q. Will Europe and the US receive patches at the same time?
A. Not only will the game be released in the US and Europe simultaneously but patches and expansions will also reach both groups of players at the same time.

:)

Freigeist

06-06-2006, 05:26 AM

Does this also mean there will be a staggered release over continents?
Well here an excerpt out of the Q&A from the new European Website.

Q. Will Europe and the US receive patches at the same time?
A. Not only will the game be released in the US and Europe simultaneously but patches and expansions will also reach both groups of players at the same time.

EDIT: Two minds but a single thought ^^

Crysalis

06-06-2006, 05:28 AM

Wierd since DAoC wasnt like that.

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 05:30 AM

Wierd since DAoC wasnt like that.

DAoC was only ever (by Mythic, to the best of my knowledge) really intended as a US release. GOA bought the rights to the European release/distribution after the game had been out for a fair while (about a year?). I suspect (but don't know) that if it wasn't for GOA there wouldn't have been a European DAoC version. It's a very different case this time round.

Seldaren

06-06-2006, 05:31 AM

OK then, GOA it is then, heh.

I know their DAoC website was very nice :) . Much more "bling" on it than Mythic's site, hehe.

Hopefully they'll be able to work out whatever issues DAoC had.

As for the Mythic Europe thing. That was in the works up until Imperator "died". Lots of stuff got re-arranged when that happened, one thing that also go put on "hold" was Mythic's presence in Europe.
At least that's how I understand things.

Seldaren

Dungeoneer

06-06-2006, 05:42 AM

As for the Mythic Europe thing. That was in the works up until Imperator "died". Lots of stuff got re-arranged when that happened, one thing that also go put on "hold" was Mythic's presence in Europe.
At least that's how I understand things.

I think that is correct. Well, according to the Q&A GOA has some good ideas, at the very least. The translation concerns are still valid, though.

Death

06-06-2006, 05:44 AM

hey, your all talking about getting US keys?, cant you just get a european key and play on US servers?, if not then im going to have to get a US key because My guild is US and I live in Australia ( unless I somehow come under US instead of pacific ) :confused:

Cheers, Death

Crysalis

06-06-2006, 05:44 AM

Didnt GOA have alot of its account info's hacked at one point also though?

Gahn

06-06-2006, 05:44 AM

Misere

06-06-2006, 05:57 AM

DAoC was only ever (by Mythic, to the best of my knowledge) really intended as a US release. GOA bought the rights to the European release/distribution after the game had been out for a fair while (about a year?).

4 months later (22 january 2002)

Fana

06-06-2006, 06:05 AM

Didnt GOA have alot of its account info's hacked at one point also though?

No, theres only been 2 incidents worth mentioning over the lifetime of the GOA DAoC servers. One was when someone got a GM login details and proceeded to use the GM tools to cause havoc by planting dangerous monsters all over the place etc. Was resolved quickly and noone was actually hurt by it (and the GM accounts cant access any user details etc). Other one was when the database of one of the servers got corrupted and the server was down for several weeks while they rebuilt it and corrected errors in characters etc (and they did a heroic job of it actually - Mythics advice was to just wipe the server clean). Other than that the actual servers have a splendid uptime record (more than US ones). So its not really GOA we are worried about as such, more the fact that GOA will host the servers in France (Paris) and therefore use Opentransit which regularely cause insane lag and disconnects etc. Not GOA's fault and they have worked hard to try to get OT to correct the issues but they always seem to come back sooner or later.

Nishlec

06-06-2006, 06:29 AM

When will they ever learn.. Sweden is obviously the best choice (by far) to put servers in Europe (;)).

DEVLiN

06-06-2006, 06:36 AM

Aren't you forgetting the time where everyone got forced into a new password, Fana? I think that incident is what was referred to.

This is potentially a bad move on Mythic's behalf. I know a lot of people that won't touch anything involving GOA anymore. Unfair perhaps, as they did improve a lot in the long run and a lot of the flak was aimed at them where they weren't responsible - but it's still something to have in mind. The complete lack of in-game support (broken /appeal system), full year-delayed patches and RightNow notoriously known among the players as "RightNever" still bring bad memories for a lot of us. If they would have had the same people but under a "Mythic Europe" name it wouldn't bring up as many old scars as this.

If it is to be GOA, Mythic better spend a lot of time reassuring the oldtimers in Daoc. I personally don't have a bad history with them - but quite a few of my online friends do.

Edit: When it all comes down to it though - GOA has worked with Mythic before, for a long time. This time they'll most likely be getting a lot more right as Mythic will be more heavily involved even in Europe (I hope). I just hope they'll actually market the game outside of france/germany this time - some advertisement would help. :p

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 06:46 AM

I know a lot of people that won't touch anything involving GOA anymore.

The complaining about EU DAoC, especially on the Freddyshouse forum, is a small minority of the players (as with many complaints on mmo forums in fact). Regardless, very few spoke with their feet. Couple to this the fact that WAR is expected to have a much bigger fanbase and appeal... a few (sometimes needlessly) unhappy ex-DAoC players wouldn't worry me too much :)

Edit: When it all comes down to it though - GOA has worked with Mythic before, for a long time.
Yep and this time everything (the way item names/descriptions work for example) could be setup for localisation in advance.

This time they'll most likely be getting a lot more right as Mythic will be more heavily involved even in Europe (I hope). I just hope they'll actually market the game outside of france/germany this time - some advertisement would help.
I'd certainly expect them to (advertise) more than DAoC seemingly was :)

DEVLiN

06-06-2006, 06:51 AM

The complaining about EU DAoC, especially on the Freddyshouse forum, is a small minority of the players (as with many complaints on mmo forums in fact). Regardless, very few spoke with their feet. Couple to this the fact that WAR is expected to have a much bigger fanbase and appeal... a few (sometimes needlessly) unhappy ex-DAoC players wouldn't worry me too much :)
I wasn't referring to the FH complaints (actually, just reading through them) - I was more concerned about some old-time guildies reactions. ;)

I'm sure they'll do fine though. After all, who knows more about Mythic's MMO's here in Europe?

Richard_Mythic

06-06-2006, 07:22 AM

Other one was when the database of one of the servers got corrupted and the server was down for several weeks while they rebuilt it and corrected errors in characters etc (and they did a heroic job of it actually - Mythics advice was to just wipe the server clean).

I'm sorry, but I have to chime in here on that one... Mythic would never advise that a server be wiped clean and everyone's characters tossed out like yesterday's trash. :(

Ethandril

06-06-2006, 07:26 AM

Well, i have played DAoC and any other mmo-game on an US-Server, so i dont mind
much about who is providing W.A.R. in Europe.
What i was really hoping for was an EU-Server and not a german-/british-/italien-
or frence-server. But again, i dont have to play on them, even when i live in Austria.

About the troubles with GOA, they have learned and will learn more, wait and see how
it goes. Maybe i start on a german or british-server too, if GOA doing well.

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 07:29 AM

I wasn't referring to the FH complaints (actually, just reading through them) - I was more concerned about some old-time guildies reactions. ;)

I'm sure they'll do fine though. After all, who knows more about Mythic's MMO's here in Europe?

I wasn't intending to imply you were, it was more a sidethought and aye, completely agree on the last point :)

erloas

06-06-2006, 07:33 AM

Not that I have to worry about this at all... But just a couple days ago I got a message at work that connections to Europe might be down for a while since they were doing a major data link change in Paris. So maybe they are fixing some of the connection issues in France.

I also think Mythic knows that they have a lot of people between NA and Europe that like to play together. And since they are already going to release and update them at the same time it seems like it wouldn't be much more to allow access to any server. With the only difference being regional location.

Snorri

06-06-2006, 07:44 AM

I wanted to play with many of my old American friends

But my guild is in europe

arrrrrrrggghhhh :???: :???: :cry:

kassdelire

06-06-2006, 07:48 AM

Well, thats me not buying the EU version then. I dont have anything against GOA as such, in fact i like and respect their GM's etc, but i simply wont play another game hosted in France. See you on the US servers, or if thats not possible, not at all.
I hope that the purpose of the differents servers ( US / EU / asia) is only for technical reasons ( server charge, ping ) and that they will NOT translate the game ( like WoW).

Richard_Mythic

06-06-2006, 07:53 AM

I hope that the purpose of the differents servers ( US / EU / asia) is only for technical reasons ( server charge, ping ) and that they will NOT translate the game ( like WoW).

From war-europe.com:

Q. What languages are being targeted for initial release?
A. Initially the game will support English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Q. Will the Beta be in English only?
A. No, the later stages of the Beta will be in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Fana

06-06-2006, 07:55 AM

I'm sorry, but I have to chime in here on that one... Mythic would never advise that a server be wiped clean and everyone's characters tossed out like yesterday's trash. :(

Well im sorry if i have the wrong info Richard, but thats what we were told.

Ethandril

06-06-2006, 07:55 AM

I hope that the purpose of the differents servers ( US / EU / asia) is only for technical reasons ( server charge, ping ) and that they will NOT translate the game ( like WoW).

Uhm, they will translate the game for each server (well for the non-english servers).

Freigeist

06-06-2006, 07:58 AM

I hope that the purpose of the differents servers ( US / EU / asia) is only for technical reasons ( server charge, ping ) and that they will NOT translate the game ( like WoW).

You mean only one language for all Players? That would be a loss of many foreign players (me as well). Not everbody speaks english, and even a lot of people who can speak english quite good, prefer playing games (especially fantasy games) in their native language. I am sure that it will be like in DAoC or WoW - there is a good translation (hopefully better than in the starting time of DAoC) for every major language in Amerika, Europe and Asia.

Liv

06-06-2006, 07:58 AM

Is it april 1 yet?

Ihr attackiere attackiere attackiere schlawüte...

Darksword

06-06-2006, 08:17 AM

DAoC patchs could not be done in Europe at the same time because mythic put a time constraint on how soon they could release the patchs over here etc, as they wanted to encourage europe players to play on their servers if they so wished.

Valid point about GOA having bad servers, i believe in DAoC there was like a 1month (even longer) problem with GOA servers that took forever to fix, and then same problem occured almost instantly. WoW servers were really laggy, but for a time, they are fairly stable now it seems, its only understandable due to the amount of people WoW drew in.

I hope GOA gets some solid servers able to cope with demand both on release (Which will be much higher than it will be after a year or so) and sustained balance. They should get a larger team to run the WAR servers than they did for the DAoC servers.

I havent lost hope in GOA, yet. please dont let me down :(

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 08:27 AM

DAoC patchs could not be done in Europe at the same time because mythic put a time constraint on how soon they could release the patchs over here etc, as they wanted to encourage europe players to play on their servers if they so wished.
I strongly doubt that. Anything you could link me too?

Valid point about GOA having bad servers, i believe in DAoC there was like a 1month (even longer) problem with GOA servers that took forever to fix, and then same problem occured almost instantly.

As mentioned before, the problem was with opentransit and the often sorry state of France's pipes, not with GOA's servers. Not too sure about the update mentioned by a previous poster. Fingers crossed and all that then :)

Darksword

06-06-2006, 08:45 AM

I strongly doubt that. Anything you could link me too?

As mentioned before, the problem was with opentransit and the often sorry state of France's pipes, not with GOA's servers. Not too sure about the update mentioned by a previous poster. Fingers crossed and all that then :)

Believe Requiel posted it on FH, i'll ask him in there then link the thread later today :)

JonesyMan

06-06-2006, 08:46 AM

Good news for our European counterparts.

kassdelire

06-06-2006, 08:48 AM

From war-europe.com:
Originally Posted by kassdelire
I hope that the purpose of the differents servers ( US / EU / asia) is only for technical reasons ( server charge, ping ) and that they will NOT translate the game ( like WoW).

From war-europe.com:

Quote:
Q. What languages are being targeted for initial release?
A. Initially the game will support English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Q. Will the Beta be in English only?
A. No, the later stages of the Beta will be in English, French, German, Italian and Spain
Hum, so let me explain why i fear this, i had a terrible experience of game translation with WoW .
Where nearly all the City, Heroes, Regions where translated into french killing the background of the game ,even the people who were on a french server but with a english version couldn't speak to each other on the channels ( trade/general ..... ).

Garthilk

06-06-2006, 08:52 AM

Hum, so let me explain why i fear this, i had a terrible experience of game translation with WoW . Where nearly all the City, Heroes, Regions where translated into french killing the background of the game ,even the people who were on a french server but with a english version couldn't speak to each other on the channels ( trade/general ..... ).The nice thing is that Mythic isn't a novice at Translation. They've been doing this for years. This isn't their first pony ride, which is great. Because they'll be able to use the years of experiance of them doing it, and really execute it in a way better than they've ever been able to to before.

Mbj

06-06-2006, 08:52 AM

Folks,

I expected that this move would generate all sorts of feelings here as well as across the DAoC and Warhammer communities. This decision is one that we made only after very, very long and complicated negotiations and discussions with GOA. Let me say just a few things:

1) GOA & Mythic could have done a better job in launching and maintaining DAoC in Europe. While GOA & Mythic did a lot of things right in Europe with DAoC (keep in mind that prior to WoW, DAoC had more success in Europe than any other MMORPG), we could have done better.

2) Both sides realize that with WAR it is crucial that we do a better job than we did with DAoC. And having both sides required to do a better job was going to be part of the deal.

3) If either side doesn't do its job, changes will be made.

GOA has been and I believe will continue to be a great partner for us in Europe just as Mythic has been a great partner for GOA. The things that we are commited to do for our European players are much more extreme (and expensive) than we did for DAoC. The same is true for GOA. GOA went to great lengths to get these rights ever since Mythic signed the deal with GW (we even have a number of GOA people in our office right now) and we have no concerns about their commitment to WAR now and in the future.

As always, all I ask is that the community gives us a chance to see how things work out.

Mark

Edited because every != ever :)

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 08:52 AM

Just asked. It's a myth

<takes out his myth-hunting gun and starts polishing>

There's bound to be a lot of myths and chinese-whispers (in a hideously mutated form) resurfacing now.

all I ask is that the community gives us a chance to see how things work out.

quoted for emphasis

Darksword

06-06-2006, 08:54 AM

Just asked. It's a myth :)

<takes out his myth-hunting gun and starts polishing>

Ahh kk thanks :D just pmed him lol.

I hope GOA can do a good job at hosting these servers, with those that will migrate from DAoC to Warhammer, if things start to go wrong i can see many jumping ship for US servers instead, especially in the early months.

Garthilk

06-06-2006, 08:57 AM

Heya Mark,

I think you guys did a lot and did it well in regards to the DAoC rollout overseas. Considering the success it has enjoyed overseas, and the fact that you guys did it better than anyone else had before I know you guys are just going to capitialize on the success. Time and time again I remind people that Mythic is a business. It is in Mythics best interest to provide a great transition to Europe and I know Mythic is just going improve what you have already learned.

DEVLiN

06-06-2006, 08:58 AM

Glad to hear it Mark - the community will give you a chance either way - the most negative ones will most likely play on US servers though.

Our guild will be playing on EU servers, we're hoping you'll both draw from the experiences you gained with Daoc. :)

Freigeist

06-06-2006, 09:01 AM

Hum, so let me explain why i fear this, i had a terrible experience of game translation with WoW .
Where nearly all the City, Heroes, Regions where translated into french killing the background of the game ,even the people who were on a french server but with a english version couldn't speak to each other on the channels ( trade/general ..... ).
But look at the Warhammer Background. At least in Germany every single term has a translation that sounds really good. And nearly every warhammer player knows only that translated term. (I think that's the same in France). So if there will be only one language edition (which won't be) a lot of flavour would get lost. The other point is, that if GOA's translation team change such allready exisiting terms a lot of fans will be confused and disappointed.

Shillen

06-06-2006, 09:35 AM

I hate the segregation. Some of my best experiences in MMORPG's have been meeting people from other countries. It is boring to play on servers with only Americans on it. I'd even play on a Euro server with 300 ping if it meant I got to experience the cultures of those European players along with all my American friends as well.

Hunding

06-06-2006, 09:52 AM

im very disappointed. allthough goas service has improved a lot in the last 2 years and they are doing the best they can, this means us europeans will be second class customers again.
i hope both sides will be at least clever enough to have a less restrictive agreement then they had with daoc, im not sure if can stand another "sorry, we cant do that cause our contract with mythic wont allow it".
i really had hoped to be a direct customer of mythic this time, cant say how disappointed i am :(

Bear

06-06-2006, 10:11 AM

Well this certainly will have various effects on many of the regiments that have formed for this game. Guess it's good that it's known very early on though.

dutch_gamer

06-06-2006, 10:16 AM

I do give Mythic the benefit of the doubt with the servers in Europe. But I don't understand why we don't have a choice to play on whatever server we want, without having to make the choice when we pay a copy of the game. It would be so much better if we could play the game on American servers and European servers with all copies of the game. I understand that they do this because GOA wants to make money but it does split the community again.

I really like playing together with Americans but I do get tired of having to play at odd hours because of the time difference. I have been doing this for years and it just really hampers my enjoyment because I can never participate in real events. When I could play on both continents with the same copy, I can play with my American friends when I want to and play on the European servers at prime time in Europe.

Right now I have no clue what I will do this time. This news just makes me want to wait till about a month after release before I even buy the game. I like playing with Americans because they at least all can understand English. I just have had very bad experiences with European servers because of the segragation of language servers. Europe may have more citizens than America but the problem is the language barrier. Even on English servers I tend to meet people who can't speak English. This was especially frustrating when I made my first steps into MMOs. It is hard to ask questions when the players around you ha
ve no clue what you are saying.

Well this certainly will have various effects on many of the regiments that have formed for this game. Guess it's good that it's known very early on though.

That is true, Blizzard waited till the end to tell us that we couldn't play on American servers. They also told us that they would allow Europeans to play on the American servers at one point, they still haven't done this. At least Mythic is straightforward, have got to give them that.

Mbj

06-06-2006, 10:30 AM

Fana

06-06-2006, 10:35 AM

Just to make it clear, GOA is indeed a competent host for DAoC, their GM's are polite, respectful, interested and feels like part of the community. They have very good uptime, and the servers are hosted on hardware that even surpasses Mythics own. Its not GOA as such that is the problem - its where GOA intends to host the game, namely Paris, France. GOA have frequently been plagued by terrible lag and outages beyond their own control, caused by the internet backbone in France run by the company OpenTransit, and although they have worked hard to try to resolve these issues they always come back and make the game unplayable for anything from a couple of days to weeks on end. The same issues are true as regards the WoW servers hosted in France (WoW is hosted in 2 centers in the EU, one in france and one in germany).

