SW:TOR to launch in Austalia. New Zealand, Hong Kong & Singapore

[Vexies]

The cynic in me sees the release date and the timing and thinks this is a nicely timed exercise in showing growth numbers, coming out just a month before the end of Q1.

They'll beable to(unless something disastrous happens) show a decent increase in subs again in Q1 2012 helping to build momentum.

I wonder if they could have released them simultaneously back in Decemeber or did they hold it back to help their growth curve to start the game.

Cynic or no its a freaking genius move on there part. There is literally almost no way for them to NOT show a increase in subs now. Pretty savvy really and as a player who very much wants to see this game grow and succeed .. all I can say is good job Bioware lets get it rolling!

[ZeroWashu]

5 million subs by the end of march?

/discuss

It will be a good way to mask the loss of subs in North America and Europe.

[Alvito]

I play on harbinger. i was not notified till after i rolled and hit 50 during early acess that bioware dumped 16 australian guilds on that server (if i had known my guild would of gone to another pacific server). the bulk of australian / pacific guilds are republic.

During the day imperials pretty much own illum. At night things get reversed (odd i think that most american players are playing as empire and most australians play republic, atleast on my server*.) When they xfer off well it's going to be near impossilbe to do anything on republic side. and as far as pvp i guess i'll be stuck playing alot of huttball and pvb'ing (player versus box) in illum. i think my server will get merged or get free xfers offered.

That might have more to do with the time ppl play not the country they are from. I have found many of the night time Aussies are on the imp/sith side. I am curious how much the population will drop on Harbinger. I cant say I will miss the country epeen battles in /general though, hopefully that will die down some.

---------- Post added 2012-02-15 at 12:45 PM ----------

5 million subs by the end of march?

/discuss

I doubt I hits 5 million that fast if at all. With Star Wars you never know though it has plenty of die hard fans that will always pad the player base some. Very few mmos have hit the million mark only 2 that I know of for sure and 1 didnt hold at 5 for long. I know the numbers on some of the current servers have come crashing down recently so I wonder how many are currently playing now and how many of those ppl will keep playing much longer.

---------- Post added 2012-02-15 at 12:49 PM ----------

Cynic or no its a freaking genius move on there part. There is literally almost no way for them to NOT show a increase in subs now. Pretty savvy really and as a player who very much wants to see this game grow and succeed .. all I can say is good job Bioware lets get it rolling!

While they might grow at first it will take away from the current servers which lowers the quality of the game for those players. Mix in some of the current players now faced with rerolling on a server based closer to them on their time zone or staying on the one they are on if they are still able to. Many of the current servers are ghost towns now I dont know how new ones thinning the crowd out is going to help. I personally have seen ppl quit because of the lack of players to do things with, if you play an mmo but it doesnt have a massive multiplayer feel it can be frustrating.

[Vexies]

It will be a good way to mask the loss of subs in North America and Europe.

You mean the way that "other" *cough* game tries to prop up their sub numbers?

Sure its going to be said as people will always find a way to trash talk the game but you can not deny that its good for the games growth and a smart move.

While they might grow at first it will take away from the current servers which lowers the quality of the game for those players. Mix in some of the current players now faced with rerolling on a server based closer to them on their time zone or staying on the one they are on if they are still able to. Many of the current servers are ghost towns now I dont know how new ones thinning the crowd out is going to help. I personally have seen ppl quit because of the lack of players to do things with, if you play an mmo but it doesnt have a massive multiplayer feel it can be frustrating.

This all really depends on how they implement the server transfer feature. Obviously its being rolled out with them bringing these servers online. If their smart they will open up server transfers for everyone not long after if not at the same time as this is being done. I can see them waiting a bit to see how the dust settles when the initial server moves are done but it should be done soon after.

Also no matter what the nay sayers say its a smart move and will grow the game. They only stand to potentially gain more subs than they lose by opening the game to a wider market. Its simply smart business. Lets be honest here it really doesn't matter where the subs come from as for many (evident by the doom vomiting that happens on these forums daily) perception is everything and they need to show growth, stability and a willingness and intent of continued investment. Its smart, its the perfect time and its the right thing to do.

