Help Blizzard Help You

It’s been known for some time that Starcraft 2 servers will separate regions, limiting Aussies to opponents from Southeast Asia. But it’s uncertain whether this is hindrance or help – which is why they need your internet data.

Gamespot AU recently quoted a thread on Blizzard forums claiming that the Asian servers, which would limit Aussies to opponents from New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines, would hinder the performance of a game in which speed is vital.

[imgclear] Their reasoning was based on the deals that some Aussie ISPs have with those in the US, and the giant pipe that we have going to their west coast. Supposedly, some local players would require a hop to the US before heading back to Southeast Asia. With some beta players lamenting lag and some worry free, Blizzard have suggested your ISP might be a factor:

We appreciate everyone taking the time to provide us with their current network paths. Many of the results are showing good pathways and nice pings, as expected. But we’re actively working with regional ISP’s to address connections that are not currently optimized. We need to have as much data as possible, so if you live in Oceania and haven’t already, please perform a traceroute and post your results.

Blizzard have asked anyone interested to submit their internet data so they can gauge the connection speeds. You can find info about how here, and the server is the Southeast Asia Battle.net Test IP address: 202.9.67.100

And while you’re at it, Battle.net forum member Maged asks you test the US IP address of 12.129.206.131 for comparison.

Latency isn’t the only problem that comes with region locking – we’ll cover many of them next week – but among them is the obvious language barrier between Oceania’s different nations, and the inability to play with friends in the US or Europe.

The discontent goes both ways, however, with some US punters claiming they don’t want Aussie hangers-on lagging their service.

But before you go buying multiple copies of the game to play with your intercontinental cousins, Blizzard hasn’t shut out the possibility of cross-server play:

…as we stated regarding cross region support, it’s something we’re working to implement after the launch of the game and it will allow you to connect to other regions should you choose to do so…

We here at Kotaku haven’t had any problems regarding latency, and the Blizzard quote suggests it might mainly be a regional issue. But given the drawbacks of being locked into Oceania, shouldn’t we be given a choice?


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