Destiny is set for release come midnight tonight and those of you who have pre-ordered, or plan to buy the game in the near future, can now rest easy in the knowledge that Activision and Bungie are launching locally hosted servers, based here in Australia.
Activision has confirmed that these servers will be available at launch.
“The seamless matchmaking experience in Destiny is designed so it doesn’t require locally-hosted servers for most players,” explained Roger Wolfson, a server software engineering lead for Bungie, “but depending on where you are and if it is required to have an optimal experience, there are locally-hosted servers all over the world, including in Australia.”
We don’t have much more information to go on at this stage. We don’t know exactly where in Australia the servers are located but — regardless — this is great news for those who plan to play Destiny here in Australia, particularly those who are looking to play competitive multiplayer.
More news as we get it.
Comments
35 responses to “Destiny Has Locally Hosted Servers In Australia”
Great news. When I was playing multiplayer in the beta there was definitely some lag, and I didn’t know if that was because it was beta or because there won’t any local servers, but regardless I remember thinking that the multiplayer had the potential to be quite awesome if I could play it without lag, which it seems I’ll be able to do.
I don’t remember any lag. Then again I played by myself.
How was the beta/ alpha playing solo?
I’m likely to play through destiny solo (meaning without an organised group of friends) and I’m wondering what type of experience it is.
Cheers
Shoot stuff in the face. Go to the ‘home base’ every 30-60 minutes. That’s pretty much it.
Not counting the hub areas where random players join in, I found the game to be very boring. It really feels like a grind fest, especially when you’re waiting for your abilities to recharge and there’s no other players who can liven up the experience with their own abilities.
There’s very little to interact with. Since your equipment is determined before you enter an area, there’s no thrill of picking up new weapons or grenades. So you spend a lot of time aiming down the same sights, killing the same enemies, getting killed because you have no health and regenerative health succeeds when you’re not getting shot at, then rolling your eyes to redo the whole area again.
I eventually quit when I was holding off the same, unimportant area for waves after waves of aliens that rush you down into melee for the fifth time.
At first I was having fun exploring the world. But I quickly realised there was NOTHING to find in any corner. No new weapons, no med packs, no grenade cache. Every now and then you’ll find a dead robot that gives you a small amount of background and exp. But I eventually stopped exploring because I knew there was nothing there.
Of course, this is all beta talk, the game might be different.
If you are going to play the game by yourself, don’t try harder difficulty settings. All it does is increase the health bars of enemies.
The exploration was a definite disappointment, clambering all over the place for… nothing. Just nothing. Especially since the enemies respawn so quickly, there’s not even the illusion of having left a mark on the world. In that respect it’s very much like an MMO. Only minus the ‘massively’ part.
The beta bored me to tears after I’d explored everything and was busily maxing all the classes, desperate to see something new. I’m hoping/betting (in this case, betting the RRP of the game) that this won’t be the case for the full version.
I’m hoping the final version is good. Despite not agreeing with a change here and there, I’ve never been bored by Bungie games. Would be soul crushing if the game they’ve been excited and enthusiastic over bringing their game to a new playerbase turns out to be just a boring grindfest where the social aspects had more thought over the gameplay.
I haven’t played but I had written it off simply because it was an MMO.
These things never ever turn out to not be grindy.
The combat feels great mechanically, but man, the lack of weapon variety really hurts it for me. One of my favourite parts of Halo is how you have to pick up and use different weapons that are dropped from enemies as you go, and choosing which ones to go with and seeing how that effects the encounter is very satisfying, especially when you need to attempt a skirmish multiple times. Using the same weapon combo for an extended period of time is mind numbing.
I say all of this after having just re-preordered the PS3 digital version so I can get a free upgrade to the PS4, so I’m definitely still keen on the game, I’m just disappointed because I feel like it may not reach its fun potential due to over-stressing the MMO aspects.
All I think I needed to be mega-hyped for this game is weapon variety and rewarding exploration. I’d love to be able to explore some far off corner of a map and find a unique weapon that does something crazy, instead of just a slightly upgraded rifle/shotgun/pistol variant.
Yep, I covered all that in my Halo indepth review 😛
It’s fantastic. You can do your own thing and every now and then see other people having a firefight of their own. You can join in and help or pass them by. Others may join you, too.
Some shit was pretty hard solo
I hope that they decide what servers to shuffle you to based on ping, not based on the region of your copy of the game…
Yeah, thats my biggest worry at the moment, hopefully I’ll find out tomorrow
I pre-ordered via Amazon and this is worrying me =\
Always rely on Bungie to care about their playerbase. They realised in Halo 2 that foreign hosts are bad, so they added in a local search option for Halo 3. Did the same for Reach while fixing up the overall network.
…more then I can say for Halo 4…
I always remember Halo (any version) having awful lag so that I couldn’t ever fully enjoy them.
The Destiny beta seemed mostly ok to me though.
I remember some hiccups with Halo 3 every now and then, but Reach was perfect 99% of the time.
Yeah dunno what you mean mcgarnical
Only one I ever had an issue with was Halo2, and it can be forgiven considering it was 10yrs ago and was an excellent game for it’s time
also during that time Sony were still playing with their dicks and making shite like Killzone… oh wait they are still doing that
Considering Halo 4 was done by 343 Industries this doesn’t exactly reflect on Bungies reputation
I know. I’m saying how good Bungie is as a developer 😛
Bungie, please, I can only contain so much hype.
If it makes you feel better, Homefront was advertised with local servers.
Homefront did have local servers… and I thought the multiplayer was great.
Yep. Don’t remember getting into them 😛
Man. I bought that game for the story. Acclaimed author! Novel new premise! Meh.
Finished in a few hours then gave the multi a whirl. Seemed like a very polished version of BF-not-quite-2042-let’s-say-2020. Didn’t matter to me, I knew the servers would be dead inside a month, so I took the thing back and complained to the EB guy who sold it to me, “I thought we were on good terms! How could you let me walk out of here yesterday with this steaming turd?!”
(He was all confused and like, “Whut? I thought it was good! What’s wrong with it? Huh? Single-player? Lol, who plays shooters for story?” I never went back.)
Holy shit, was that really his reaction?
Yup. Thing is, I have a brother-in-law who would probably be completely on the same page as that guy, so he’s serving SOME kinda market.
I’m not saying there aren’t people who act like that, but I’m surprised people working in a gaming store would have an opinion like that.
My understanding of the hiring criteria is, ‘salesperson first, gamer second’.
Homefront was the buggiest game ever, not sure if it was me, but was unplayable
This is great news!!!!!
oh man….super hyped for this one 🙂
Hopefully these are better than “Australian” titanfall servers… I was only ever able to get a game on south east asian servers. Alas, it was the 360 version.
Xbone version the Aus Servers are alright
Fuck to the YES! finally game companies realise that trying to play on international server with what the Australian gov calls “Internet” is the worst thing in the world.