[Elethiem]

Why would they position themselves to get flamed by issues whilst trying to release the game in Australia\Asia at the same time? This way they can ensure a smoother launch at those regions. If they wanted a commercial *bang* they would release it worldwide for bigger 'launch numbers'.

Its EA being cheap. They don't want the negative press of having long queues, bad latency and servers dying from being overburdened, plus after a launch the subscriber count usually drops fairly substantially as people stop subbing or take a more relaxed approach to playing. Thats a good time to release somewhere else to get more people playing to get more people in the game and keep the servers running nicely.

[Vexies]

ts EA being cheap. They don't want the negative press of having long queues, bad latency and servers dying from being overburdened, plus after a launch the subscriber count usually drops fairly substantially as people stop subbing or take a more relaxed approach to playing. Thats a good time to release somewhere else to get more people playing to get more people in the game and keep the servers running nicely.

How dare they make smart business decisions and stage the release globally to ensure steady growth!! lol Yep sounds completely cheep to me.. or good bushiness sense. Im not sure what the being cheap part is about.. why in the world wouldn't they do it this way?

[asharia]

5 million subs by the end of march?

/discuss

anyone from oceania that wanted to play is already playing. myself included.

i bought a key straight off a website and then just downloaded the game. my mate actually bought the box from EB, who were doing some dodgy dealing or something and had copies to sell.

so, i wouldnt expect subs to change much. especially considering the pop of australia is much much less than the US.

tbh, i dont know that i'd even take up the offer to switch to aussie servers. i'm used to having about 190 ping, i dont think it really affects me. my schedule means i'm better suited to american prime time. also, aussie servers would probably be small, low pop, and kinda boring.

[vizzle]

anyone from oceania that wanted to play is already playing. myself included.

i bought a key straight off a website and then just downloaded the game. my mate actually bought the box from EB, who were doing some dodgy dealing or something and had copies to sell.

so, i wouldnt expect subs to change much. especially considering the pop of australia is much much less than the US.

tbh, i dont know that i'd even take up the offer to switch to aussie servers. i'm used to having about 190 ping, i dont think it really affects me. my schedule means i'm better suited to american prime time. also, aussie servers would probably be small, low pop, and kinda boring.

Yeah I'm sure you speak for the entire Asian and Australian community. Most people who play games don't even follow games, don't buy games as soon as they come out.

[Slugfest]

anyone from Oceania that wanted to play is already playing. myself included.

i bought a key straight off a website and then just downloaded the game. my mate actually bought the box from EB, who were doing some dodgy dealing or something and had copies to sell.

so, i wouldn't expect subs to change much. especially considering the pop of Australia is much much less than the US.

tbh, i dont know that i'd even take up the offer to switch to aussie servers. i'm used to having about 190 ping, i dont think it really affects me. my schedule means i'm better suited to American prime time. also, aussie servers would probably be small, low pop, and kinda boring.

QFT. Being on the Harbinger I like the fact that the population is very heavy. Despite this I STILL have the occasional problem getting into a HM flashpoint. From what I've seen there have not been any burning discussions (at least in general chat) about bad performance game wise based on where the server is. A mass exodus is probably not in the best interest for a lot of these players since there is no guarantee that the new AU servers will have a high population.

Back in WoW I raided with a couple AU/Asian based guilds that were either on a west coast server or an oceanic server. Guess what: no one reported any glaring problems with ping or latency during raids on either server. In fact, most problems (AU wise at least) stemmed from their ISP providers or bad end user hardware and had nothing to do with where the servers were.

In short, this might be ok with people who are JUST starting to get into the game in those regions and want to see how the new servers play. But if they are already on existing servers and not having that much of a performance degradation I can't see it as a good thing for server populations since people are spread too thin as it is due to the initial population caps that were put in place during launch, resulting in insane que times. Also, as others have mentioned, if players in those regions REALLY wanted to play SWTOR they found a way to do it and are currently playing (Harbinger, Swiftsure, I'm looking at you).