We dont want to see the same issues in WAR. Thats what this is about. I have no problems with GOA as such and in fact if GOA ran the servers in another country i would think it was even a good thing they were responsible for it in the EU. As long as it will be run from France however i am very sceptic.

Caracca

06-06-2006, 10:36 AM

I've being playing daoc in the eu. since the beta ( still am playing it though). but the few times i did require the aid of the customer support they did slack a few times doing it.

Also a mayor concern ( even stated a few times in this topic) is Opentransit. though that bottleneck isn't a real issue for ppl from the southern europe ( read: france, italie, spain, etc). it does provide a mayor lag issue for the northern part of it ( UK, netherlands, Germainy, sweden ,etc.) unless that problem could be solved by something by relocating the servers. i'll be takeing the Euro release with a spoon on salt. and go buy me an US version.

but for now only time will tell. and whatever the Beta will show us.

P.s.

Mark, the beta's will they commence at the same time(frame) or will the beta first commence in the US. and after that it will start in the EU ?, or will it start shortly after eachother ?

Regards,

Midwinter

06-06-2006, 10:41 AM

Y'vess

06-06-2006, 10:46 AM

In terms of "one world" servers, I do wish that we could have the European players and American players all together but that is not going to happen this time. Additionally, I'm not even sure it's a great idea for both technical, social reasons (language, grouping issues) and support reasons.

Mark

Very Dissapointed....yet another developer driving a wedge between friends in US and Europe. This current trend stinks, SOE is capable of creating one account signup process, one website and one version of the game where players can CHOSE to play on whatever language or location server they want this has been available for years.

I find it ironic the internet is supposed to bring us all closer together unyet in the last couple of years game developers are just trying to redraw the borderlines again.

Mbj

06-06-2006, 10:57 AM

Folks,

Based on what I've read here I just had a brief chat with the GOA folks about OpenTransit. I've been assured that those problems will not occur (other than the usual disclaimer because of true unexpected technical failures) with WAR.

In terms of Northern Europe having a worse experience than the rest of Europe if that is still a problem when WAR is in beta, GOA will do what is necessary to ensure that is not a problem at launch.

In terms of the opening of betas, are hope is to have the an English language beta for US/Europe right from the beginning and localize content as soon as it is complete in small chunks to allow Europeans who can't participate in the English language beta to participate in a European beta. The key is that we don't want to have to localize the same content three times or more during beta as that will slow down development of the game as well as add substantially to the costs. Besides, when we make our dumb mistakes early on we want to minimize the number of people who see them. :)

In terms of being upfront about things, that is the way I've always been and always will be. You may not like what you hear from me (or from Mythic) at times but it will always be the truth. A good Community is built on trust and communication between its members and in our case, the Community leaders. The last thing I will aloow to happen is that trust to be misused or worse, to be destroyed.

I know nothing I can say will make everyone happy (no shock there) but I would not have done this deal unless I believed it was in the best interest of Mythic and GW. The excitement, interest and involvement of GOA to date has left me feeling rather good about what we will be able to offer to our European players. Things are looking great on all fronts and we are well on our way to a very interesting and exciting Summer.

Mark

Fana

06-06-2006, 11:00 AM

I find it ironic the internet is supposed to bring us all closer together unyet in the last couple of years game developers are just trying to redraw the borderlines again.

That is a general trend all media companies are into at the moment. Its about controling different markets and carving out domains - they dont want the potential customers to be able to chose where to spend their money, so they make it impossible to spend it anywhere but where they agree amongst themselves they can spend it.

Fana

06-06-2006, 11:05 AM

Caracca

06-06-2006, 11:06 AM

There's this on the EU Q&A if it helps at all Caracca:

Q. Will European players have access to the beta?
A. There will be several stages of beta and it has yet to be decided at what stage we will localize the beta. Otherwise yes, Mythic and GOA will ensure that players from Europe and the US have access to the beta before the game launches.

yes i did saw it. but it felt rather incomplete. ( the euro site is even partly working, at least it got a broken link on it :/)

and thnx mark for the fast and complete supprise. nice to see that there will be some action taken about the Opentransit "problem"

Caldenfor

06-06-2006, 11:12 AM

In terms of "one world" servers, I do wish that we could have the European players and American players all together but that is not going to happen this time. Additionally, I'm not even sure it's a great idea for both technical, social reasons (language, grouping issues) and support reasons.

Mark

Does that mean close friends from previous games in our guild will not be able to play with us on American servers if they live in Europe? Not sure if I read it right or not. I can think of at least seven from our guild that are over seas that we played frequently with in DAoC. I "think" what you are saying is that you have american and european servers, but I am not sure if people can go from one to the other.

Caldenfor

Fana

06-06-2006, 11:25 AM

EVE operates a very successfull international server structure. Its a great idea since it ensures that there are always alot of people online no matter when you log in, and its also very nice to meet people from all over the world (my corporation in EVE has an equal split of US/EU/Australians etc, even someone from japan). SWG operated on a similar principle, although there were no "international" servers as such people could chose if they wanted to play on EU or US servercenters, and SWG had one of the strongest communities in any mmorpg.

The_Pilgrim

06-06-2006, 11:39 AM

This is good news, even if a minority of voices will always complain about GoA. I hope everyone keep in mind it was with GoA and Dark Age of Camelot/Mythic partnership that mmorpg in Europe really took off and this is no Myth.

As far as i'm concerned i've never had a single problem with GoA's server and their Customer Service. As long as we are getting the game patched and up to date with the US, i will be an happy player and customer.

And whoever says i'm biased because i'm french gets a kick in the teeth ;) Fyi i played on the Excalibur english language server on DAoC Europe not the French server. I find it very nice to play with people from all over Europe.

Garthilk

06-06-2006, 11:40 AM

Updated the WAR Guide with some of the FAQ stuff for WAR Europe.

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/page_the_war_guide.html#europe

Fana

06-06-2006, 12:13 PM

As far as i'm concerned i've never had a single problem with GoA's server and their Customer Service. As long as we are getting the game patched and up to date with the US, i will be an happy player and customer.

And whoever says i'm biased because i'm french gets a kick in the teeth ;) Fyi i played on the Excalibur english language server on DAoC Europe not the French server. I find it very nice to play with people from all over Europe.

I see that you are in France though. Note that the problems we are describing affect people *outside* of France so im sure you have had an excellent experience throughout (as said, GOA's servers run pretty much flawless, its just that that is no use to us that play from outside of france when we cant get good connectivity).

Orion_fr

06-06-2006, 12:14 PM

In fact, i think Goa is not a bad idea, it's a great partner in Europe.
Things we can do as gamers is to prevent Mythic here from the real problems that we meet in Europe.

From my side and because i know several people who worked in Issy Les Moulineaux:

- underestimating people for the success of DAOC, it takes times to have a ticket in charge on the customer support
- GM in stealth mode every time and no real interactivity with players
- too many time to have some very important updates... imagine some european that read the US forum who explain how to exploit the bug... from US side, it takes 2 or 3 weeks to be ok with a patch... in Europe, several bugs lived for months.
- a very bad organization on the web site... statistics were off during ages...

I dont about OpenTransit problem, because it's not really a problem with GOA but it can be a good idea to have a northern platform in EU may be in Germany or something like that.

Fana

06-06-2006, 12:15 PM

I dont about OpenTransit problem, because it's not really a problem with GOA.

No its not a problem for you people that play from within France, see above post.

Orion_fr

06-06-2006, 12:18 PM

And read my edit :p

Abriael

06-06-2006, 01:34 PM

One of the biggest problem with GOA has always been the honestly extremely low quality of their translations. This is a problem that will be extremized and amplified with WAR, that is based on an established world with it's lingo and literature. If goa plans to keep the translation quality it had for DAOC, that could have disasterous effects for the immersion factor of the game. And if the immersion factor is screwed...
As such, i'll give them the benefit of the doubt, encouraged by what Mark wrote, with wich he demonstrates that he perfectly knows and aknowledges that there have been problems with DAOC and that those problems NEED to be adressed for WAR.

I do think, though, that is CRUCIAL for GOA (and for Mythic to press thhis particular matter) to make an effort in hiring translators, localization supervisors and quality checking staff with an extremely strong warhammer-related background and able to concentrate their efforts on a translation that not only needs to be up to par, but it actually needs to be of exceptional quality compared to what we normally see for games' translations in europe (normally the general quality is woefully low). A standard quality game translation, made by people with little or no knowledge of the warhammer world would simply completely eradicate the players' immersion and would be extremely harmful for the success of WAR in europe.
We have to remember that the biggest part of the warhammer community is for now based in europe, so the quality of the game text is actually almost more important in europe than in the US.

All this is, of course, IMHO, well, not very H actually, but that's what i think :D

Caracca

06-06-2006, 01:37 PM

Does that mean close friends from previous games in our guild will not be able to play with us on American servers if they live in Europe? Not sure if I read it right or not. I can think of at least seven from our guild that are over seas that we played frequently with in DAoC. I "think" what you are saying is that you have american and european servers, but I am not sure if people can go from one to the other.

Caldenfor

no caldenfor what they ment is. if you bought the europian version of the game. that you could choose to play on the US servers. and vice verse. but at this time. they are planning just like the current DAoC and WoW. eu version stays in the eu. and the US version is only playeble in the US

but if you are europian. you can still buy/import/ or whatever the US version to play on the US servers ( and probably the other way around aswell :P)

hopes this clarify's it more

Daeric

06-06-2006, 01:43 PM

I just have to ask.. Does mythic have any contact with GOA at all ? or with the European comunity ? GOA has the worst support i've ever encountered. It took them over a year to fix items missing etc after a server crash. Their lines are so clogged servers keeps going done very other minute, they haven't done much to improve it either for what 4 years ?

French telecom is a joke.. How about letting a country with good broadband and good experience handle it.. put the servers in Sweden! Let Electronic arts or some other well established swedish company handle it and atleast we can be sure that there won't be uptime issues :???:

I was so dissapointed finding out GOA is gonna ruin another fine game by mythic i just had to QQ some.. hopefully enough people QQ about this decicion so mythic gives it a second thought :confused:

Bluestrike

06-06-2006, 01:44 PM

Mark you said on the previoes forum that Mythic was doing WAR in europe yourelves but I see you mention GOA and WAR in the same sentence so now I'm confused.
Goa is gonna handle the EU servers again?

Also can the player shoose the language they want to play or is it forced on us?
Just don't do a dutch translation then :-P

*edit* Okay just saw a press release from Goa, that sure ruined my day.

Garthilk

06-06-2006, 02:15 PM

Dysfinn

06-06-2006, 02:20 PM

Mythic, you're about 3 steps from the line I choose to not buy this game at all. You just took one step further to it D:

PekkaR

06-06-2006, 02:42 PM

I remain hopeful that should the Paris data center really work badly for some of Europe, then they'd consider German or Swedish data center to go alongside with it like WoW eventually did. The important thing is that the industry has noticed the potential in Europe. DAoC did well and WoW has really hammered the point home:

..World of Warcraft is breaking records in Europe... ..Fresh off its conquest of American online gamers, World of Warcraft sold an estimated 280,000 copies of the game on its first day of release, a record for an online game, and finished the weekend topping more than 380,000 units. The first-day sales numbers were greater than what analysts previously thought the entire European MMORPG market would be.

The last sentence is the point. ;)

Blizzard announced today that the MMORPG now boasts over a million European customers -- which the company points out is more than four times the previously estimated size of the European MMORPG market.

That second one is from January 2006. Linky: http://pc.ign.com/articles/682/682278p1.html

This stuff proves the potential. There are also special reasons for WAR to do well in Europe:

1) Shown by DAoC's success and WoW's PvP to Normal server ratio in Europe, PvP is very popular.

2) Warhammer has tons and tons of fans in Europe... Games Workshop is UK-based after all, and the strategy game community offers the opportunity to bring yet again new people to MMORPGs.

I'm double crossing my fingers (gonna manage that somehow) that they'll go for another data center elsewhere if really needed. :grin:

Alanthus

06-06-2006, 03:48 PM

This is the first really bad news I've read about WAR so I guess it's no surprise it's a whopper :(

I was very much looking forward to playing with my all of my european friends on weekends when the time zone issues aren't as bad, either on "their" server or on "mine" but I guess that's not going to happen. I will likely still pick up the game but there is no longer a question of spending years playing it, I will be looking for another game that supports an international community.

Someone might point out that there are still ways they could enable playing on both US and euro servers but realistically that will not happen with this construct.

I will be back reading in a couple of weeks after I have taken this in and got back to feeling positive about the game, I very much hope the next piece of negative information is a minor issue of game mechanics rather than something major like this.

Rohan

06-06-2006, 03:52 PM

I'll just have to add this to the "Things we will have to wait and see how they are implemented" list.

It could work out great if things go as planned. It could go down the drain if things fall through.

From the sound of it, it sounds like Mark and Mythic have been thinking about this for a while now and will be thinking of ways for smooth implementation.

Nishlec

06-06-2006, 04:01 PM

I find it quite interesting that Swden is never officially recognized as an option for these things, and I can never seem to understand why. Especielly when considering the large number of gamers, computer enthusiasts and fast internet connections (I mean hey, the anti-piracy organisations sure are focusing a lot of their energy here). Personally, I can't really see why you would ever want to place a data centre in France. Servers should be more centralized, like in Germany or Sweden. After the terrible lag problems that Blizzard had with WoW, I still can't see why anyone would ever consider France again. But I guess it all comes down to who can make the best offers (isn't there also somthing about French telecom companies?).

If GOA doesn't get it working correctly right away, I hope Mythic will start looking for another option as soon as possible. The last thing we want it a repeat of the horrors of French telecom services (no offense *chuckle*).

dutch_gamer

06-06-2006, 04:20 PM

IIf GOA doesn't get it working correctly right away, I hope Mythic will start looking for another option as soon as possible. The last thing we want it a repeat of the horrors of French telecom services (no offense *chuckle*).

I hope so too. I have read the horror stories from WoW in Europe. I have played on the American servers from day one and I have never really had any major issues. Yes, the server crashed when the AQ event started, but I have had the same experience with relic raids in DAoC.

I really feel like we are getting the shaft. I don't think Mark Jacobs is a bad guy or anything but I don't want this lag I keep hearing about. And two datacenters is not the solution either. When they are still based in France and will get another one in Germany, the European players will be segregated.

This news really saddens me because I am forced to play on the American servers again to have a decent connection. And it is truly no fun to have to play in the middle of the night to have the same experience as the other players. I can't keep on playing with a six hour difference with every game I play. It has really killed my dayschedule, just for a game. But if I don't do it, there will be almost nobody I can play the game with. It is hard to PvP when most people are still at work.

Anyway, I hope that Mythic will indeed pay attention to this in beta. And that they will not shrug to inform us when testers in northern Europe still have issues with their connection. This is one reason why I am glad that Mythic will start with the beta soon. Because that way I have some time before I pre-order a copy of the game, since I have to make a decision between Europe and America again. And I am almost confident they will have a collector's edition this time, which I want. I would think that GW would add a miniature of Warhammer in the box.

Amras

06-06-2006, 04:53 PM

I never really liked GOA in the short period I played there with DAOC (After 2 monts I went back on the USA servers).
At least this time the patches will be released at the same time in the USA and in Europe.

I'm sure we will have to wait and find if everything will be better this time, but still the decision to give European servers to GOA is the first thing I didn't like to hear from Mythic regarding WAR. Also because if I will buy the Euro version of the game, and then I'll see that nothing changed and GOA service is the same that we had with DAOC, I will need to buy another copy to play with the USA servers (good for Mythic, not that much for me).

Probably GOA will open servers like in DAOC, splitting the Europe community with different servers (UK, German, French, Spanish, Italian). I don't really like this idea.
I would really like to see only EURO servers where the only difference from the USA servers is the timezone. Having different servers for different (languages/nations) will only split the community, and I don't really see the good point in this (if you want to team with people that speak your language you could join guilds even in a standar server.

Fana

06-06-2006, 05:01 PM

To be honest, I think the efforts being made to support and localize the game to the Europe market are huge. I mean, honestly doing business as an MMO overseas is very difficult, execution is extremely hard to pull off. The fact that Mythic is doing so much, is really cool IMO. I guess they could have done like other games, and either not supported an European release, or even done no localization, but they've stepped up. While previous attempts haven't been perfect, they've recognized the areas for improvement and are making the steps necessary to improve things with WAR.

I mean, whats to complain about? Dollar for Dollar, Mythic is devoting more of it's time and effort to supporting European communities than probably any other MMO.

How is carting it off to GOA "devoting more of it's time and effort to supporting European communities than probably any other MMO"? To warrant such a statement they would have opened their own office in the EU, or at least asked their potential playerbase where and by whom they thought they game should be hosted. I guarantee you any poll on that matter would not have place France very high in the list of available countries.

" I guess they could have done like other games, and either not supported an European release, or even done no localization"
Name one mmo released or starting development in the last couple years that isnt offering EU players localization? Fact of the matter is, at present the EU mmorpg market is larger than the US one, and any developer not trying to tap into it would be crazy.

seb1024

06-06-2006, 05:39 PM

whislt it does not suprise me that GOA are going to run the european franchise of WAR it does sadden me incredibly...
I will not be subscribing to GOA and will be looking to source a North America client version of WAR where both my guild and freinds intend to play...

also from GOA history they are usually late in introducing patches and updates this has been witnesed often enough for DAOC itself and i no longer feel the need to pay to play a game that is far from the most upto date available that mythic themselves will provide.

GuddZilla

06-06-2006, 07:14 PM

Ohh well looks like ill be playing on the US servers then.

Larowar

06-06-2006, 07:32 PM

Hello,

sorry for the english i use a translator program

Having to play on the US and FR server Merlin mid and YS mid, I can say that for 6 years that Goa occupies of mmorpg it has been has to say DAoC, they spent 6 years of poor in technical support to very poor.

It is has to say to wait 7 days has 2 week to have the answer has a blocking of a Char in texture while passing share their system of antiquated technical support, while on the US one in 1h there was an answer!

No the on-line GM to quickly help the players in day, just an adviser who Na no right, on US there was 1 of them to connect per hour wrought at the American hour.

Not only one adviser to connect for the small problems of players, over US even the night there was 1 of them!

GM on FR when it to connect itself it to spend their time has anything to make or have to be trotted in wisp on the worlds and have to discuss without helping.

