Gnawer
- Male
- 29 Years Old
- Tørring, ??
- DK
- Plays: Pretty much everything I can get my hands on. :)
- Interests: nothing (except Alganon?)
- Offline
Sigh, let's see...
I'm a 29 yo guy from Denmark and I guess I'm a bit of a gaming nerd. I play all kinds of weird games; RTS, RPG, Manager games, FPS etc. but my favorite will always be the MMORPG genre. Unfortunately the games are getting worse all the time imo, so I'm not playing any MMORPGs at the moment.
Let's hope Alganon will change the current trend of making everything as easy as possible in MMOs. ;)
Well, I've been wondering about something for a while.. Why do MMOs always divide the players into smaller groups. We get US East, US West, Various Asian servers, EU German, EU French, EU Spanish, EU English (for everyone else) etc.
Do we really hate each other that much now? We can't even play games together anymore? lol
My first MMO was a game called Asheron's Call (AC1). Some of you may know it and some of you may not.. In AC1 they didn't force you to play on an EU server just because of your nationality. In fact, there wasn't a single EU server. Everyone in the world had the same servers to choose from and I really miss those days..
If I was online during prime time (CET - Central European Time) I would usually see a lot of Scandinavian, German, UK, French (etc. etc.) players online. If I was still online 6 hours later, the US players (East Coast) would be all over the place as it was now their prime time. Even later the Koreans would start showing up and so on...I really liked that.
It's not like I understand a word of Korean or French but it made the world feel alive somehow. Most of them were able to speak English anyway, so it wasn't like you couldn't ask them for directions or whatever.
Of course I could choose not to care. Do I need Korean or French players to be able to have fun? No, I don't. But I like meeting different people in MMOs and it also means the servers aren't empty during the night. You can always find someone to talk to or group with. It's always prime time somewhere in the world. ;)
Let's say a server can handle 2000 players being online at the same time...
Then let's say there's 2 sides (Horde/Alliance-ish) and we're down to 999 people you can potentially group with during prime time.
Then you need to find someone around your own level.
Then you need to find someone who needs/wants the same quest as you.
Then you need to make sure that at least one of them is a healer-type character, one a tank etc.
It all adds up to an annoying LFG time and then imagine doing it during the night and it's nearly impossible to get a group going for anything at all.
Even in a popular game like WoW I usually ended up doing solo stuff with my lowbie Alts during the night because there were only like 50 Horde players online in total. That's not 'Massive'.. I guess it's just a 'MO' during the nights or something? :/
I don't know if the problem is that bad in the US as you guys have several time zones over there. That obviously means you also have several 'prime times' every evening. It's not really like that here in Europe though. UK have their own thing going (GMT) but that's only one hour apart from the rest of western Europe, so that doesn't allow for much variation in playing time.
If I try to play most newer MMOs during (CET) prime time, I may end up having to wait in line just to log in. If I try again 5-6 hours later, the server is pretty much empty. That wouldn't happen if the games didn't force us to stick to our 'local' servers. Then I would just be able to play with the US players instead.
In First Person Shooters (FPS) a low latency is much more important than in a MMO and they usually don't even restrict US players from an EU server or the other way around..
I don't get it. Why aren't we all allowed to play together anymore? Am I really the only person in the world who doesn't mind someone speaking German, Korean, Spanish, French or whatever in a game near me?
Can anyone explain this to me? Does anyone at least have a guess? lol
Some germans can't speak english? Really?
lol ... is that so astonishing? Does everybody in your country speak a second language well enough to play a mmorpg in that language?
While everybody in Germany has to learn a second language in school, that language is not always English. And even if it is .... not everybody is good at it. To enjoy to play a game in a foreign language you need to feel at least basically comfortable with using that language I suppose.
Hey Sharra.
Well, I don't know how many Germans speak English obviously. But is it really that bad? I mean, a person's English skills don't need to be perfect (look at me. lol) to be able to communicate in a multi-language server.
I know a few Danes that don't speak English but they just tend to join Danish guilds and speak Danish there.. I mean, most people understand "Kill 10 wolves and you get a Sword of Doom" etc. :)
Couldn't it all be solved by just making an German option in the client software? If they translate everything but Item name, Location names etc. it shouldn't really hurt the interaction? And it would still make it easier for the person to understand lore books, long quest descriptions etc..? :)
Oh yes, a German option in the client software would help a lot. *keeping my fingers crossed for that* I would really like to draw my friends into this. :)
Yeah, it would be cool if they would translate the client. :)
As long as they don't start translating item names, location names etc. like they did in Diablo II. It was hard trying to trade with Germans when you didn't have any idea what the guy was selling. :P
I still don't understand why they force us to play in EU/US/Asian servers based on location though. It just doesn't make any sense to me. It makes about as much sense as having different release dates around the world. lol :/
It all depends on how they are organizing the code to whether or not they will be able to make quick (relatively speaking) translation of the game. I'm not sure as well if they could make that client side....that would be a panacea of sorts I guess :P
Living in a 99% white community now, I really miss the multi-culturalism from university. I did play one game where they merged all the eu-pvp servers onto our server and I really enjoyed it. Just seeing different languages in chat was a balm to feeling culturally deprived.
I, too, hope they translate the client into other languages, but, lol, am also glad it's starting in English as I don't ever again want to see quests in Chinese.
I have meet alot of players from over sea's and think that is a preference.
Didn't Ultima Online have a language translator in it?
While I do understand your argument, I have a lot of friends that won't be able to play Alganon because they do not speak English. It's not fun to play when you do not understand the story-line and the quests you are doing, nor be able to talk to most of the players around you. Others do not speak English well enough to fully enjoy the game. They could play on an english server if need be, but would really prefer a german one to feel more comfortable.
But you are right that there is no reason to FORCE people into playing on european servers just because they live there. If they prefer to play on an american server, there is no reason to not let them.