Don’t Block Me, Bro!

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by: Candace on Jun 11th, 09 at 6:23 pm

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Once again, I am in a throng of players begging that our country IP addresses is not blocked. Who would block the IP of an entire country? The publisher of a free to play MMORPG. Especially when there are multiple publishers the world over for one game.

I’m currently in the (now) open beta for a game that may be blocking the IP addresses of North America, Australia, and Asia. This is a problem that I have come up against before, and it won’t be the last time I see this issue happen. However, the players seem to think they understand why publishers for free MMOs do this. They keep crying “foul”, and in the words of Inigo Montoya; “You keep saying that word. I do no think it means what you think it means.”

Lag issues is not quite the reason why a free MMO will block a region. If they do, it’s to protect the players in the region blocked. The further they are away from the servers, the worse their lag is. If you are close to the server database and experiencing lag, then it’s most likely because of a crowded server, or your own client side issues.

Currency conversion problems is again a highly unlikely issue. Most platforms that accept credit cards can easily convert currency. However, players in the regions blocked may end up spending more money to buy items in a micro transaction. For example, a US based player using a European MMO will spend almost twice the amount they would in the US because of the US dollar to Euro conversion rate.

Do these companies have a “deal” with each other to keep their regional player base to themselves? Again, I doubt it. Unless the publishers are owned by the same parent company. However, publishers could just have common courtesy for the other publisher and not want to take their paying customers.

There are plenty of other reasons why a free to play MMO would block another region or country. Though, there are ways you (the player) can keep yourself on your “home” servers. Most communities for these free to play games are small, and the developers/GMs are easy to talk to.

Write them, and let them know why you are playing on a different region’s servers. Tell them what type of lag you are or not experiencing, and why you don’t have a problem converting currency to theirs. It’s also a good idea to suggest ways they can work around this.

The massive free to play MMO Maple Story ended up blocking regions from certain servers. However, they implemented this block much later in the game. So, players who had already created accounts on a different region were still able to play there. It affected players who created accounts after a certain date.

Personally, I am very happy on the European client in one free MMO, and I don’t want to be blocked. I’m enjoying every minute as a beta tester, and I have 0 lag issues. I really ought to contact the company of that game and shout “Don’t block me, bro!”

One Comment to “Don’t Block Me, Bro!”

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The Rock says:

June 13, 2009 at 8:06 am

Blocking people from beta testing an MMO in this world market? INCONCEIVABLE!

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