The system of payment was completely to exceed as soon as there were saturations of request,and need 1 week for resolve it or 1 month when Goa no is your credit card and was not mine because i use it on other mmorpg. There were without stop of moral harassing anti-semite and other, cheaters has the shovel, nothing was not really made to block its they were to exceed share the extent of the plays. If its continuous like its, its will be a large loss for mythic much of player which is started from DAoC Europe are left to disgust because of the technical support very no one answer.
and the server when is down the night or the week end or vacancy day no one can restart server,we need to wait the day of a guy (administrator) push a button to restart all server! 2 or 3 dat after when the server go down Friday evening .
NO please not the same 6 years of that no one years again please Mythic stop slaughter !!!!!!!!
Other I Want To use MY PASSWORD not the stupid password of GOA "Ym75u9hgg" im not a FT user i want my liberty to use my login and my password !!!

Garthilk

06-06-2006, 07:48 PM

Name one mmo released or starting development in the last couple years that isnt offering EU players localization?Name one that isn't or didn't offer EU localization at launch. Okay. Vanguard, World of Warcraft, Eve EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Ultima Online, Ashersons Call, Darkfall, 9 Dragons, Adellion, Dark and Light, Anarchy Online, shall I continue?

There is just for starters. The fact they are pushing to keep EU players on the same patch and release schedule, and still offer intially so many languages, is frankly unheard of. Perhaps, do a bit of research into the subject.

Sure, in the past have game companies eventually rolled out services to the EU? Of course. But I can count on one hand the number that have done both the US and EU at the same time.

Seriously though. If your unhappy about the current situation, not the situation from last year, or the year before. The current situation, express them the right ways. Make a tally of issues you've experianced in say the last 3 months. Track that data and present it. Or for cripes sake at least offer something constructive other than GOA sucks.

Garthilk

06-06-2006, 07:51 PM

also from GOA history they are usually late in introducing patches and updates this has been witnesed often enough for DAOC itself and i no longer feel the need to pay to play a game that is far from the most upto date available that mythic themselves will provide.Again, this issue will be resolved with WAR. From the WAR Guide.

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/page_the_war_guide.html#europe

Q. Will Europe and the US receive patches at the same time?
A. Not only will the game be released in the US and Europe simultaneously but patches and expansions will also reach both groups of players at the same time.

Larowar

06-06-2006, 07:56 PM

PekkaR

06-06-2006, 09:36 PM

And two datacenters is not the solution either. When they are still based in France and will get another one in Germany, the European players will be segregated.

Either you play on the same server with somebody or not. Some of the servers are in France, some are not. Both appear on your server list. How does that segregate anybody? The difference isn't apparent except that you can check the list for a server that will have less lag and connection problems for you. If you want to play with your friend(s) on the same server and you come from different countries, just choose any server. One of you might have a worse experience than the other, but that doesn't differ from having all the servers in France.

Language is the real community divider, although I can't see it as clearly a bad thing like some here. I think localizations are good for people who couldn't play the game in English anyway, and they probably wouldn't have played it with no localized client and no hope of communicating with most of the people they run into on their server. People wanting to play together with international friends can go for an English server like they could have if there wasn't any localization. Assuming of course that clients aren't artificially restricted to servers of certain language, which would be annoying and would mean they'd have to carefully consider the whole thing at the time of purchase. (I'd always go for the client that's in the language of the server I'll be playing on, otherwise I'd be seeing some different terminology in the UI than others which would be a bit confusing now and then.)

It's also pretty obvious that it's good if the people who want to communicate with different languages use separate forums and so on (another mark of divided community). There is very little benefit from people coming to forums and finding lots of posts and threads that they don't understand. Same thing when playing on the actual server. Localization for the (other) big language groups means better chances that most people who play on the English/International servers talk English, fixing some of the expected communication problems for us European players. (ones without localization but willing and able to communicate in the most common language of the internet)

Daeric

06-06-2006, 11:01 PM

Puki

06-06-2006, 11:19 PM

Great, GOA. Sry if I'am not really happy about this but GOA has done everything in the last 4 years to ensure that you have to hate them. No support on weekends, no ingame support, no support at the evening, the only way for contact is the webbased "Right Now" . The opentransit problem is there for over 2 years and now it should magically disapear? I don't think so.

DEVLiN

06-06-2006, 11:45 PM

I for one hope that they will have one single client, with localized servers to connect to. That way you can chose to play either on the US or EU servers if you wish, regardless of if you bought the client locally or imported it from the US.

For instance, we have guildies living in South Africa - there, with for instance WoW; only the US version was available - it took a lot of trickery to get it to work on the EU servers and it provided a major issue every single time there was a patch. Sending a EU client to him through mail turned out to never arrive, compliments of the SA mail offices.

I don't mind at all if they suggest people to play on the French, German, Italian, Spanish servers - but why separate the US English from the EU English speaking communities? Sure, there's the issue of time zones, but not everyone work daytime hours - some work in changing shifts or constant night time. Not only that, but there are quite a few french/spanish speaking communities over in the US as well, are there not?

What's the major reason to differentiate the clients? As in, people in EU not being able to (with a EU client) connect to US servers, and vice versa? Database management? That can be solved if you really want to. Let's not forget the Australians either - which client do they get to buy? and Russians?

Law issues? Have different EULA's / CoC's depending on where you decide to join. Payment and login servers? Sure enough, let GOA handle that (as long as they remove the "invoice currently in process" bug (j/k) ;)).

Not only that, but with a unified client and proper database management, you could even further increase the level of in-game support (something that was severely lacking, even borderline non-existant) here in Europe during all hours of a day. Centralized, both US and EU support personell could answer off-game or in-game support questions if they know the language in which it was written. It would remove bank holiday-nuances as well to a large extent.

Note that nothing of the above rules GOA out from handling EU servers, regardless of their location.

If Warhammer truly is the next-gen MMO it is set out to be, please make sure it tries it's best to be so on all levels, including player's choice (provide [us english], [uk english], [french], [german], [spanish], [italian] and whatever asian languages you plan on having as a choice within any client, defaulting but not limiting to the language they picked during installation) and the level of support.

Peace

06-06-2006, 11:59 PM

Well Im realy concerned about this, especialy about language segragated servers, I like the oportunity that online games give me, to talk to people from other (strange :) )countries sweeds fe.
And on the Goa subject, I think it was to be expected that mythic couldnt build their own infrastracute in such limited time, yet again its disapointing they didnt even try.

Peace

06-07-2006, 12:12 AM

That is a general trend all media companies are into at the moment. Its about controling different markets and carving out domains - they dont want the potential customers to be able to chose where to spend their money, so they make it impossible to spend it anywhere but where they agree amongst themselves they can spend it.

Dziel i rządź- polish saying, roughly translated, Divide and rule

Peace

06-07-2006, 12:18 AM

Folks,

3) If either side doesn't do its job, changes will be made.

Let me just qoute that:P
And when Im at it, will there be an english language pack to download?

Why do I ask? Beacuse if you assume that the translation will be done prefectly(and it will be pretty lacluster imo, atleast in poland ,where i am from) there are some things which are very very hard to translate fe. "barding" which translates to "kropież" in polish and is a running joke about warhammer translations in my country.

Dysfinn

06-07-2006, 12:44 AM

Oh god, every post I read in this thread makes me feel worse and worse about this.
Either:
a) GOA will do a bad job and Mythic will kick them out (Hooray)
b) GOA will do a bad job and Mythic won't kick them out (OH CHRIST)
c) GOA will do a GOOD job miraculously somehow and Mythic won't kick them out (Hmm)
Only two of those seem physically possible.

Tae

06-07-2006, 01:03 AM

Ohh well looks like ill be playing on the US servers then.

Alas, it looks as though I (and a fair few others) will be joining you.

Gahn

06-07-2006, 01:49 AM

I'm sorry, but I have to chime in here on that one... Mythic would never advise that a server be wiped clean and everyone's characters tossed out like yesterday's trash. :(

Err sry but i could even drag out the post from a Goa GM declaring that Mythic proposed to trash the db -.-

Midwinter

06-07-2006, 01:55 AM

Cadiva

06-07-2006, 02:04 AM

I see that you are in France though. Note that the problems we are describing affect people *outside* of France so im sure you have had an excellent experience throughout (as said, GOA's servers run pretty much flawless, its just that that is no use to us that play from outside of france when we cant get good connectivity).

However, I play from the UK and have played DAoC right through from closed European beta and I have never had a problem with Open Transit or with lag/disconnects other than what I would expect when there were 400+ people in one zone on a relic raid.

There are problems for sure with OT, but it does not affect the whole of Northern Europe in the same way.

As for GoA, a lot of the time people are whining at them for things they have had no real control over and as none of us, as far as I can tell, have worked for GoA or Mythic, how the hell do we know what the deal was with regards to DAoC in Europe?

Lets not forget that before GoA took the licence for DAoC, there weren't any MMORPGS that had European based servers. Now they all provide them, that's purely down to the effect of having an EU DAoC which was seen to be very successful.

This game is still months off, I'm loving all the nay saying that's coming out now without anything really being known about what's going to be happening in 3rd quarter 2007.

PS: I'll also be really happy if the whinging minority buggers off to the US servers cos then I won't have to run into them on the EU ones :)

Gahn

06-07-2006, 02:04 AM

Folks,

It is our intent to ensure that the European players of WAR are not second-class customers in any way, shape or form. That is not optional.

Also, keep something else in mind, Mythic has the time, talent and cash to have done WAR in Europe ourselves. We were prepared to do that for Imperator but we have chosen not to do so with WAR. One of the reasons is that we felt that we could not launch in Europe as successfully with WAR on our own as we can with GOA. We did our homework when we were looking at launching Imperator ourselves in Europe and based on what we learned and a lot of very careful analysis that we made this decision. We truly believe that because of this decision European players will have a better experience (on all levels) with GOA than they would have had with Mythic doing it ourselves. If you look at our very brief faq:

http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/community/faq/faq_goa.php

you will see what I mean. We are commited to a simultaneous launch in multiple languages as well as simultaneous patches for the US and European community. What could undescore our committment to our European players than that? Without the support of a strong partner, that sort of thing would be very difficult, if not impossible, for Mythic to pull off. The amount of work that will go into development, testing and localization of content on WAR dwarfs what we did on DAoC. By choosing to work again with GOA, we have signaled our committment to our European players at the cost of revenue which would have flowed in Mythic's coffers if we had done it ourslves. We believe that the cost is worth it because in the end, it will make for a better experience for the European community. If that in turn leads to increased subscribers for WAR, fantastic! However, no game's success can be guaranteed and by following this path we are doing what is necessary to help make this game's launch and lifespan in Europe a long-term, smashing success.

In terms of "one world" servers, I do wish that we could have the European players and American players all together but that is not going to happen this time. Additionally, I'm not even sure it's a great idea for both technical, social reasons (language, grouping issues) and support reasons.

Mark

Facts about your valuable EU partner:

Goa promotion of Daoc in Europe countries was next to 0 in all time (since SI launch) i played the game.
OT hubs and networks to their datacenter has been a major pain in the arse for all my gaming period, we got lag (2-3 s spike delays every 5 mins or so) for weeks before OT started to look in their routers and backbones to fix the problem (despite we as a PAYING player base started to send in both to Goa and OT Tech Office endlees pingplots showing the problems in their network), and that coming from 80% of playerbase more times that i can count on 3 hands -.-
There was an hack of various accounts that forced Goa to release new passwords for all accounts (mass mailing system that took 4-5 days to reach all customers -.-).
There was a corruption of the Prydwen server database that they acknowledged too late despite playerbase was rumoring problems of Items disappearance for days, corruption lead to discovering that they not had a valuable Backup of the DB (alas not corrupted) if not handing out a roll back of 1 week (or more), they decided to manually fix the problems asking playerbase to send em name of toon and which questable items they got (effectively wiping all MPs crafted pieces eventually had by toons) understimating the problem; they foresaw a work of weeks, which in fact went on for months!
They never had and never wanted to have any form of online support (and we ALWAYS payed same amount of cash of our Us counterparts, actually i think, overall, we are even MORE than us playerbase) besides some GMs idling on Irc channel and slapped by some E&E to log in if an encounter bugged during Toa time (erm don't even make me start on this). That said they got very polite and helpful GMs.
Overall they give the huge impression of a family conduct business with next to 0 budget under their feet.

Honeslty is beyond me that Mythic still believes in Goa as an affordable partner for anything, that said your business :p

Puki

06-07-2006, 02:06 AM

Certainly a lot of mindless GOA bashing here. Again, GOA work damn hard, probably harder than any company I know. They work crazy hours, slaving their asses off for an oft ungrateful minority. There have been problems with opentransit and france telecom intermittently (certainly not constantly) that could still exist though, again, someone in this thread mentioned an upgrade?

Regardless, wait and see. GOA won't mess this up. They didn't "mess" DAoC up.

The problems with opentransit are there for the last 2,5 years and they are still not solved. And everytime you talk about it the gamemasters only say "there is nothing we can do about it". And now I should scream my joy about them taking over into the world? Yeeehaaa! One big cheer for more lags, one big cheer for no ingame support, one big cheer for no support on weekends (the time most of the people play). Yes, they can work as hard as they want but they suck at communication with customers and in customerorientation. And after all this I really should look forward to the fact that GOA is hosting WAR in europe? No, thank you. Most of us existing GOA customers had high hopes that Mythic would host it by themself and that for some good reasons

Amras

06-07-2006, 02:12 AM

I hope that GOA won't mess WAR up.

But if you ever playd in the USA servers and also in the GOA servers you will notice a HUGE difference, not only for the delay in the patches.

I'm sure they will do theyr best to give us a great support and a great game experience, but it wasn't like that for DAOC, and we have the right to be worried for WAR.
And I don't really like this post from MJB:
"3) If either side doesn't do its job, changes will be made."
Because if they will need to do changes while the game is started everything wil be bad for the Euro players.

While playing in the USA with Doac I found the best community and the best support I've ever found in any other game, and I'm worried that is not Mythic that will directly support us in Europe.

Yes, I also don't like segregating the server for languages. I know that it will help people that don't speak english to play, but I know Tons of people that even if they don't speak english are able to play on English servers. They will play with people that speak theyr language and they will learn the basic "english game sentences" to communicate with others.

Midwinter

06-07-2006, 02:13 AM

Facts about your valuable EU partner

I wouldn't really call them facts.

Goa promotion of Daoc in Europe countries was next to 0 in all time (since SI launch) i played the game.

Besides WoW, can you name many mmos that have had TV advertising? I saw DAoC advertised often enough in computer and wargaming magazines.

OT hubs and networks to their datacenter has been a major pain in the arse for all my gaming period, we got lag (2-3 s spike delays every 5 mins or so) for weeks before OT started to look in their routers and backbones to fix the problem (despite we as a PAYING player base started to send in both to Goa and OT Tech Office endlees pingplots showing the problems in their network), and that coming from 80% of playerbase.

Not 80% at all, in the slightest. The complaints on Freddyshouse (where you post aye?) are from a tiny portion of players. Prydwen-stealther lot ahoy.

There was an hack of various accounts that forced Goa to release new passwords for all accounts (mass mailing system that took 4-5 days to reach all customers -.-).

Better safe than sorry surely? You'd rather they'd not asked people to change?

There was a corruption of the Prydwen server database <snip>
You're kidding right? They encounter a (pretty big) unforeseen problem and worked night and day (8-10 seemed the norm for a time) to get it fixed in a heroic effort and you complain? Erg. I honestly don't know how they could have reacted better than they did.

They never had and never wanted to have any form of online support (and we ALWAYS payed same amount of cash of our Us counterparts, actually i think, overall, we are even MORE than us playerbase)

GMs are ingame (if invisible) you know. :p

Honeslty is beyond me that Mythic still believes in Goa as an affordable partner for anything, that said your business :p
Mythic are certainly more in the know than any single poster here. GOA have a lot of very talented staff. Will they need to expand for a game the size of WAR? Yes, of course. Will people be happy to move to a (rather nice area of) Paris? Yep I'd say so :)

Midwinter

06-07-2006, 02:15 AM

The problems with opentransit are there for the last 2,5 years and they are still not solved. And everytime you talk about it the gamemasters only say "there is nothing we can do about it".

Which, incidentally, is true.
one big cheer for no ingame support,

Support for WAR will very likely be different to DAoC. Wait and see :)
one big cheer for no support on weekends (the time most of the people play).
Same again, support for WAR will very likely be different to DAoC. Wait and see :)
Most of us existing GOA customers had high hopes that Mythic would host it by themself and that for some good reasons
No, a tiny percentage did. Many (usually the ones not posting complaints) are perfectly happy GOA are running it. Look, if it's really that bad, play on the US servers. Didn't people say that about DAoC? Ah yep they did and... three weeks later they were back on the European servers. Ho hum :(

Midwinter

06-07-2006, 02:24 AM

One of the biggest problem with GOA has always been the honestly extremely low quality of their translations. <snip>
Last one (for a bit, promise).

I notice you're from Italy which probably means you played the "Italian version" which was run by CTO, NOT GOA and yep, half the game was still in English at the time CTO went bankrupt. GOA have never done Italian translation.

Gahn

06-07-2006, 02:25 AM

I wouldn't really call them facts.

Besides WoW, can you name many mmos that have had TV advertising? I saw DAoC advertised often enough in computer and wargaming magazines.

They didn't even bought a newspaper banner, or an internet banner, nada nix nicht (bar something during toa launch), never stated that i wanted tv advertising.

Not 80% at all, in the slightest. The complaints on Freddyshouse (where you post aye?) are from a tiny portion of players. Prydwen-stealther lot ahoy.

They wiped 3 weeks ago the sticky where all pingplots from last 1.5 years where stored (strangely nuff eh?), i guess u are one of the few who didn't had problems with OT, personally in my alliance we had compliants from all over Europe, Sweden, Norway, Uk, Italy, Spain, Greece, name one country and it's there.
Also u can have a slightly idea at what problem OT is by reactions of 90% of ppl in this thread alone bar u ^^

Better safe than sorry surely? You'd rather they'd not asked people to change?
You're kidding right? They encounter a (pretty big) unforeseen problem and worked night and day (8-10 seemed the norm for a time) to get it fixed in a heroic effort and you complain? Erg. I honestly don't know how they could have reacted better than they did.

U gotta be kidding me ofc, heroic effort? sure, professional solution? No way.
Also u're obviosuly one of the non affected by the problem, or u played Excal. There were peeps unable to play their main toons for 5 Months, and if they decided to stop paying sub their toons weren't looked by, get your facts right pls.