Oceanic servers: good for the long term health of the game, maybe not so good in the short term if people leave the present servers en mass.

[ZeroWashu]

You mean the way that "other" *cough* game tries to prop up their sub numbers?

Sure its going to be said as people will always find a way to trash talk the game but you can not deny that its good for the games growth and a smart move.

Where did I say in that statement that the game is not good. I simply posted a truth, opening to new regions will allow them to mask losses in North America and Europe. After watching the loss of good players in the guild I am part of and what few we managed to skim from failed guilds I seriously doubt the numbers are holding. We never have anyone complain about queues anymore, its all about failing to get FP fill ins for the odd teams and Ops are a pain too. We even got a few people from other servers who complained about "its dead over there" so.... Hopefully cross realm lfg/lfw will help

[Peyj]

Cynic or no its a freaking genius move on there part. There is literally almost no way for them to NOT show a increase in subs now. Pretty savvy really and as a player who very much wants to see this game grow and succeed .. all I can say is good job Bioware lets get it rolling!

Except most people who wanted to play already paid for the game & subscribed.

anyone from oceania that wanted to play is already playing. myself included.

i bought a key straight off a website and then just downloaded the game. my mate actually bought the box from EB, who were doing some dodgy dealing or something and had copies to sell.

so, i wouldnt expect subs to change much. especially considering the pop of australia is much much less than the US.

I agree, everyone I know that was interested in playing just bought the key online and has been playing since US launch. I don't know a single person who has held out for Oceanic launch. There will probably be a slight sub growth, but it's not going to be anywhere near as large as some people are anticipating here..

[vizzle]

Yes, keep basing your assumptions on anecdotal evidence. "Everyone I know has already bought it, that means no one else will!"

[Thrax]

Regional servers. I subbed to another 2 months just hearing this. Now let's hope they let me transfer off my Godforsaken server for free.

[Cakka]

Good news for aussies and et al. but this is not even near the same as launching in China, Korea, etc. eg. Australia only has about 20 million people and it has by far the largest population of those four. So saying that we will suddenly see some huge surge in subscription numbers is extremely unlikely.

[Tydrane]

I'm glad that I waited. I didn't want to spoil the game for myself by playing it on US servers before it was released here. When I heard that they wanted to wait so that they could release it here with local servers, that decided it for me.

[vizzle]

I'm glad that I waited. I didn't want to spoil the game for myself by playing it on US servers before it was released here. When I heard that they wanted to wait so that they could release it here with local servers, that decided it for me.

I don't understand this logic; how would you be spoiling the game for yourself by actually playing the game? Especially when there are thousands of other Oceanics playing on US realms.

[Tydrane]

I've played World of Warcraft for years with approximately 290ms latency. I've had to get used to that delay, and overcame it to pretty great effect, especially in PvP during TBC when I was a beast in battlegrounds.

I'll get to enjoy the entire experience with less to no latency issues. That's just one reason.

I'm also used to waiting for video games. We're at the arse end of the world when it comes to release dates for everything, we get stuff after everyone else has already played it, or seen it, or heard it. I've been interested in Final Fantasy Type-0 for a while, as well as the next installment of Kingdom Hearts, and like anyone who has ever played the Half-Life series, I've waited well beyond an acceptable amount of time for Episode Three/HL3. I have enough video games to get through, anyway - Wild Arms on my PSP (one of my favourite PSX games, so happy they put it on PSN), gotta actually finish FFXIII, gotta start FFXIII-2, and I bought Sonic Generations for PS3 months ago and haven't played it yet. There's also WoW, RIFT and my minecraft world that keep me occupied... I'll enjoy TOR when it comes, but it's not like I can't wait for it - and I'm probably a bigger Star Wars geek than most people here.