GMs were ingame and responding to reports. Sure a few raiders could tell you this (when mobs didn't spawn etc).

GMs were ingame during daytime hours and not all days (during the Prydwen incident they were even MIA), not at all during evenings (aka prime time) and could sometimes be contacted via Irc by E&E if a bug occured let's say after 22 cet. Ofc if u are a player playing at off peak noon hours well get a job :p

Mythic are certainly more in the know than any single poster here. GOA have a lot of very talented staff. Will they need to expand for a game the size of WAR? Yes, of course. Will people be happy to move to a (rather nice area of) Paris? Yep I'd say so :)

Mythic isn't certainly more in the know of how goa handled their playerbase, playerbase is since it's we the ones who played the game and experienced the service -.-

Midwinter

06-07-2006, 02:27 AM

Mythic isn't certainly more in the know of how goa handled their playerbase, playerbase is since it's we the ones who played the game and experienced the service -.-
If an MMO company, with vast resources at their disposal, based their business plans on the advice of a few disgruntled players with thorns in their paws, the world would be a sad place :(

Gahn

06-07-2006, 02:28 AM

If an MMO company, with vast resources at their disposal, based their business plans on the advice of a few disgruntled players with thorns in their paws, the world would be a sad place :(

Ofc they rather would base their decisions on few fanboys? Sure :D

Midwinter

06-07-2006, 02:35 AM

Ofc they rather would base their decisions on few fanboys? Sure :D

Fanboys and the contentedly-silent majority I think you'll find :)

Gahn

06-07-2006, 02:38 AM

Fanboys and the contentedly-silent majority I think you'll find :)

Oks let's say u gonna play Eu and am gonna play Us and we are all happy and dandy xD

Btw so u can think about it, silent majority don't even knows existance of Game Forums in 90% of cases ^^

DEVLiN

06-07-2006, 02:48 AM

Enough.

GOA did some things right, some things wrong. That doesn't mean they don't learn from previous experiences. It might very well be a lot different this time around since Mythic/GOA will be involved in this from scratch.

The thing is, they have to pull an outstanding performance this time around; people that did have problems with them in the past will not be very forgiving this time around. Word-of-mouth works both ways to promote/demote a game.

Amras

06-07-2006, 02:48 AM

The contentedly-silent majority is usually the majority that don't really care. ;)

Jokke

06-07-2006, 03:50 AM

i cannot belive they gave Goa the task..:cry:

Shillen

06-07-2006, 04:12 AM

Name one that isn't or didn't offer EU localization at launch. Okay. Vanguard, World of Warcraft, Eve EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Ultima Online, Ashersons Call, Darkfall, 9 Dragons, Adellion, Dark and Light, Anarchy Online, shall I continue?

HUH? WoW had EU localization in BETA, nevermind at launch. Get your facts straight. I don't know if the other games you mentioned are accurate, but since one of your examples is horribly inaccurate I'm going to assume that others are as well.

Rawen

06-07-2006, 04:24 AM

MBJ wants to compete with GOA against Blizzard in EU.So i have a simpel question.Will WAR (EU) have 24 hour ingame support ?

I ask this simply because last time i used "right now" i got an answer weeks later if this problem is still there.The last time i did this in WOW the GM contacted me within a few minutes and solved the problem.

Ibaun

06-07-2006, 04:28 AM

Last time I did that in WoW it took about 24 hours, while most of my rightnow appeals were solved pretty soon. Not everybody was that happy about Blizzard's support team.

Apart from that, I'm confident by reading Mbj's replies that GOA will do a good job, and the problems we had with DAoC will be over now. People learn.

Let the games begin!

Fana

06-07-2006, 04:35 AM

Name one that isn't or didn't offer EU localization at launch. Okay. Vanguard, World of Warcraft, Eve EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Ultima Online, Ashersons Call, Darkfall, 9 Dragons, Adellion, Dark and Light, Anarchy Online, shall I continue?

There is just for starters. The fact they are pushing to keep EU players on the same patch and release schedule, and still offer intially so many languages, is frankly unheard of. Perhaps, do a bit of research into the subject.

Sure, in the past have game companies eventually rolled out services to the EU? Of course. But I can count on one hand the number that have done both the US and EU at the same time.

Seriously though. If your unhappy about the current situation, not the situation from last year, or the year before. The current situation, express them the right ways. Make a tally of issues you've experianced in say the last 3 months. Track that data and present it. Or for cripes sake at least offer something constructive other than GOA sucks.

Very unfair remark from you there to be honest. If you had read my posts you would know that i do *Not* think that "GOA sucks" nor have i ever said so. In fact i like GOA, i like their GM's, and i think they are technically competent. What i dont like is Opentransit, which GOA has no control over. As for expressing ourselves and making tallies of issues - i can see you know nothing about what we have had to go through in the EU: Every time the problems have resurfaced we have been asked to create pingplots and send them to GOA, many of us have done so myself included, on numerous occations. It hasnt helped. So we have definetly tried our damndest to help GOA (or rather OpenTransit) resolve the problem.
Also, every last one of those games that you listed has options for EU players. Maybe not from day one, but id be perfectly willing to wait a little if it meant i didnt have to play the game on servers placed in France. Or if Mythic simply sold the US copy here from the start, at least to those countries where the population has adequate english skill (nordic countries, UK, netherlands etc etc).
As for offering US and EU players the same patch and release cycle being practically unheard of, that is not true either. EVE does it, SWG does it, DDO practically does it (few days delay), WoW does it etc. The later also offer multiple languages.

dutch_gamer

06-07-2006, 04:56 AM

Is anyone on here still playing DAoC in Europe? If so, I would like to know if there are still issues with them. I wonder if they truly isn't any support during the weekends. Because if that is so, why trust them to do a better job with WAR? They should do a good job RIGHT NOW, not in the future but now. I am not sure why I am supposed to expect them to do a better job with WAR when others are saying that they don't a good job with DAoC right now. Maybe Mythic can try to do some research with a poll on the site of GOA.

I just want to know the truth about the servers of GOA. I can't deny that it can't be the vocal-minority that is making it seem worse than it is. But what if they aren't the minority? Because the European and American copies are most likely directed to only the servers on the same continent, I can't take any risk. I just don't feel like buying a European copy of the game when all these horror stories are true.

It is just too bad that service nowadays means localization instead of allowing both copies on the same set of servers as in EQ1 (at least). I know for sure that in the Netherlands and Sweden most people have broadband. So having a server in America doesn't matter because the ping is usually very good. Heck, in WoW I usually had a better ping than some Americans with broadband. The amount of people in the Netherlands having a 20 Megabit connection is increasing rapidly (ADSL2+).

Anyway, not sure why I mentioned all this. :p I just hoped for the same amount of choice as with EQ1 (I can't say I liked the game, but I did like that all servers were accesible).

Peace

06-07-2006, 05:14 AM

Or if Mythic simply sold the US copy here from the start, at least to those countries where the population has adequate english skill (nordic countries, UK, netherlands etc etc).
.
"Adequate english skill" oh my god.. I just had to quote this gem...

Jape

06-07-2006, 05:25 AM

Well, this is how well GOA runs euro/daoc:

When glastonbury (european classic server) opened, our guild rerolled from US servers to euro. That was about 15 players.

About 1½ months later everyone just quit because of unplayable game (lag). Group RvR is kinda impossible when theres LD every 15 min.

I dont know GOA's excuses for this lag and why it wasnt fixed, but obviously nothing was done about it (what i heard is that it had been going on for years).

So, thanks mythic for choocing "great partner".

Archangel-WHA

06-07-2006, 05:49 AM

Gahn

06-07-2006, 06:09 AM

So, I'm someone that's never even heard of GOA before, I mean, what does it even stand for? But being in Europe means I'm going to get them. The problem is that you guys are already going through and trashing their name, which definately isn't an exciting prospect for me and other prospective gamers. In an effort to guide the discussion a bit there are a couple of things I, personally, would like to know from those of you that are experienced enough that have been asked but have been left unanswered:

1. What about the right now? So what is happening for DAOC right now on the GOA servers? was it just teething problems, or are the problems still happening now? maybe someone would like to have a test and see what happens? Only, I don't really know or care much about their history, it's what they're going to do that matters to me most.

Situation RIGHT NOW is quite good, last MAJOR lag *beep* was 2 months ago.
That is for the networking platform part and from an English Server point of view.
That said :
We still going round touching wood and crossing fingers that OT solved the problem defo cause it happened countless times that all gone good for some weeks and all of a sudden game became unplayable, still some zones under heavy stress are unbarable for many players (can't even login sometimes like it was last weeks when all 3 realms concetrated in one zone, let's say 500 chars max anyway) and this has prolly more to do to their Server Platform [and before some smartass comes in screaming it ain't true u can check thread here http://forums.freddyshouse.com/showthread.php?t=197583], u still get now and then the scary double red square (which means your char is running around but your client is losing connex to server so u don't really know what's going on server side) and u either go linkdead or get back in control of your char in RvR to find that some1 wtfpwned meanwhile u were lagging ^^

2. What about promises? MJB has come along and promised us that they would do a good job this time. But, what I'd like to know is if this was promised last time, what were the terms? was it a firm promise, or were Mythic "dabbling in the unknown" as it were, trying to find a good footing? Because again: it could be explained off a teething problems.

I bring you questions.

Nothing was promised last time (still i'd like to point out that Eu customers payed same amount of Us ones but NEVER had same kind of payback from Goa, no appeal service on line etc), but u can understand very well that once u experienced some major ups u tend to be majorly cautious on believing anything coming out from the usual mouths.

Garthilk

06-07-2006, 06:26 AM

HUH? WoW had EU localization in BETA, nevermind at launch. Get your facts straight. I don't know if the other games you mentioned are accurate, but since one of your examples is horribly inaccurate I'm going to assume that others are as well.WoW had EU localization, but not at launch. That fact is straight. They didn't do a US and EU launch at the same time. No disputing that.

Garthilk

06-07-2006, 06:29 AM

I would love to see and read a coherant list of things that are currently going wrong with the whole GOA thing. Unfortunately I don't have the personal experiance, but I want to know what is going wrong now.

Senden

06-07-2006, 07:30 AM

Well a lot of the lag problems won't be about now would they, the DAoC EU servers don't have half the original fanbase. I've heard way too many horror stories about DAoC EU to even want to trust GOA now. This leaves me with two choices, play on potentially laggy servers and potentially end up having patches a lot later than the US, or play on the US servers and run the risk of having servers with a lot less people on for my prime time, neither is very promising tbh.

I shall still remain optimistic regarding GOA but WAR is going to be leaps forward from DAoC and it really wouldn't suprise me to see the lag coming back early on and if it does, there will be a lot of unhappy customers. We should all remain optimistic about the situation because it looks like GOA is here to stay and we have to either like it or lump it.

Mbj

06-07-2006, 08:18 AM

Folks,

Let me make one thing clear from the contract:

GOA's level and quality of support must equal or exceed Mythic support

If they don't do that, the deal is off. Now, does that clear things up a bit?

Also, for those that are saying that GOA failed to bring lots of customers to the game, that is total nonsense. At its peak, DAoC subscribers in Europe dwarfed all the competition. Our numbers there (which at the time was a far less robust market than it is today) were better than we expected them to be. If GOA had handled Italy and other territories from the beginning, our numbers would have been even higher.

Again, I'm not saying that GOA was perfect, they weren't, Mythic wasn't perfect either. We both have learned a lot over the last 5 years and we expect to learn even more over the next two. We have contract language that assures that GOA's support and effort will not only be even better than last time but that it will have to be the equal or better than Mythic's support. If that isn't good enough for those that are complaining or worrying, than there is nothing more I or anyone can say that will change your mind. And when that happens, I will stop talking about it because it is pointless.

Mark

mts

06-07-2006, 09:22 AM

Hi, I registered here just to reply regarding these news about GOA hosting the european servers. First of all I'd like to thank Mr. Mark for replying here, very nice to see that.

Anyways, on to my point. I played the US version of DAoC when it was released and switched to the european beta when it started to play with my friends. I played for several years and the only complaint I have about GOA are 2 things: delayed patches because of translation and information flow. Im afraid to go near the european version because of this and I'm pretty sure 80% of the people who played euro DAoC for an extended period will feel like this (atleast all my friends share my view).

Waiting for months just to be able to play the same content as our american brothers get instantly was a huge demotivating factor and the only reason I stayed euro was because of the community we had developed there.

I think GOA will raise alot of red flags, it did for me atleast.

Best regards, Mats from Norway.

Skaven

06-07-2006, 09:23 AM

Folks,

Let me make one thing clear from the contract:

GOA's level and quality of support must equal or exceed Mythic support

If they don't do that, the deal is off. Now, does that clear things up a bit?

Personally there wasn't that many problems I had with GOA, most of the stuff was out of their hands such as the lovely opentransit. My problem was with that sometimes I felt that my feedback wasn't valued as much as say a us player would of been. Granted, it has got better with the introduction of in-game polls etc, but the europeans seem to of got the short end of the stick - i.e no testserver, no team leads to report back to there overseas counterparts, no in game support such as gm's... yadda yadda the list goes on.

Some people felt that having a test server was an invaluable tool to testing new specs, working out in game mechanics etc. Whist im sure this is not what mythic had intended this server to be for none the less it happens, thus giving them an advantage.

Also, a big factor for us brits for having the low populations on our servers was the marketing, there is none at all. To be honest, unless you actually specifically type in google euro daoc you won't find anything at all about it apart from the usa servers.

Just hope more nearer the time of the release more info on the above will be released so I can make an informed decision of where to put my money.

Bluestrike

06-07-2006, 09:23 AM

How about player's oppinion, there were polls on the DAOC US servers, did Goa run the same polls for you or are you only serving the US version players?

I hope there will be no location specific servers, germans have 5k players but the english players are only 1500 scattered over 5 servers at the moment of typing.

So I rater see a mixed servers but localized text and a general chat channel and a localized chat channel (default).

But since GW is located in the UK I guess they too have to put up with GOA, or are they getting free accounts on the US servers?

I don't want to play outside peek hours again, but I also don't want a middle man between me and the game developer because it feels like i'm pulling the short end.
So I got a tough choice to make :-)

*edit* fixed few typo's and the guy above has some good points :P

Abriael

06-07-2006, 09:41 AM

I notice you're from Italy which probably means you played the "Italian version" which was run by CTO, NOT GOA and yep, half the game was still in English at the time CTO went bankrupt. GOA have never done Italian translation.

Assuming is never a good idea. I did play the CTO version, but then moved to GOA, until i decided to finally move to the US servers.
GOA did a lot translation work for the italian server Deira (if they did it directly or outsurced it, that i don't know, but the responsibility for the quality lies on GOA wether they outsurce or not) picking up from what was already done by CTO (another bad choice, because the CTO translation was extremely poor to begin with, and a good translation and quality team would have noticed and corrected it). The translation is full of typos, grammar errors, false friends, inconsistencies and conflicts. But i wasn't only talking about the italian version anyway. The translation work done by GOA on a general level is poor. Not even the french version is up to par, not to mention the others. As many other game publishers around the world, they underrated the importance of an elegant and well done translation, and it shows.
I think that a similar policy for WAR would be absolutely inacceptable (it wasn't even with DAOC, but oh, well), expecially given the fact that WAR's translations will have to be based on already established and consolidated lore, literature and style (it'll have for sure a lot of material withwich GW never tackled directly, and that will have to be translated with a style that doesn't conflict with the actual GW translations for each country), and this will make it 10 times more difficult.
Without an hell of a translation team, with exremely competent and warhammer-educated native speakers (wich sorely lacked in DAOC), i can't see it as coming out as well as it needs. Of course if GOA decides to radically change it's previous policies regarding this matter, all is possible. Everyone can learn from their errors, but denying the actual fact that those errors were made doesn't help any.

Murdoque

06-07-2006, 09:51 AM

Reading this was quite a shock - the asumption that WAR will be hostet bei mythic itself was a great relieve for me at that time.
MTS summarized my feelings quite accurate - a LOT of red flags here - because of the above mentioned points (btw i played DaoC since Release and just decided to quit - even for me the time comes when i can t abide seeing another Druid standing with empty eyes in the porterkeep... hehe).
If there is only the vaguest possibility that Goa will host WAR i will buy my game from the us, because i rather live with not being able to play at prime time as to wait for months for content, have no ingame support - and as a result as having to wait for said patch such a long time, to see that every last bit of new thing has been listet and given a walk through on every board and internetsite available.
Sorry for the sermon - but the shock was to great - even for a sturdy goblin as myself - grabs his magic mushrooms and goes back to his cave...

Bear

06-07-2006, 09:53 AM

Please just make things "kinda relaxed" ;) when it comes to who can play where, and we as players will work out where we want to play.

At the risk of sounding fanboish (anyone that knows me knows I'm not), and not meaning to be a bear on the subject (well actually I can't help it :D ), raging against the machine in this case is just not worth it imo.

1. Mbj has made it perfectly clear what they expect out of this other company.

2. Mythic is a business that relies on having customers that will subscribe to their game over a period of time. I don't think that they'd enter into a deal with someone that they thought couldn't do a good job. I'm quite sure that Mythic is well aware of any problems this company may have had in the past, and have addressed those issues.

I think as long as there's no "hardships" put in place that wouldn't allow people to play on whatever server they want, then we should just move on before it makes the whole community seem like a bunch of malcontents ala another game's forums. I'd say save it for if/when there's a real issue and we really do need to band together as a community and get something changed.

Like if they don't let us have sea battles! :razz:

Alanthus

06-07-2006, 10:20 AM

Hmmm, trying to sum up issues here:

- Translations, patches etc. for EU (timing, quality...)

Has been answered in this thread but everyone I think realizes that the actual result will not be known until after release. DAOC-EU level is not acceptable to players today.

- Latency, connection stability issues

This issue is a little murky in europe as it is dependant not only on the country you play from but also your ISP, there are facilities in at least Sweden, Germany and the UK that have very good connections to the biggest ISP's throughout europe so it's quite possible to address both latency and connection stability. That said it has been a fact since internet arrived in europe that some countries have much more stable connections (not necessarily lower average latency though) to the US than to many countries in europe. Many players in the UK, Scandinavia and the Netherlands will likely be considering playing on US servers both due to connection stability and language issues. The more this is addressed beforehand the more likely it is that players will get an enjoyable game experience.

- In game support availability

Has also been addressed from a contractual standpoint but again the GOA experience so far leaves a lot to be desired. It has to be at the same level as in the US at least, it will still appear to be less due to language issues and the simple fact that development work is done in the US. As a side note here I have done support for both european and US companies for over 15 years and while US customers may appear more demanding that is largely an illusion based on different cultures and language quirks.

- US and EU players playing together.

I notice that there has been no responses to this, I would assume from having a 3rd party running EU that the best solution for the player (choosing server freely regardless of if the game is bought in the EU or the US) is out. The question then becomes if players will be blocked from getting the version they prefer, with a contract in place with GOA this is something I would assume is already decided. Will you be able to play on US/EU servers regardless of IP, billing address etc. and simply based on the version you buy?

- In game language issues and ethnic tension

This hasn't been brought up yet but it will be I'm sure and it would be interesting to hear Mythic's and others ideas on this. Essentially what has happened on english language servers is that languages that do not have their own servers have essentially hijacked specific servers, the game experience certainly suffers from being yelled at for speaking english on an officially english speaking server... Will this be an issue addressed by in game support, will certain servers be suggested as good choices for large communities of players speaking a language not supported by specific servers yet etc.

Hrm, ok, baby woke up so will cut this short, I'm sure I missed some stuff...

Ryuno

06-07-2006, 10:29 AM

GOA bashing aside, I think its a big big shame that EU and US players can't play together. That was one thing I was really looking forward to with WAR. :cry:

Ethandril

06-07-2006, 10:34 AM

...GOA's level and quality of support must equal or exceed Mythic support
If they don't do that, the deal is off. ...

Quoted for truth.

Thats all what players, who had problems with GOA, are hoping for.
(I mean the part "GOA's level and quality...", and not "... the deal is off. ...")

Thank you, Mr. Mark, for this statement!

But i have to say again, i haved played on the US-Servers, so i dont have any experience
with GOA.

Mbj

06-07-2006, 10:44 AM

dutch_gamer

06-07-2006, 10:45 AM

- US and EU players playing together.

I notice that there has been no responses to this, I would assume from having a 3rd party running EU that the best solution for the player (choosing server freely regardless of if the game is bought in the EU or the US) is out. The question then becomes if players will be blocked from getting the version they prefer, with a contract in place with GOA this is something I would assume is already decided. Will you be able to play on US/EU servers regardless of IP, billing address etc. and simply based on the version you buy? .

I would like to know this as well. Blizzard forced Europeans to play on the European servers because they blocked certain creditcards from Europe. You had to jump through hoops to actually play on the American servers. Right now, I don't have any means to do this again. So it will be a lot tougher for me to get to play on the American servers when they don't accept my Mastercard. So pretty please with sugar on top, allow us Europeans to play on the American servers. ;)

I want to say one thing about the comment on one world server. I think that customers who want this, expect everyone to speak English. If you don't, such a server is simply not meant for you. It is just that northern Europeans almost all know how to speak and type in English. Especially in the Netherlands, American English is the trend. Most trendy commercials are in English because English is catchy for some reason.

Note: I am not here to attack anyone. I will still play Warhammer and most likely on an American server. I actually like Mythic as a company and I have nothing against anyone who works there. I just want to make sure that I don't scare Mythic off on this forum, that is not my intention.

mts

06-07-2006, 10:52 AM

Dysfinn

06-07-2006, 10:53 AM

dutch_gamer

06-07-2006, 10:55 AM

The lack of CS from GOA or connectivity issues wasnt a problem for me at all, the only problems were the delayed patches and lack of information on them from GOA (when they would arrive etc).

This contract with GOA, is it the same one you had for DAoC or is it a new exclusive one for WAR? I really hope its a new one and that patches will be released at the same time for both versions.

Mbj has already responded to this and has told us that the patches will be at the SAME time, this time around. So have no worries about this. They won't have delayed patches again with Warhammer.

I know this has nothing to do with this thread, but maybe Mbj is still reading. :p
Will there be English speakers at the Gamesday in Cologne/Köln in Germany on the 6th of August (at the demonstration of the game that is)? I can understand German but I am just not that good at speaking it. Unless I want to tick off some Germans by misusing "die, der, das, etc".

Ethandril

06-07-2006, 11:02 AM

I really understand the fact, that "one-game-world" isn't the best way to provide an
mmorpg, especially the language barrier. So you have to set the game in different
languages like german, french, italian or spanish.

But, what about the british server(s)? I mean, amercian and british english are
at least the same language! (I fear the flame ... ;) )

Ok, to my point, can players with the UK-account play on US-Servers and reverse?

DEVLiN

06-07-2006, 11:09 AM

Realistically, a one world server will not happen
To be fair though, it isn't what we're (or atleast I am) asking for either. :)

What we're asking for is the option and ability to pick whichever language/location server we want from a single client. Not having to purchase another client just to play in the US or in the EU. Several servers, all with their dedicated languages - and the options to pick whichever one we as players want to play on, for whatever reasons (be it playtime hours, pre-existing friendships/guilds and so on and so forth).

To simplify the request; adding another tab in the GUI with "US English" next to the others.

Shapechanger

06-07-2006, 11:33 AM

I know this makes me the oddball out, but in DAoC on Percival there was a very strong European presence in Midgard.

They would consistently take our relics at 4 AM EST. Everytime we would earn them back in some very tough fights primetime, and then have them stolen back again in the dead of night.

Because WAR will allow enemies to ransack captial cities, I really DO NOT want a huge 4 AM presence of bored Europeans pillaging my server, not thank you!

In a PvP game it is just way much more fun and healthy to have people on generally the same time zones.

Alanthus

06-07-2006, 11:35 AM

Folks,

Realistically, a one world server will not happen anytime in the near future with the main reason being customer support as well as social issues. ...<snip>

Marc,

I don't think anyone is asking for a one world server, at least not by the general definition of the term. It is a fact though that quite a few countries in northern europe are very close to the US both socially, culturally and linguistically and the only thing separating them is time zone really so the question still remains if it will be possible for people from countries like the UK, Scandianavia (yeah, it's several countries but everyone my age or younger speaks and writes english) and the Netherlands primarily will be able to play on the US servers at all or at least be able to buy the US version and play it that way?

Having europeans on the US servers actually add quite a bit to the experience of quite a few players I have met that play daytime in the US due to work hours, personal reasons or simple preference even though they play from mainland US.

Ethandril

06-07-2006, 11:37 AM

... I really DO NOT want a huge 4 AM presence of bored
Europeans pillaging my server, not thank you! ...

ROFL :D

We aren't bored, we just know the best time to get them ;)

Abriael

06-07-2006, 11:38 AM

They would consistently take our relics at 4 AM EST. Everytime we would earn them back in some very tough fights primetime, and then have them stolen back again in the dead of night.
Because WAR will allow enemies to ransack captial cities, I really DO NOT want a huge 4 AM presence of bored Europeans pillaging my server, not thank you!

Welcome to the world of 24/7 servers.
In any case it's already been hinted more than once that the campaign will be LONG and as such impossible to just conclude in one night.

In a PvP game it is just way much more fun and healthy to have people on generally the same time zones.

So that the ones that can't play during peak hours are forced to play in the sahara desert of nothingness?

Yay! More segregation!

mts

06-07-2006, 11:40 AM

Mbj has already responded to this and has told us that the patches will be at the SAME time, this time around. So have no worries about this. They won't have delayed patches again with Warhammer.

Okay if this has been specifically adressed my Mr. Mark I apologize. Its just that I have been burned badly by GOA before and I'm leaning towards the US version as of now until I'm somehow convinced that GOA will change for WAR.

If this indeed is the scenario I would suggest getting the word out there that maybe a different office or team will handle WAR or how much they have changed etc. Because I have a feeling that huge amounts of european gamers who have had experience with GOA will flock towards the US version of the game... :/

Shapechanger

06-07-2006, 11:49 AM

So that the ones that can't play during peak hours are forced to play in the sahara desert of nothingness?

I really don't mind the occasional guy from overseaas on my server, we have a French guy in our guild who I'd hate to see go! They are nighters and play when we play. I used to work nights and know what it is like to face a dead world.

What I don't want, personally, is it made so easy for Europeans to play on a server 7 or 10 hours off (Im PST now) that there is a huge population in the dead of night ransacking our captial city.
And each day we wake up to the aftermath, or with them inside our gates. I've been there, done that, and it was not one bit fun. No thank you.

As to 24/7 servers and all that, sure. But you know there is something to be said for 600 online in one realm and 45 in the other. It's just more wholesome and enjoyable all around if the 600 aren't having another pve experience, and the 60 aren't running for their lives.

This type of thing can be helped with localized servers. Those who really need to play off timezone can, and will always find a way around. For WoW I offered to mail out a couple of copies to France, and I'm sure in your community or guild there are those doing the same for the few nightowls.

But to just open the doors to 600 Americans to come and play on your server when you are all sleeping, it would be a disaster for you. Anyone who's been on the receiving end in a conquer realm situation knows how bad it hurts to bend over every night.

Abriael

06-07-2006, 11:57 AM

What I don't want, personally, is it made so easy for Europeans to play on a server 7 or 10 hours off (Im PST now) that there is a huge population in the dead of night ransacking our captial city.
And each day we wake up to the aftermath, or with them inside our gates. I've been there, done that, and it was not one bit fun. No thank you.

Honestly, if you don't like Galroth and his goons (yes, i know what you're talking about, and i'm as well on the receiving end) to take relics at night, work with european players in your realm to make sure they're organized and involved enough to defend during the wee hours. There aren't european players only on midgard, there are decently sized european parts of the community even on Albion and on TreeHuggersLand. More than enough to send galroth & co home in a coffin if they were any decently organized.
It's not like europeans go only to one realm (or faction in the case of WAR), as there will be europeans able to attack, there will be others able to defend. If they don't it's their fault, not the fault of the server.

Shapechanger

06-07-2006, 12:15 PM

LAF, yeah Galroth & his goons. The issue is that Hibernia always had no presence in the wee AM hours... Many a night I'd wake up to defend and there would literally be between 6 and 15 level 60s online to defend. We'd all be there and be dead in a flash.

It's convenient to say, rely on your resources to combat thiers.. but we had no resources because it was 4 AM.

They had Euro players and we didn't. I mean, what you gonna do? Get your teeth kicked in while sleeping. Nothing you can do about that.

Abriael

06-07-2006, 12:20 PM

I would tell that to the hibs that i constantly meet roaming during american wee hours. "hey, you don't exist!" Meybe they'll disappear... hopefully they'll leave their realm points behind, though.
If they would defend, instead of just continue to roam the albion frontier, Galroth would have a much harder time. But it's for the rest of their realm to involve and motivate them.

PS: since when hibernia has level 60s? I knew that Mythic loved the tree huggers more than us, but wasn't informed about that, yet :P

Bluestrike

06-07-2006, 12:22 PM

I don't want a one world server as I completely understand langue issues for players not that good with english or whatever language.

What I like to see is mixed servers of which some are apointed to "free for all but speak english in public, and custom support in english" where anyone regardless of their location can play on and run by Mythic :-P

Wasn't it possible to let GOA only handle all non english european servers for example?
Wel I guess its not that simple mostly involving money deals at that point and logistics like 2 versions unless you could shoose during install or buy the game online in a STEAM kind of way :-)

Ibaun

06-07-2006, 12:37 PM

Oh pls, let's not involve Steam with this, it'll be hard enough as it is :x

Kazgut

06-07-2006, 12:37 PM

I really hope you guys keep to your word with this, WoW had french servers and let me tell you WoW europe is absolutely horrible seeing this being rerepeated by Mythic (Having Camelot as there past french server idea) would make me cry inside if it is yet again very less then desired.

dutch_gamer

06-07-2006, 12:40 PM

To be honest, I am not quite sure how Europeans could take the relic at 4 AM est or pst, whatever American timezone it is. Especially since that would be at least 10 am central European time. I would think that most people work around that time and if it is during the weekend, who cares. And like Abriael has said this won't be happening in WAR because you can't take over a city in just a short amount of time.

It is silly to put restrictions into place to keep some Europeans off of the American servers. I really don't want to be forced to play on laggy servers in France and I also much rather play with my American friends from my DAoC time.

Shapechanger

06-07-2006, 12:43 PM

What I like to see is mixed servers of which some are apointed to "free for all but speak english in public, and custom support in english" where anyone regardless of their location can play on and run by Mythic

This is really a pretty good idea! Have a server selection that is English only support, anyone from anywhere welcome. It might be more of a headache than it's worth for Mythic, but a nice idea just the same.

I am not quite sure how Europeans could take the relic at 4 AM est or pst, whatever American timezone it is. Especially since that would be at least 10 am central European time. I would think that most people work around that time and if it is during the weekend, who cares.

Okay first, you can't calculate it's 10 AM if you don't even know which timezone you are talking about. There is 3 hours difference between EST and PST. But Sweden (which is where a lot of the Euro players were from) is a 10am to 4am conversion to EST. I don't know about your reasoning that not many Swedes play at 10AM because of work, because there were a lot of people still on at 10AM their time. And how many do you need to fight nobody and guards? Anyways

60 Mids hitting a relic keep with 10 or so player guards, they could take the relic in about 15 minutes back when this stuff was going on. The time varies though, because there were so many fluctuations in the relic keep guard balance back in Old Frontiers. It used to be they'd start around 11PM our time, or I guess 5AM Swedish time, and finish up several hours later.
Then it got to where they'd just hit us at 3-4 AM with our pants down and take them in a matter of minutes. I watched this happen many a time (Because I played during those hours).

Anyway what's the point in bickering about it?

But about Hib, it's like I said. I don't know about after ToA because I didn't enjoy ToA too much, but before that we didn't have groups running at night. Maybe were after, maybe with clustering... but my experience getting alarm clock raided over and over was some time ago, and back then, we didn't have anyone at night.

You must've played Alb, so I'm sure you guys got some of it too, but with the bad Alb relic keep location there wasn't much use in retaking for you guys. We got it really bad in Hib! It was very, very frustrating to work so hard to retake primetime (Go Blarney!) and just lose them to a ghost at night.

I don't know what else to say. There isn't any counter to dealing with a huge Euro population in the wee AM when you have less than 2 groups to defend with, sometimes less than 1.

And like Abriael has said this won't be happening in WAR because you can't take over a city in just a short amount of time.
He said it was "hinted at". That's great and all, but I want to see the money.

We can't predict the effort required to take a capital. But we can assume a full realm can do significant damage to a defenseless, or insignificantly defended captial in 4-5 hours.

I just don't think it is healthy for the server.

Anyways sorry for running on, I should just let it pass, but I really, really don't think having a bunch of people on a PvP server from a timezone 5-10 hours off is a good idea. 3 to 4 hours is okay, but even that is rough. It's really hard if you are an East Coast American playing with West Coast people as it is. But when you toss in people on the other side of the world it totally screws the equation.

And because we are talking taking capital cities, it's just plain a bad idea.

Abriael

06-07-2006, 12:54 PM

Night time raids are, anyway, not a matter directly related with timezones or the country of origin of players. There will be ALWAYS people playing at night for practical reasons or just because it brings more advantage.
Even when i played in the old italian server (that had people from just one timezone in it) pople still did a LOT of night time raids all the time.

Shapechanger

06-07-2006, 12:56 PM

Yeah it's true. I'm fine with that, like I said. Night time raids are fun, I did a lot of them too. I workred nights for years and know the loneliness searching for people to battle. If I were still nights I would seriously be looking to play Oceanic with the Australians. Not perfect, but I'd get some action for a few hours, 2AM to 7PM isn't bad. I completely empathize.

It's just when you are suddenly looking at 10 or 20 to 1 odds that things start to just kill the fun. That kind of population imbalance doesn't help anyone on either side.

It's all good till it's SO lopsided there isn't even a challenge. Then you gotta look at it and see what you can do. Probably not making it terribly easy for that to happen is the best plan.

Caldenfor

06-07-2006, 01:24 PM

*I know it is still early, just giving my point of view*

Well I know from experience playing on the Gawaine server in DAoC, the Hong Kong (HK guilds) were a huge force in the off american hours. The total battle was changed by the time you got on the next day. It would go either way depending which late night realm held the raids, although some americans participated, without the HK guilds it would have been meager accomplishments. I dealt with that and not being able to communicate easily with every player, but I would hate to come to release and find my english speaking friends from the US, living in other countries, can't play along side me.

Caldenfor

Kilrogg-WHA

06-07-2006, 01:25 PM

I would like to know this as well. Blizzard forced Europeans to play on the European servers because they blocked certain creditcards from Europe. You had to jump through hoops to actually play on the American servers. Right now, I don't have any means to do this again. So it will be a lot tougher for me to get to play on the American servers when they don't accept my Mastercard. So pretty please with sugar on top, allow us Europeans to play on the American servers. ;)

I want to say one thing about the comment on one world server. I think that customers who want this, expect everyone to speak English. If you don't, such a server is simply not meant for you. It is just that northern Europeans almost all know how to speak and type in English. Especially in the Netherlands, American English is the trend. Most trendy commercials are in English because English is catchy for some reason.

Note: I am not here to attack anyone. I will still play Warhammer and most likely on an American server. I actually like Mythic as a company and I have nothing against anyone who works there. I just want to make sure that I don't scare Mythic off on this forum, that is not my intention.

DAoC allowed anyone to play anywhere as long as they got the correct version. I don't see why it'd be different this time around and I definately don't understand Blizz's enforcement of credit card locations...money is money, once they get the monthly fee they shouldn't really care if the person decides to play on a US or EU server.

You just have to buy the US version of the game by importing it or perhaps digital download. More expensive if you import it sure but if you're playing a MMORPG there's good chances you don't have financial difficulties.

Ghimpi

06-07-2006, 01:37 PM

GOA bashing aside, I think its a big big shame that EU and US players can't play together. That was one thing I was really looking forward to with WAR. :cry:
Nothing says you can't just buy the US version and play on the US servers, or vice versa if your guild wants to be a bit more global minded. Just pick a server provider and have that be the one the guild uses.

Senden

06-07-2006, 01:41 PM

I really appreciate you taking the time to post Mark but you seem to just cover customer support.. what us Europeans want and have always wanted, is not just same level customer support, we want to feel like we are treated equally to the avid gamers across the pond from us. Customer support is ofcourse a high priority but there are a lot of other things you need to have on the same level such as server stability which seems to be a problem from my experience with people who host their servers in France.

Also as someone else pointed out, I think a lot of people just want the option to join the US servers instead of being completely phased out of them. A world server, wouldn't actually be that hard to do providing it offered English support only and I bet that the majority of people would prefer this option as it would offer a decent number of players on the server at any given time. To think of a chance for the Aussies, North Americans and the Europeans all together on the same server, that would pretty much give enough players on for any timezone. Now who wouldn't want this?

Ralzar

06-07-2006, 01:44 PM

Nothing says you can't just buy the US version and play on the US servers, or vice versa if your guild wants to be a bit more global minded. Just pick a server provider and have that be the one the guild uses.

Sure, you can do that. The problem is that when europeans have to go out of their way to get access to the US servers, you wind up wiht a very low euro population. Which means you'll have few people to fight with and against. Unless you're able to play in the dead of night you'll probably just hear stories and see screenshots of what the game is really like during peak times.

Ghimpi

06-07-2006, 02:03 PM

I don't presume to know much of anything about co-location, multi-lingual customer service, or regional latency issues, but what keeps Mythic from having localization as a selection in the Options menu? Then have GOA do the customer service for specific localization languages piped through to an EU CSR center and call center? Does localization really have to be tied to server specific, or market specific locations?

Fana

06-07-2006, 02:09 PM

I really don't mind the occasional guy from overseaas on my server, we have a French guy in our guild who I'd hate to see go! They are nighters and play when we play. I used to work nights and know what it is like to face a dead world.

What I don't want, personally, is it made so easy for Europeans to play on a server 7 or 10 hours off (Im PST now) that there is a huge population in the dead of night ransacking our captial city.
And each day we wake up to the aftermath, or with them inside our gates. I've been there, done that, and it was not one bit fun. No thank you.

As to 24/7 servers and all that, sure. But you know there is something to be said for 600 online in one realm and 45 in the other. It's just more wholesome and enjoyable all around if the 600 aren't having another pve experience, and the 60 aren't running for their lives.

This type of thing can be helped with localized servers. Those who really need to play off timezone can, and will always find a way around. For WoW I offered to mail out a couple of copies to France, and I'm sure in your community or guild there are those doing the same for the few nightowls.

But to just open the doors to 600 Americans to come and play on your server when you are all sleeping, it would be a disaster for you. Anyone who's been on the receiving end in a conquer realm situation knows how bad it hurts to bend over every night.

Erm so you mean all the europeans that would want to play on US based servers would all go to one faction?

If there are 600 EU players playing on one faction of a server its perfectly reasonable to expect about an equal number to be playing the other faction. So no 600 vs 45 as you say.

Hunding

06-07-2006, 02:54 PM

GOA's level and quality of support must equal or exceed Mythic support
im fine with that as long as you dont accept outsourcing ingame support to web based service like "right now" as a sufficient quality of service again.
having /appeal replaced by a service like that just because the supplier of this service belongs to the same corporation that goa belongs to is unacceptable.

edit:
as far as multinational servers are concerned, i dont mind that we will not have those at all. i remember playing lineage 2 on the us servers where alle euros were cause they didnt have any euro servers at that time and it was a total desaster. it was allways euros vs us, ger vs uk and everybody was picking on the french^^. pvp and different nationalitys are a very explosive mixture.

Nishlec

06-07-2006, 05:00 PM

First of all I'd just like to comment on the posts regarding EU players taking over capitols late at night (early morning?). That is just a stupid way to reason for several reasons. First, like someone said, they won't all be playing on the same faction. Second, Mythic portraid it to be a campaign to take over the city, so it's not like you can run in and pull down some flag to take it, but it will be a long process that holds many different stages. Rome wasn't built in one day you know, so it's not like you will have a siege that runs only over a few hours. Most likely, a siege will take several days up to weeks before you have conquered the whole city.

Secondly, since this game will be focusing on mass-PvP more than any other game, I can't see why they would chose GOA to handle the servers, when they've had issues with that before. I mean, this game is built around the motion that you can take over another race's capitol. Look at WoW for example, the servers cant handle a raid on a capitol, and that's just with perhaps 200 people fighting on both sides. How do you (Mythic) expect servers to be able to handle perhaps twice the load? I sure hope that is something you discussed with GOA before signing a contract with them. The last thing we want to see is servers crashing while a battle for a capitol is being fought.

Just my two cents,

Larowar

06-07-2006, 06:31 PM

Lets not forget that before GoA took the licence for DAoC, there weren't any MMORPGS that had European based servers. Now they all provide them, that's purely down to the effect of having an EU DAoC which was seen to be very successful.

sorry to say that but GOA is not the first launching european server for MMORPG your are surly too young to remember the first MMORPG and one of the best PvP Ultima Online with Drachenfels and Europa server!! Before DAoC launch

Larowar

06-07-2006, 07:20 PM

Folks,

Realistically, a one world server will not happen anytime in the near future with the main reason being customer support as well as social issues. Since it is our intention to have 24x7 CS support just as in DAoC, for Mythic to maintain enough language speakers to provide a constant level of top-notch support would be extremely difficult and very expensive. The last thing I would want to happen is having too few English speaking CS or too many French speaking CS and have to deal with the aftermath of that. If either we didn't want to do 24x7 or we expected the game to have low subscriber numbers it might be possible but we won't do the former and don't expect the later.

Additionally, I think one-world servers do not, in general, add to the overall satisfaction of customers. While it is a joy for those who have friends in other countries or for those who want to intereact with people from other countries, it is also frustrating for people when language barriers come into play.

Mark

i say again the bigs problem for Goa is:

-1) he have no one Counselor or GM in game on day time to help stuck player with this character or other big problem. the only way is send a report, you receive a mail with " the support technic receive your report he can help you on the 24H/48H if u dont get help at this time send back another request" 1 week later no more help after some request ! is only my char go stuck below the texture of the ground . 2 week later after around 20 request in game, on the support site we see a GM tell my alt char to log my main, and he sumoned me outside wow 1 min to make it after 2 week of waiting! and i m not the only guy we got similar or another big problem with that!

-European player want to have 1 or 2 each day by server for resolve all big problem ingame not online 24h/7j but someone when really need it.

-2) The Billing Account credit card! I work in a gaming room in network and I saw passing much from player of DAoC goa FR, much of them one had a problem with page Internet to pay their subscription in the month and have to await 1 week by making plusior request on the site of support, so that the company which manages paiment updates to them database because that if had to block their chart!

-3) the password of the account! goa send the a random password for manage account on this web page and another random for play! at this time i lost the 2 and dont have any more my old email because wanadoo now orange cancel it when u cancel provider subscription ! i only remember my login and have all cd key, i can test now the Goa support for send a request to get back password on my new email! i think is not difficult with database! is lost it on UO and he send me back after i give cd key!

-i want to put one of my password for play on a game dont want to open email box look for a crazy password like "ha4GLAFm64"

i go to try and i post back when i receive each email if u want! or after i get back all password! Prey for me Grungni.

Cattie

06-07-2006, 10:37 PM

Damn, I guess CNN and Fox News was wrong....Europeans don't hate us as much as I thought :)

Anyhow, I really hope we get to see a good number of people from the UK at the very least, though I do enjoy playing with the swedes as well. Come on Mythic, help bring us all together under one game and stop the U.S. vs. Euro hate! you can keep the French though :p

Cattie

Daeric

06-07-2006, 11:05 PM

Certainly a lot of mindless GOA bashing here. Again, GOA work damn hard, probably harder than any company I know. They work crazy hours, slaving their asses off for an oft ungrateful minority. There have been problems with opentransit and france telecom intermittently (certainly not constantly) that could still exist though, again, someone in this thread mentioned an upgrade?

Regardless, wait and see. GOA won't mess this up. They didn't "mess" DAoC up.

It's probably worth reiterating a few points:

1) Simultaneous release, patches, no delay.
2) The support in WAR will almost undoubtedly be different (bigger/better?) to the support in DAoC. Wait for an announcement.

They sure did mess alot of daoc up.. loosing databases, not having statistics up for a loooooong imte, and when it got up it was down just as fast again. I agree the lag issues might not be GOA to blaim, but the poor support sure is. You claim they work crazy hours and slave their asses off... funny cause in US ou can get suuport everyday, not just weekdays. and there's always some GM online not just once in a while...

Maybe GOA is just 2 people or something.. working their asses off.. still as a paying customer i don't give a damn.. then either hire more people ( competent english speaking people) that can handle the support better or keep slaving and do it better!

Daeric

06-07-2006, 11:30 PM

Which, incidentally, is true.

Support for WAR will very likely be different to DAoC. Wait and see :)
Same again, support for WAR will very likely be different to DAoC. Wait and see :)

No, a tiny percentage did. Many (usually the ones not posting complaints) are perfectly happy GOA are running it. Look, if it's really that bad, play on the US servers. Didn't people say that about DAoC? Ah yep they did and... three weeks later they were back on the European servers. Ho hum :(

Ofc they were back on euro servers.. I was one of those that went to Us cause of GOA's incredibley bad support, and I was perfectly happy with Us servers.. except for one litttle thing.. timezones.. see I couldn't come on any big raids and when ever i was logged on the RvR was preety much dead so i had to go back to euro and it's lagspikes, items dissapearing, quests bugging, groundfalling, /stuck problems etc etc etc etc...

Someone called this thread for mindless GOA-bashing.. it's not mindless, if anything it's a warning to mythic that people complain in this earlystage.. it somewhat proves that atleast a part of the playerbase for EU daoc/Wow has been/is very unhappy with GOA.

Orion_fr

06-08-2006, 12:35 AM

In fact... i just realize that... the news is coming on the 06/06/06...

*bong* *bong* *bong*
"Goa take the Eu contract, this is the end of the World, the evil come back"
*bong* *bong* *bong*

Must be a Chaos Event or something like that :p

Dysfinn

06-08-2006, 01:08 AM

Folks at Mythic,

I Do not give any damn whatsoever if you use GOA or not, as long as they keep their promises, they will be a great partner for Mythic.
However, I am very conerned about the fact you are segregating different nationalities, because you are in fact forcing the player to do something if it is against their own will. Your answer of course will be to 'Buy the US version', but guess what? Timezones. Even if other Europeans join the US server, there won't be as many as there ever would be if you just made one huge server list for anyone to click. So here is what I DO give a damn about: Make it so that Europeans And Americans, no matter what their client version, can choose any server they want to go on, be it of 'American' or 'European' origin. In fact, scrap the damn whole national server seperation. Just make one long list of servers, and people can choose the server they want to play on. Seriously, Mythic, you're going too far to the line that people say "This game would be great if the player segregation didn't have such a huge impact on who I get to play with".

Death

06-08-2006, 01:10 AM

not a shot at mythic but I agree, its much more popular to just have a worldwide set of servers we can choose to play on ( otherwise expect to get very little sales in europe.... )

Ares

06-08-2006, 01:32 AM

I hope there will be only one version of the game with a list of both usa and european servers i can choose to create a new character on.

I heared of DAOC from some swiss friends i played delta force with. I was a poor student and there wasnt a beta or free period at that time. My swiss friends shared their daoc files on a ftp server and i played the game for a few days with a loaned account. And i liked it!! It was just after my birthday so i had some cash.. I wented to the store and bought me mine daoc so i could create my own account. I activated the account asked my friends over ICQ what server i should logged and ... Huh dont see the server?? WTF?? So i asked over ICQ again what was wrong. And my friend asked do you have an USA version..
USA version, isnt it the same game?
So i bought the wrong game with my last cash. Called the european helpdesk if they could change my new account to an USA account, but they couldnt.
Thanks god i could play the account of one of my swiss friends until i had enough cash because he couldnt play for a while.. The while became a year and at the end my friend bought a new account and i could have his

Now my rl brother is probably moving soon to Canada (His wife is from Canada (yes internet love got serious) They both play DAOC and they will probably both will play WAR
So if i want to play on a european server with my friends (not sure yet if we gonna play euro servers or USA yet) I have to buy the USA version of the game also, to be able to create an character on an usa server so i can also play with my brother and my sis in law ?? This would realy sucks!

I rather have 1 version of the game where i could choose whatever server i want to play on. And 1 or 2 euro or usa server that are global (english speaking language) A server that has no down time and is crowded even if you login at 3h. in the morning. Where guilds have people from USA EUROPE ASIA AFRICA and AUSTALIA all in the same guild.

Ethandril

06-08-2006, 02:44 AM

I don't know if this will perfectly fits here, but what about this:

What we know so far:
Mythic will provide W.A.R. in the US only. GOA brings W.A.R. to Europe with at least
4 servers (all near Paris): UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, all in their native
language.

US / EU:
Maybe GOA can set up the UK-server as an EU-Server where all players in Europe
can play on with thier version of W.A.R., you just have to download the english package
if you don't have the UK or US game.

When you have the "english package" of W.A.R. you can also play on the US-Servers if
you want to.

To make it more clear:

EU-Server = UK-Server <-----------> US-Server
- Germany Server
- France Server
- Italy Server
- Spain Server

So no matter what version of W.A.R. you buy, you can play on the server you want to.

Nishlec

06-08-2006, 03:47 AM

Damn, I guess CNN and Fox News was wrong....Europeans don't hate us as much as I thought :)

Oh, we do, trust me. ;P

Tekener

06-08-2006, 03:59 AM

Tekener

06-08-2006, 04:09 AM

GOA did a lot translation work for the italian server Deira (if they did it directly or outsurced it, that i don't know, but the responsibility for the quality lies on GOA wether they outsurce or not) picking up from what was already done by CTO (another bad choice, because the CTO translation was extremely poor to begin with, and a good translation and quality team would have noticed and corrected it). The translation is full of typos, grammar errors, false friends, inconsistencies and conflicts. But i wasn't only talking about the italian version anyway. The translation work done by GOA on a general level is poor. Not even the french version is up to par, not to mention the others. As many other game publishers around the world, they underrated the importance of an elegant and well done translation, and it shows.
I can't speak italian so I don't know of the italian quality in DAoC (or French or Spanish). But I do know the German translation and it was horrible at the beginning but changed a lot afterwards to a level I can't complain about. Maybe GOA is doing the German translation different than the italian one. But I'm sure GOA has a quality assurence working also on outsourced translations.

dutch_gamer

06-08-2006, 04:42 AM

Okay first, you can't calculate it's 10 AM if you don't even know which timezone you are talking about. There is 3 hours difference between EST and PST. But Sweden (which is where a lot of the Euro players were from) is a 10am to 4am conversion to EST. I don't know about your reasoning that not many Swedes play at 10AM because of work, because there were a lot of people still on at 10AM their time. And how many do you need to fight nobody and guards? Anyways

Just forget it. I don't even want to argue with you. Since you clearly can't read that I said AT LEAST 10 am. You clearly don't want the Europeans to play on the American servers. Guess what? We will no matter what, because GOA isn't good enough with their lag.

DAoC allowed anyone to play anywhere as long as they got the correct version. I don't see why it'd be different this time around and I definately don't understand Blizz's enforcement of credit card locations...money is money, once they get the monthly fee they shouldn't really care if the person decides to play on a US or EU server.

You just have to buy the US version of the game by importing it or perhaps digital download. More expensive if you import it sure but if you're playing a MMORPG there's good chances you don't have financial difficulties.

I know that Mythic allowed it. But Blizzard set up a lot of blocks for Europeans. Heck, they basically set up the blocks for countries on continents with no server to play on the American ones.

I just hope that Mythic isn't that stupid and that they will do it the same way as with DAoC. And importing the game from Canada is cheaper than buying the game here. Most of the time it is even cheaper than downloading it. It will arrive a few days after release, but that doesn't have to matter anyway. I can get the game here within 3 days, which is not bad too bad. It usually takes me far longer to get something from England than from north America.

DEVLiN

06-08-2006, 05:17 AM

Mythic and GOA will have 2 seperated account systems in WAR (like in DAoC and like Blizzard has). You pay in EU for an EU account and you can't login with an EU account on an US server simply because they have a different account database
This has been officially stated to work exactly as you described (for Warhammer Online), where exactly?

Ethandril

06-08-2006, 05:29 AM

@Ethandril
This is no new idea, half your idea is already used in DAoC, the other half is impossible. In EU you can change the language of your DAoC client and you can play on any EU-Server. But you can't access any US server not because of the language but because of the account data. Mythic and GOA will have 2 seperated account systems in WAR (like in DAoC and like Blizzard has). You pay in EU for an EU account and you can't login with an EU account on an US server simply because they have a different account database

The system of US / EU Servers are based on DAoC and EQ2, so i'm not disapointed that
my idea isn't new. But in EQ2 i could play on the UK-Servers with my US-Account, so
i thought it would be nice to have this in W.A.R. too.
(Plan B: 2 EU-Servers hosted by Mythic ;) )

Anyways i got your point, too bad GOA and Mythic will use 2 seperated account systems,
which makes my idea useless.

Nerror

06-08-2006, 05:38 AM

Dearest wonderful Mark, (no sarcasm)

I understand the logic behind the decision to "segregate" into EU servers and US servers (even though I don't entirely agree), and I know the deal has been struck, so there's no point talking about what I, and many others, think should have happened.

However, there's a need from both GOA and Mythic to keep working on the issue with regards to explaining and assuaging fears in the large EU WAR community.

I hear a lot of negative things about GOA, and a few positive ones, and I ONLY hear negative things about GOA's internet provider, which of course is GOAs responsibility too, when it comes to their customers. That's basic business, as I know you are aware of. GOA can't just tell their customers that's it not their fault, it's their ISP. Well they can, but it's still GOA that's responsible to us for having that ISP, and obligated to make ammends. Their ISP, if those are the real culprits, are then responsible to their customer: GOA. But enough of that, you already know that.

So I suggest the following:

1. A few more details about what minimum standards Mythic and GOA have set for eachother. I know we won't see the contract, but what info we have so far is very vague. A bit too vague I think; I think it creates more worries than it assuages.

2. Official interview or statement from GOA stating the following:

a. Their own track record with the DAoC servers over the last year. Give us some numbers on server downtime or lag/trouble due to actual errors on their side.

b. The track record of their ISP. They say they have been working hard with the ISP to solve the connection issues? Great, then they must have numbers and data to support that.

c. What they have done and are doing (in detail!) to ensure that all european WAR servers are up 24/7/365 and connected to a stable part of the internet backbone that also stays up 24/7/365. Yeah, I know happens, but the goal should be (and is, I am sure) 24/7/365 excepting patch days.

I know these two suggestions take a bit of time to do, and thus cost money, but in the end I think you'll more than get that money back in terms of good-will and subscriptions.

Damn, I guess CNN and Fox News was wrong....Europeans don't hate us as much as I thought :)

I lived in the US for a couple of years back in 2002 and 2003, and I must admit the amount of false information about how much Europe hates the US is staggering. Talk about some biased and wrong articles in, for example, the NY Times and TV. A lot of people think Bush (+ current administration) is a dangerous, stupid and arrogant buffoon, and I have to agree there, but that doesn't extend to the american people.

DEVLiN

06-08-2006, 06:30 AM

Worth mentioning perhaps with all the patch-bashing is that the EU servers of Daoc are now running patch 1.83 and people are congratulating GOA for the smoothest and quickest patch ever.

Nerror

06-08-2006, 07:58 AM

Worth mentioning perhaps with all the patch-bashing is that the EU servers of Daoc are now running patch 1.83 and people are congratulating GOA for the smoothest and quickest patch ever.

Yep it's stuff like that we need to know, but words are cheap, so some numbers/data from GOA to back up what people say or think would be good. :)

Abriael

06-08-2006, 08:55 AM

Worth mentioning perhaps with all the patch-bashing is that the EU servers of Daoc are now running patch 1.83 and people are congratulating GOA for the smoothest and quickest patch ever.

Probably because they're used to wait aeons for it. I's better than in the past, but i wouldn't define 20 days of wait for the patch compared to the US "smooth" nor for sure "quick". For sure I wouldn't deem it quick or smooth enough for WAR.

I can't speak italian so I don't know of the italian quality in DAoC (or French or Spanish). But I do know the German translation and it was horrible at the beginning but changed a lot afterwards to a level I can't complain about. Maybe GOA is doing the German translation different than the italian one. But I'm sure GOA has a quality assurence working also on outsourced translations.

I'm not sure about the current quality of the german translation (even if i still hear lots of complaints about it), but beginning with an horrible translation and then correcting it on the go isn't exactly an example of professional behavioir or of good quality standards. A translation needs to be carefully checked from the start, otherwise a correction that comes when most veteran players already experienced most of the text in the game (and had their fun spoiled by reading the NPC talking like a 5 years old foreigner), comes definately too late.
WAR translation will be, moreover, a very difficult task. Videogame translation is hard by itself because the translator doesn't have any visual reference, but just lines of text deprieved of their context. Apply this to an extremely complex and established lore like the warhammer one and you'll see the scenario. If the translator isn't able to recognize immediately what the text at hand is talking about and place it in the correct part of the lore (Of wich he needs to have an extensive knowledge, both in english and in his native language), he'll go down a downhill of errors that will seriously damage the quality of the finished translation.

Orion_fr

06-08-2006, 08:59 AM

In fact, if you want to be sure about the german translation, you can ask for the job...

http://emploi.afjv.com/emploi/ETRA024.htm

Or trying to talk with GOA people in an italian restaurant near their job in Issy Les Moulineaux :p

Abriael

06-08-2006, 09:25 AM

Lol, no thank you. I think i mentioned it somewhere, but i strongly believe that a translator absolutely needs to be a native speaker, "knowing" a language doesn't mean being able to write in it with any elegance or with the necessary wording variation. I'm sure there are plenty german veteran warhammer players with translating skills good enough to do the job plenty well. The problem is if GOA will just stick to it's present translation team or will at least integrate it with people that have the needed knowledge of the warhammer world in both languages they're working with, without wich, i'm afraid, we're in trouble. And this works for all languages, french included.
And i do think those are points (translators being native speakers with a LOT of warhammer knowledge and experience weighing on their shoulders) on wich mythic should stress a lot with their european partners, if they're aiming towards quality.

Madmar

06-08-2006, 09:32 AM

Lol, no thank you. I think i mentioned it somewhere, but i strongly believe that a translator absolutely needs to be a native speaker, "knowing" a language doesn't mean being able to write in it with any elegance or with the necessary wording variation. I'm sure there are plenty german veteran warhammer players with translating skills good enough to do the job plenty well. The problem is if GOA will just stick to it's present translation team or will at least integrate it with people that have the needed knowledge of the warhammer world in both languages they're working with, without wich, i'm afraid, we're in trouble. And this works for all languages, french included.

Well I play on the French servers and to be honest the quality of the translation is fine and is a lot better than any of the other mmos that I have played. Some things break sometimes or work badly, like articles, but that's to be expected as DAoC wasn't intended for translation (or so we're told).

I'd imagine that GOA will have lots of GW dictionaries and glossaries to help them as most of the warhammer universe content has already been translated in a lot of languages.

Wait and see :)

Abriael

06-08-2006, 09:45 AM

Nothing is "intended" for translations that's why a translator's work is not only to literally translate a text but to adapt it to his language so that it's elegant and pleasant to read, not only correct (or IN-elegant, in the case of orcs, of course, but still elegant in it's lack of elegance, not sure if i get the point across).

I'd imagine that GOA will have lots of GW dictionaries and glossaries to help them as most of the warhammer universe content has already been translated in a lot of languages.

This is exactly the wrong way to go. Having to use specific dictionaries and glossaries means exactly that the translator's knowledge of what he's working on is not enough.
Having a dictionary that tells you what is what doesn't give you any hint (or just very generic hints, besides being extremely time consuming and unpractical) on the background and surroundings of the element at hand. Those information are extremely important when one has to chose the language style with wich to write for example, or when one tackles elements that haven't been originally devised by GW, but have to be translated with a style still fitting the other GW translations and literature.
The difference between a good translator that has no knowledge (or a very generic one, maybe acquired quickly reading through the last edition army books, a big error by itself) of what he's talking about, even given glossaries and dictionaries available, and an equally good translator that is also a veteran player, and as such knows exactly what he's writing about, is immense.
There's really no chance of comparison.

DEVLiN

06-08-2006, 10:03 AM

Probably because they're used to wait aeons for it. I's better than in the past, but i wouldn't define 20 days of wait for the patch compared to the US "smooth" nor for sure "quick". For sure I wouldn't deem it quick or smooth enough for WAR.
Oh my, aren't we in a nit-picking mode today?

With smooth and quick, I was referring to that the servers were up and running before lunch today. Server downtime was at it's minimum today for just about any major patch I can remember in the EU anyway. Patch is now the same as in the US, 20 days behind is for sure a major improvement over being years behind - but this is with a game that was not meant to be translated in the first place.

Comparing how it was done in Daoc in the past by how it will be done in WAR is like comparing last years pears with futuristic apples that hasn't even bloomed yet.

Abriael

06-08-2006, 10:06 AM

Oh my, aren't we in a nit-picking mode today?

Absolutely. Because i do think that both Mythic and GW need to be REALLY nit-picky with GOA to have it work well. I think it's unrealistic to ask mythic to undo the partnership (and not very smart as well), but a good old robust leash and a well administered whip should do the work :p

Bluestrike

06-08-2006, 10:12 AM

-i want to put one of my password for play on a game dont want to open email box look for a crazy password like "ha4GLAFm64"

The actual password names might be better then in the US version and be more hack proof as the example you gave is a typical save password unlike a familiar word.
If they generate the password is also less likely you use the same password on a forum, where theomne could posseblu steal it.
(half my guild got scammed because a new member made a cool looking website, but some people used the same forum login and password as they did for the game, a few days later they found they characters stripped of all gear and even deleted.
One of them never got his character restored, the others were more lucky but lost items and money.

But since I already know a few of these types of password out of my head and use different ones for forums and low security stuff it would be nice if I could use my own passwords indeed :-)
Can even make combo's of them haha :-)

Bluestrike

06-08-2006, 10:16 AM

DAoC allowed anyone to play anywhere as long as they got the correct version. I don't see why it'd be different this time around and I definately don't understand Blizz's enforcement of credit card locations...money is money, once they get the monthly fee they shouldn't really care if the person decides to play on a US or EU server.

As mythic seems to have made their demands, its only reasonable to asume GOA had some demands on its own, so its possible that the contract says that Mythic will not allow europeans to play on their servers.
That would force them to take the same actions like WOW to try and prevent it as they have to by contract.

In the case of Blizzard it seemd weird tough unless there are different publishers for Eu and US versions what need their percents of the subscrition perhaps.

Abriael

06-08-2006, 10:24 AM

As mythic seems to have made their demands, its only reasonable to asume GOA had some demands on its own, so its possible that the contract says that Mythic will not allow europeans to play on their servers.
That would force them to take the same actions like WOW to try and prevent it as they have to by contract.

I really hope Mythic didn't allow such a demand, because, other than being unreasonable (and demonstrating how poor Blizzard's management is) it would prevent thousands of players to play with friends they made over years of online play.
If the decision to keep the partnership with GOA was largely unpopular, it would be absolutely nothing compared to how unpopular would be to forcefully segregate european players on GOA's servers.
Not to mention that mythic would give up a quite big chunk of their potential playerbase, given that warhammer is currently much more popular in europe than in the US as an IP.

In any case GOA is a licensee, meaning they are in a position of "inferiority" by definition. In the licenser/licensee relationships normally the first one makes demands and requires guarantees, the second doesn't (because their only reasonable demand is to be able to use the licence and make money over it), so it would be completely realistic for Mythic to make their demands and for GOA to just agree to them, otherwise mythic can just go look for another licensee.

Bluestrike

06-08-2006, 10:29 AM

Madmar

06-08-2006, 10:33 AM

Well I'm sure glossaries will help the translators in that they will at least know what the correct terms are for everything ;).

You're right though, that's not all in translation (I've done quite a bit myself in the past) but I feel that GOA have done pretty well for DAoC - at least in the French version. Maybe the Italian version isn't too good, I don't know - have you played recently with it? In any case, I don't see why they shouldn't make a good job of it this time around too - especially as there is so much existing background information on the subject for them to read about.

The difference between a good translator that has no knowledge (or a very generic one, maybe acquired quickly reading through the last edition army books, a big error by itself) of what he's talking about, even given glossaries and dictionaries available, and an equally good translator that is also a veteran player, and as such knows exactly what he's writing about, is immense.

How can you be a veteran player of a game that hasn't been released? I'd imagine GOA will be the first people to get access to the game in the beta to be able to see exactly what it's like to address exactly the kind of issue you're talking about. As for the other background information - they can get that from the tons of Warhammer books that exist, and who knows, maybe they're all big Warhammer fans already? :)

dutch_gamer

06-08-2006, 10:40 AM

I hope they aren't gonna force anything either, but as long as no Mythic dev says otherwise I'm gonna asume the worst case scenario just to get no new 'surprise' :-)

If I was in GOA's place and seeing all those potential players I would demand just the same , probebly attached to a big bag of money :-)

Really if GOA starts demanding that, this will be very disastrous for the amount of Europeans even willing to play this game. I REFUSE to play on the European servers after hearing how bad OpenTransit is. I think Europeans have every right to be able to play the game lagfree. And if that means playing on the American servers so be it. But I think that we as potential customers should have the right to play with our friends on the American servers, if we so please. It is really too bad for GOA, but I much rather play on the American servers because of how GOA has been in the past, and also to be able to play with some of my old friends from DAoC.

Abriael

06-08-2006, 10:46 AM

especially as there is so much existing background information on the subject for them to read about.

Having a lot of existing lore and literature doesn't make the job easier. On the contrary it makes it a lot harder. Because it requires an almost perfect knowledge of what has been written (all of it, it's plenty easy to slam down an inconsistency or a conflict with a part of lore that isn't directly involved in the translated text if you don't know the roots and ramifications behind it) and to be able to often translate with a style that's not the translator's but GW's one. They don't need just to be consistent with GW's original text, but with GW's translations in their language as well. This by itself requires a really extensive knowledge of GW's literature and a great adaptation ability.

How can you be a veteran player of a game that hasn't been released?

Warhammer has been released 23 years ago. I'd say there is quite a decent number of veteran players around, and that it's between that number that GOA should build the backbone of their translation team.

I'd imagine GOA will be the first people to get access to the game in the beta to be able to see exactly what it's like to address exactly the kind of issue you're talking about.

Seeing just the game definately isn't enough. Having to deal with an extensive literature means you have to keep the style and avoid conflicts with the literature as a whole, not only with the game itself. While translating it's quite easy to put such conflicts in. It's not just a grammar matter.

As for the other background information - they can get that from the tons of Warhammer books that exist

I wouldn't venture comparing the experience someone built over several years of reading and actually playing warhammer, WHFRPG and the spinoff games, with what one can acquire reading the available books just as "homework" for a job. Without mentioning the fact that a BIG chunk of the warhammer lore resides on the past white dwarf issues, and there are an IMMENSE lot of them.
A comparison is impossible and improper.

and who knows, maybe they're all big Warhammer fans already? :)

I'm not really willing to put such an important matter in a weak balance over the "maybes", and i really hope Mythic and GW aren't willing to as well.

Orion_fr

06-08-2006, 11:02 AM

... about translation

I think there's a major difference between DAOC and WAR.

- The game must be thinked to make easier the translation in easier and language and i don't think that DAOC was think like that in the beginning.

- there's plenty of books, novels, site about Warhammer World that can help the translator in his native language. I'm agree with you on that point and that why in the job annoucement, GOA ask for a native german as greatly appreciate, english spoken and french appreciate for the german translator.

Dodsferd

06-08-2006, 11:02 AM

Great idea guys, fair distribution to both parties.

Good work! :D

Abriael

06-08-2006, 11:11 AM

- there's plenty of books, novels, site about Warhammer World that can help the translator in his native language.

I already explained in the previous posts why this makes the job harder, not easier. I don't think i need to repeat it.
The warhammer world is not something you know trough homework, but something one experiences in years of hobby, reading and playing. It's like comparing an history student with a full fledged historian.

I'm agree with you on that point and that why in the job annoucement, GOA ask for a native german as greatly appreciate, english spoken and french appreciate for the german translator.

Thst's actually another point that leaves me a quite dubious. They put being a native speaker as a "preferred trait", while, IMHO, it should be absolutely indispensible and crucial.

Larowar

06-08-2006, 02:01 PM

The actual password names might be better then in the US version and be more hack proof as the example you gave is a typical save password unlike a familiar word.
If they generate the password is also less likely you use the same password on a forum, where theomne could posseblu steal it.
(half my guild got scammed because a new member made a cool looking website, but some people used the same forum login and password as they did for the game, a few days later they found they characters stripped of all gear and even deleted.
One of them never got his character restored, the others were more lucky but lost items and money.

But since I already know a few of these types of password out of my head and use different ones for forums and low security stuff it would be nice if I could use my own passwords indeed :-)
Can even make combo's of them haha :-)

Afflicted statement its, but that the password is to generate Goa share or chooses share the user its does not prevent the hack logins and password.
What arrived to your friend and to idiot but it is with him does not have to be unconscious to put same the login and password for the plays me I have my login and my password for the game which changes has each time and I have same the login for the forums or if I hacker on the forum its but completely equal is made.
There is a big problem one days or Goa it is made hacker and of the people one to recover the logins and password have to change them and to send the stuff has of another person or directly sold to recover the money or other. There is nevertheless 1 week before the first sending of email to the support and the stopping of the waiters to solve this problem.
I am not a partisan of this kind of solution for the password, wanadoo provider Internet makes the same thing considering it is the same company and who does not understand that there is a law which oblige them has to give the chois to the user to change information whose password in fact left and who categorically refuses to do it!

Nerror

06-08-2006, 02:30 PM

There is nevertheless 1 week before the first sending of email to the support and the stopping of the waiters to solve this problem.

That's actually funny :)

Larowar, it looks like you used babelfish, or something, to translate. Hard to understand what you wrote in some parts.

Midwinter

06-08-2006, 02:53 PM

Absolutely. Because i do think that both Mythic and GW need to be REALLY nit-picky with GOA to have it work well. I think it's unrealistic to ask mythic to undo the partnership (and not very smart as well), but a good old robust leash and a well administered whip should do the work :p

Don't be ridiculous. Again, the partnership with DAoC is nothing like the (announced) partnership for WAR. DAoC was never pre-planned to be translated into other languages as you, surely, must realise. 20 days behind patching is pretty damned impressive. On the other hand, we have already heard that WAR will be released and patched simultaneously.

GOA, and Mythic for that matter, are not the simpletons you seem to take them for.

As other people have said, wait and see.

Abriael

06-08-2006, 02:55 PM

GOA, and Mythic for that matter, are not the simpletons you seem to take them for.

As for mythic i'm pretty sure, GOA instead, still has to demonstrate that.

Midwinter

06-08-2006, 02:56 PM

Thst's actually another point that leaves me a quite dubious. They put being a native speaker as a "preferred trait", while, IMHO, it should be absolutely indispensible and crucial.
The obvious problem with this of course is that they could wait months and years (resulting in no translation at all) until a native born-Italian decides to apply for the job. To assume that one would is foolhardy. Hence "preferred trait". If you've got it, they want it.

Abriael

06-08-2006, 03:33 PM

The obvious problem with this of course is that they could wait months and years (resulting in no translation at all) until a native born-Italian decides to apply for the job.

I'm fairly sure there are at least 50 millions native italians around, it' not like finding one is THAT hard, and that works for every language around. When i used to work in the localization field it took 1 to 6 hours of searching to get hold of a good native japanese translator, i'm sure it's not that hard to find them for the languages WAR will be translated in, assuming one is willing to search of course.

Larowar

06-08-2006, 04:16 PM

That's actually funny :)

Larowar, it looks like you used babelfish, or something, to translate. Hard to understand what you wrote in some parts.

i use systran :p i say it yesterday on my first post im sorry for my english i use translator :p i try without

when some player see this big problem, all send email and open a support ticket on the webpage of goa and all server go down 1 week after the first one , normally for DAoC Mythic not Goa ) and lot of other mmorpg if he see this problem he stop quick all server for find the problem where is the fail etc..! all char restored some hour or last day for enjoy all this customer.
is that i needed to say
sorry again

NoLd

06-08-2006, 05:42 PM

I'm fairly sure there are at least 50 millions native italians around, it' not like finding one is THAT hard, and that works for every language around. When i used to work in the localization field it took 1 to 6 hours of searching to get hold of a good native japanese translator, i'm sure it's not that hard to find them for the languages WAR will be translated in, assuming one is willing to search of course.
It seems, for you, the problems are always from the company. Don't you remember that Goa didn't have the management of Italian Servers at the beginning ? Don't you remember that the company which had the management failed ?

Well, may be, if you met some people from GOA, you'd see they are really implicated people. They tried ... and for them too it was a beginning. Now they handle more games, they learned a lot of experience ( like you ) ... It wasn't perfect, I know it. But I saw their evolution and they were really better now than at the beginning.

More, Goa and Mythic work together since 2000 ... Their "connection" is strongest than the one between GW and Mythic. Now, the only thing we can fear is always the fact the feedback can have "a delay" ... But with GOA helping in the development, it will help a lot in the carrying of EU player feedback to Mythic.

In the beginning, I didn't really enjoy this news. But with some time, I thinked about it and the only thing that can happen to GOA is do something really better...

P.S : don't forget, they have almost a year to find people to translate ...

Abriael

06-08-2006, 06:30 PM

It seems, for you, the problems are always from the company. Don't you remember that Goa didn't have the management of Italian Servers at the beginning ? Don't you remember that the company which had the management failed ?

CTO failed due to extremely bad management, they spent months telling plain lies to their customers and payed the price for it.
The job that GOA did on the italian server of the game and on the italian translation is sub-par, to say the least. Such a level would be absolutely unacceptable for war.
The fact that there was another company that shown an even worse behavioir and management doesn't justify GOA in any way.

P.S : don't forget, they have almost a year to find people to translate ...

If they want to do a good job they better find them much before a year.

NO ONE is denying that GOA could have learned from their errors, but between that and not being rightfully worried about the future of the game we're all waiting for, there's quite a difference. GOA didn't earn a good reputation yet, and the reactions you saw on this thread are the result of that. If the results with WAR will be better than the ones with DAOC i'll be the first to be happy, but until i see the money, i'm worried, and i think i have the right to be.

Shapechanger

06-08-2006, 06:44 PM

GoA really deserves a chance, as the above poster seems to be saying.

They have a longstanding working relationship with Mythic, and so long as they are willing to meet or exceed Mythics level of service they have earned the chance.

They might have been rough in the beginning, but so was Mythic at the beginning of DAoC! Got a lot better though.

Sorry to hear about the French servers and internet though, that doesn't sound too good. You can always buy a US version, isn't that hard to do. Sucks if you have to pay 2 accounts though, a US and a EU account.

Id hate to see open doors to majority population of people in different very different timezones playing on servers in my timezone though. That just blows. Cool to have some people coming from other places to play with you, not cool to have Guild Wars on your static -7 GMT server.

And no they don't spread evenly over different realms as someone suggested. Sounds nice in theory, but in practice people tend to stick to their own native groups. As another poster mentioned, by and large, the Germans will play with the Germans, and the Swedes with the Swedes, etc. So you end up with a great big pool of one nationality in one faction and not much else in others. At least for us in Percival, that's how it was. If you don't believe it, go to the Percival VN boards and ask, Im sure you'll get educated if you want to keep thinking otherwise.

Stuff in theory just isn't how it always comes out in practice. People may evenly go to various realms, but once they find out there is an all nationality guild of their nationality in one faction, the jig is up.

People like to play with people who speak their language, it's as simple as that. It's easier, smoother, and less burden on the customer service people and the company paying them.

I'm glad, not because I'm xenophobic, I am absolutley a world traveler (though Asia & South America are my chosen destinations), but because it is WAY simpler & cheaper in a PvP game to have people on generally the same time zone and speaking the same language.

Abriael

06-08-2006, 06:51 PM

And no they don't spread evenly over different realms as someone suggested. Sounds nice in theory, but in practice people tend to stick to their own native groups. As another poster mentioned, by and large, the Germans will play with the Germans, and the Swedes with the Swedes, etc.

This definately doesn't mean that all europeans will stay on the same realm, wich, in fact, isn't true. Europe has quite a lot of nations actually.

So you end up with a great big pool of one nationality in one faction and not much else in others. At least for us in Percival, that's how it was.

On the tintagel cluster (that includes percival) you see quite a decent number of people from all realm in RvR and PVE at euro hours. For sure more than enough to defend. If they're willing to try and defend of course. If they're not, well, though luck...
The fact that galroth is active and actually organizes and leads the ones from his and nearby timezones is his merit, and if the other realms don't do an equivalent thing, it's their fault. But the human material is definately there.

If you don't believe it, go to the Percival VN boards and ask, Im sure you'll get educated if you want to keep thinking otherwise.

Are you really advocating the vnboards as a good place to be educated? :rolleyes:

DEVLiN

06-08-2006, 11:15 PM

Another thing people seem to forget:

Server uptime in Daoc EU has been outstanding, compared to the "half day every week, regardless of patches" deliberate downtime in WoW. I'm not saying that it makes up for [insert thing that has happened here], not at all. But please try to remember that true masters are those who has had all the problems and found ways out of them.

There are many ways to run things, some better, some worse. People improve and grow with the task and I guess all that can be done (because it's futile to press this matter any longer - Mythic has received our concerns and they'll make sure the cooperation work; or fix it if it doesn't.) is either accept it and be happy - or do something about it (rather than keep restating the same arguments over and over on a forum) and play on the US servers. I'm not sure it's in anyone here's interest wether someone chose to play on the US servers though.

What's needed to be said has been said, it's been heard and noted and it either has or will be taken care of if problems arise - there's really no need to continue arguing (with the same arguments all over again) about it.

Shapechanger

06-09-2006, 12:48 AM

There are many ways to run things, some better, some worse. People improve and grow with the task and I guess all that can be done (because it's futile to press this matter any longer - Mythic has received our concerns and they'll make sure the cooperation work; or fix it if it doesn't.) is either accept it and be happy - or do something about it (rather than keep restating the same arguments over and over on a forum) and play on the US servers. I'm not sure it's in anyone here's interest wether someone chose to play on the US servers though.

What's needed to be said has been said, it's been heard and noted and it either has or will be taken care of if problems arise - there's really no need to continue arguing (with the same arguments all over again) about it.

I guess that more or less sums it up.

PS- Abriel, don't forget that I'm talking about Old Frontiers, when I was there on Percival. Things probably different now, but I have no reason to slant how it was years back.

Madmar

06-09-2006, 01:07 AM

NO ONE is denying that GOA could have learned from their errors, but between that and not being rightfully worried about the future of the game we're all waiting for, there's quite a difference. GOA didn't earn a good reputation yet, and the reactions you saw on this thread are the result of that. If the results with WAR will be better than the ones with DAOC i'll be the first to be happy, but until i see the money, i'm worried, and i think i have the right to be.

Could have learned from their errors? How long ago did you actually last play DAoC? Really, because I'm finding it very hard to follow you... I've played since the beta on DAoC EU and I have noted a tremendous improvement in their service. Sure it's not perfect (name one company which is), but it's light years ahead of what it was like. If the current trend continues, and what's been said actually does happen then they'll be light years ahead of where they are now for War.

Cadiva

06-09-2006, 03:17 AM

sorry to say that but GOA is not the first launching european server for MMORPG your are surly too young to remember the first MMORPG and one of the best PvP Ultima Online with Drachenfels and Europa server!! Before DAoC launch

I'm not too young to remember the Ultima Online launch, the European Ultiima Online actually came in 1999, two years after the original game launched in 1997 and the European expansion came only after Origin had already expanded into Asia.

So, there were European servers for Ultima Online, but they were not launched at the time the game debuted in 1997.

http://www.uo.com/sept2003nl.html#grand

DAoC established and launched dedicated European servers run by a European host/data centre only four (I think) months after the US version went live. They were the first company to provide a dedicated European gaming service pretty much from the launch of their product.

Every other large scale MMORPG to date has seen how well they did and now provides European localisation, even if they don't physically host the servers in Europe with a European team operating them.

Anyways, we're arguing over pedantics :) Mythic, with DAoC, were the ones who pushed the idea of catering directly to the European playerbase, rather than everyone having to try and play on a US game version.

EDIT: As a PS to the whole thread. It is a vocal minority complaining about GoA and GoA's service and people who claim that 90% or 80% or any other percentage really of the DAoC European playerbase don't like GoA or have problems with lag etc are talking, quite frankly, out of their behinds :)

The vast majority of people play DAoC in Europe and just get on with it. That's clearly obvious otherwise there would be NO people playing European DAoC cos they'd all be off playing the US where it's allegedly so much better.

Murdoque

06-09-2006, 03:33 AM

Nice to hear that something will be done if things don t run smooth with WAR - but that still leaves a big question to ask.
Even if Mythic is willing to change the partnership if GOA keeps up its glorious record as myself and many of my online friends endured over some years now (no ingame support, lag-a-lot etc - and yes i know they sweared to be the perfekt host this time), what happens to the characters already doomed to be alive on such a server? Has one to start from scratch if a new company takes things over - i sure hope not - even the smallest risk that this might happen (and i wouldn t even dare to imagine what horrible things must come to pass that mythic takes action) leads me strongly in the direction of the US-Servers (welcome or not ).
Such is the upheaval it has created with my online friends, that many have statet they wouldn t touch another game hostet by GOA - EVEN if its WAR - and many of us are fans of the GW IP for decades....
Takes a swig from his mushroombrew and apoligizes for his rants - but the morale of a goblin is not easily recovered from such a blow...

Nidragon

06-09-2006, 04:16 AM

I have done a poll on our italian forum, asking what they think about GOA.
Link: http://www.gamesrider.it/forums/showthread.php?t=4280

They say that GOA has good servers but there are some problems and delays with the payment system.

Midwinter

06-09-2006, 04:25 AM

Abriael

06-09-2006, 08:58 AM

Since it's come up a few times it's worth mentioning that translation for almost everything (beyond item/place names, quest titles etc) is outsourced to a 3rd party. It'd take a huge number of extra staff to do the amount needed and, as such, all mmos outsource their translations to specialist companies. Well.. maybe not Blizzard (unsure) who have something like 500 people working for them ;)

Outsurcing translations doesn't justify in any way a company if the quality of such translations is poor. It's their responsibility to perform a quality control on the outsurced material, if they chose not to, don't have the resources to, or don't do it with the necessary attention to detail, the responsibility for errors, inconsistencies, conflicts and such is still theirs.

Midwinter

06-09-2006, 09:17 AM

Outsurcing translations doesn't justify in any way a company if the quality of such translations is poor. It's their responsibility to perform a quality control on the outsurced material, if they chose not to, don't have the resources to, or don't do it with the necessary attention to detail, the responsibility for errors, inconsistencies, conflicts and such is still theirs.

Not that I necessarily (at least, not completely) agree but where did I say it wasn't? An odd reply to an otherwise straightforward post made merely to disseminate information.

Abriael

06-09-2006, 09:22 AM

It was a mere integration of your information :D

Bluestrike

06-09-2006, 10:41 AM

The vast majority of people play DAoC in Europe and just get on with it. That's clearly obvious otherwise there would be NO people playing European DAoC cos they'd all be off playing the US where it's allegedly so much better.

Wel I haven't met to many people what liked GOA, I'm sure its also very specific to locations. germans seem to have 50- 60% of the total players while then english version barely has 25% of the population while they have a bigger market (Ireland, England, Northern europe, netherlands and the flemish/duch part of Belgium)
So that means they are getting it elsware.

The mayority of players I know was playing the US servers and looking at their reaction on local forums they probebly do the same for WAR.

Looking at the current DAOC statistics I have more people to play with if I have the DAOC us version then if I would play the EU version :( (I admit I don't know if the EU servers are clustered atm so my conclusion can be wrong)
I also mustI must admit I was jealous at first when the eu version had 2k players on their servers in my primetime but it looks like US passed Eu version now and that should say enough as well.

I'm just alot concerned thats all,
Lets say someone is showing a nice fish to me now but I heard from others that they got the same fish and that is was infested with maggots.
So I'm gonna check this new fish out with utter caution before accepting it.

*edit*
No matter what Mythic or Goa say, the EU player will always feel like second choice/class/whatever or feel neglected for the simple reason that GOA is between the EU player and Mythic, this is just how emotions work and ofcourse its easy to point the finger to GOA in such circumstance for anything thats wrong.

Perhaps one way to deal with this would be a common version of the herald (if not already)
Ofcourse with language tabs, but in essence all WAR players in the world browse to the same website.
Both Mythic and Goa could post news there concerning their servers or the general WAR public.
Both versions have the same stat systems, feedback systems, TL report systrem (perhaps for techincal reasons english only unless the TL can speak more then one language :P)
both versions should use the same payment system and so on.

At least the EU player might have the feeling this way that they are acknowledged by Mythic.

There this should be by share to being part of the solution :D

Nalaeph

06-09-2006, 01:28 PM

Well, at least this time around the WHOLE WORLD will have the pleasure to wait till the lazy gitts in Paris translated the patches in whatever number of languages! I'm kidding.

I've only played DAoC for a year and my experience with GOA wasn't anything to write home about. The OpenTransit problem was there for me and the one time I tried to use the GM service (through a tool called 'RightNow!' or something... more like 'NeverEver!') was a waste of time.

The one good thing I can say about them is, that they tried to include GM events and new quests for a while, wich was a nice touch even if they didn't always work out perfectly.

Shike

06-10-2006, 03:22 AM

I'm really split here, as I have played on both Mythics and also GOA's servers for years I know quite well how it works on both types and...

GOA, well, they had their problems in the past, cant look past that so easily but I believe they have improved, Requiel, Erivoss and the rest has done alot for making things better. However, the supportmodel with rightnow is just awful, the way they handle XML is awful, the website is awful and the paymentmethod is awful. Serveruptime is great and there isnt so much serverlag to talk about, however, Opentransit is really really crappy overall, despite the fact that they have gotten slightly better. During my time on UServers I have gone linkdead one single time, one!.. and thats from a swedish ISP and it was also my own ISP that had problems that time. On EUservers I have gone linkdead a cpl times this last week, I get lagspikes now and then and my pingplots always points at opentransitnodes that cause the problems, all hops until I reach their network is perfectly fine and BAM, high ping, high packetloss for a while, then it settles down for abit and thats how it goes on. The transatlantic pipe should work worse but it is infact working better than towards opentransit.

I will just wait and see how it works the next months on GOA's servers with opentransit and if it goes on like it does now, I will probably just take the choice I know is stable, US, even though I will have slightly higher ping, stability for me is more important than low latency. (not fun to go LD in critical moments on MLraids, hard farming or whatever, it pisses me off, it doesnt matter if its one LD per week, but red lag at some point every evening is too much and thats how it is atm for me). Im ok with the way GOA works these days, I know they cannot change supportmodel and they have improved with the patching but the ISP.. is a really bad choice. Mythic says GOA and Mythic will use same supportmodel etc and thats really good, same patch all the time is also very good so there are some things speaking for GOA at least. As said, can only wait and see how it works over time with OT now.

:???:

valo

06-10-2006, 03:24 PM

Sounds like mythic are going to do their best to get the game out in the best possible way.

I am sure that there is a slight game developers rivalry between blizzard and mythic :)

maybe we could watch a little sports tournament between mythic employees and blizzard employees to see who wins :D

Shapechanger

06-10-2006, 03:47 PM

while then english version barely has 25% of the population while they have a bigger market

It's probably a little more language friendly for the English blokes to come and read the American stuff though since we more or less speak the same language. Almost no difference there. Certainly no need to translate 'cause we can just guess at the couple of differences.

freeid

06-10-2006, 03:58 PM

Why do modern mmo's try to segregate the community. This feels like another wedge driven between the international mmo comunity, I feel sorry for cross nationality guilds coming from other games.:cry:

seb1024

06-10-2006, 04:10 PM

** Edited for Content **

Nenimeindrol

06-10-2006, 11:31 PM

I dont really care that it is GOA holding the european servers (if its true). I just wish the servers wouldnt be put in france as Opentransit has alot of problems and sometimes the servers will lag ALOT, it happened in DAoC and it happened in WoW and it will happen in WAR if they put their servers in france :)

indeed, I have given up on french completely on that matter. So long as GM's aren't french I can survive personally with the lag.

edited addition:
Readed MBJ's reply about possible server coming to N-europe if it lags via france.. I would suggest using Sweden for it even if I "hate" as a finn those swedes. Just wondering how bad the lag should be in beta, but I gues we'll see then.

And 1 server for all.. hell no, it's better to separate usa/eu atleast always due to raid content times.

Kazgut

06-11-2006, 09:47 AM

Agreed sweden is the best natural choice to put a server in Europe they have one of the best internet connections ever.

Orbstrinn

06-12-2006, 07:38 AM

Hello everyone, i'm a french girl and i use to play on Daoc(EU).

The real problem with the translation quality isn't the ressources (it's obvious that the teams have to be good... and have to know the background very well), the real problem is the time.

How could you imagine that we'll have the patches and version the same day in Europe and US with a perfect translation ? They'll have a very little time to translate a patch and test it in 5 languages. People who imagine that anybody (GOA or Mythic or anyone) could do the perfect translation with the delays shortened to satisfy the clients is living in Wonderland... We are the ones who forced them to low the quality because we want to have everything : short delays, patches at the same time in US and Europe AND a very good translation fully respecting the background of Warhammer. Of course that's no excuse but a good translation is enough for me, no need to have the perfect one with the exact term used in the book B section 2 paragraph 5 of player's guide for warhammer players ;).

As far as i am concerned, i appreciate GOA's translations in french, it's quite good. I never have any problems with their support (but i don't really have any problem at all) and i'm glad to see them with Mythic to give birth to a wonderful game.

Shapechanger

06-12-2006, 01:10 PM

Why do modern mmo's try to segregate the community.

Im sure not so sure they are 'trying' to segregate the community.

I think instead, rather, that 'trying not' to segregate the community is too expensive and cumbersome, and both very significantly so.

Cadiva

06-13-2006, 04:25 AM

Agreed sweden is the best natural choice to put a server in Europe they have one of the best internet connections ever.

No network is perfect, World of Warcraft had 17 servers down yesterday due to an 'environmental issue' at Telia's data centre.

Open Transit has its moments thats for sure, but it certainly depends on what ISP you use and what country you are playing from.
Not everyone in the UK has problems, not everyone in Sweden etc, if you see what I mean. Networks are, by their very nature, prone to occasional problems and I can't see that these would be eliminated no matter where they put the server clusters.

It makes more sense to have them located in two different data centres just in case something major happens to one of them but that is, no doubt, much more expensive as you're then having to supply two tech teams to keep an eye on them.

As Mark Jacobs has said the game will be released simultaneously in the US and EU and that patches will come out at the same time, that rather leads me to believe they'll be doing the translation work at the SAME time as the development work.

Lack of English speaking players in the EU DAoC - very much down to a lack of advertising of the game and the fact the US version shipped three months earlier, lots of people started playing US and never moved over to Europe when it launched there.