Bioware's Issues with China

[Profyrion]

Because only Chinese people know how to run 20+ clients with bots to farm gold amirite...get real dude, more than enough westerners farm gold and if no Chinese would do it there would be even more westerners there to fill the demand

You can't ignore that a lot of account hacking is done from China. Certainly the majority of phishing attempts originate there. The farmers don't have to do much farming when they can just log into your account and take your gold.

[Redblade]

You can't ignore that a lot of account hacking is done from China. Certainly the majority of phishing attempts originate there. The farmers don't have to do much farming when they can just log into your account and take your gold.

Not saying they don't, I'm just saying there is westerners doing the same things and if the Chinese where to be effectively blocked you can be sure that some one will fill the demand, just claiming that the Chinese is the problem is being really naive or plain ignorant.

[WarFalcon1]

I think you are wrong with this comment. I think first impressions turned a lot of the people who did buy/try the game off. There was a lot of graphical issues at launch (rubber-banding/sliding animations are a big one) and while I may pick it up when it goes F2P, first impressions are a big thing. If the first impression someone gets of you is bad, it's really hard if not impossible for them to ever look twice at you again.

I bought the game at launch, played MAYBE 3-5 days (got to level 12) but it was maybe an hour a day, 2 hours a day before the graphical problems got to me. If there was no rubber-banding/sliding and the animations themselves "flowed" together instead of looking "jittery" in the way they transitioned together I would have stuck it out longer.

I don't think it has anything to do with the "vanilla/tbc" style of WoW. Well, maybe I'm in the minority considering I feel having to put time and effort into my toon before reaching a goal instead of having it handed to me is a good thing.

You realize WoW had huge graphical issues as well right? Even late into the launch. Very similar bugs infact. Like standing right next to the mob but it says you are too far away. Then it glitches/slides and appears a good distance from you. Clipping into walls/objects and not being able to get out. I still love the crouch down to loot get stuck that way and slide around for a good few minutes. Cast a spell and get stuck in the cast animation. Those are still in the game, least it was a 8 months ago.

There were issues at launch, I'm not saying there were not. But every MMO has to deal with those issues.

[alturic]

You realize WoW had huge graphical issues as well right? Even late into the launch. Very similar bugs infact. Like standing right next to the mob but it says you are too far away. Then it glitches/slides and appears a good distance from you. Clipping into walls/objects and not being able to get out. I still love the crouch down to loot get stuck that way and slide around for a good few minutes. Cast a spell and get stuck in the cast animation. Those are still in the game, least it was a 8 months ago.

There were issues at launch, I'm not saying there were not. But every MMO has to deal with those issues.

A good majority of those issues were lag related. Can't say I have ever got stuck in a wall or anything outside of falling under SW, on purpose of course. Sliding animations and the "flow" (smoothness might be a better word) of the animations are a completely different thing.

[WarFalcon1]

A good majority of those issues were lag related. Can't say I have ever got stuck in a wall or anything outside of falling under SW, on purpose of course. Sliding animations and the "flow" (smoothness might be a better word) of the animations are a completely different thing.

Some of them are lag related. The looting one for sure. But getting fear'd/clipping into a wall and not being able to get out is not lag. But you are right SWTOR is not quite as smooth as WoW. It has gotten better but I still find abilities clipping, not going off if I spam the button and whatnot.

[Parrin]

You realize WoW had huge graphical issues as well right? Even late into the launch. Very similar bugs infact. Like standing right next to the mob but it says you are too far away. Then it glitches/slides and appears a good distance from you. Clipping into walls/objects and not being able to get out. I still love the crouch down to loot get stuck that way and slide around for a good few minutes. Cast a spell and get stuck in the cast animation. Those are still in the game, least it was a 8 months ago.

There were issues at launch, I'm not saying there were not. But every MMO has to deal with those issues.

WoW still has those issues. Try hunting clefthoof in Sholazar Basin. That was created in WotLK, and it's still not working.

[Arlee]

So this thread is about a player's issues trying to connect through china.... we have strayed rather far from that, but lets get back to it please

[Profyrion]

Not much left to talk about, honestly. OP hasn't posted in days, and he needs to do a lot more objective research rather than simply looking for a place to point his finger if he wants to play the game.

[iggie]

China needs to be banned from more MMOs for all the botting and gold farming they do and ruining games on a massive magnitude.

Stereotype much? A company should be able to solve (or combat) gold farmers/sellers in a way that doesn't involve them blocking the largest internet user base in the world. As for botting, every country has botters.

---------- Post added 2012-08-18 at 11:45 AM ----------

Not much left to talk about, honestly. OP hasn't posted in days, and he needs to do a lot more objective research rather than simply looking for a place to point his finger if he wants to play the game.

I am currently playing the game. The issue isn't my not being able to, but the masses. Failing sub numbers are a common concern for everyone involved with TOR.

Whenever I post anything about China the closest racists always come out spouting gold farming this and that. You keep claiming I'm not objective, yet you keep ignoring the fact this is the only western game with issues currently. Why would only TOR, a crappy star wars game not in mandarin with no physical servers in asia, be blocked over other games.

Yeah I thought so. It's easy to back Bioware and blame China, because China is known for it's "evil ways on the interweb".

My experience with Bioware is that of contacting North American ISPs, they love passing the buck. They'll do/say anything and blame anyone to close your ticket. Why does missing out on the largest market of gamers in the world not cause Bioware some concern? They don't even accept Chinese bloody paypals or credit cards, make sense considering they don't want Chinese people playing.

If China was indeed blocking SWTOR you'd think they'd of mentioned it by now somewhere, or even used that as a reason why their sub numbers are so low now.

---------- Post added 2012-08-18 at 11:48 AM ----------

I doubt Swtor is suited for the chinese market. WoW had to go through massive content alterations before being ok with the Chinese censorship. If I remember correctly everything having to do with undeath had to be changed? Or atleast no skeletons allowed. I doubt the Chinese government would be thrilled with all the Rakghouls in Swtor etc.

EDIT: Some changes made to the Chinese version of WoW http://chinagame.178.com/201008/75942001505.html

FALSE. These changes are easily edited by using certain files from an English client. The "block" happened before Rakghouls, before the NDA was even lifted actually. Keep in mind the issues to WoW happened because it was a CHINESE company running WoW servers on CHINESE soil in MANDARIN. Access to Blizzard websites and games were not affected AT ALL. Many players migrated to Taiwanese Warcraft which had NO CHANGE to it's access.

Since then not one game has had issues with China, just because it's Warcraft people assume the Chinese government changes every fucking game now. READ THE OP. Hate typing stuff twice.

---------- Post added 2012-08-18 at 11:50 AM ----------

You can't ignore that a lot of account hacking is done from China. Certainly the majority of phishing attempts originate there. The farmers don't have to do much farming when they can just log into your account and take your gold.

Which they can easily do from a VPN/proxy. I'm not the smartest with computers and I can connect, pretty sure businesses will find a way as well.

[vizzle]

China needs to be banned from more MMOs for all the botting and gold farming they do and ruining games on a massive magnitude.

I'm surprised this hasn't been infracted; it's tough to get more racist than that. An entire country and all its citizens should be banned just because they have the most gold farmers? Do we know if the majority of them are gold farmers? No, we don't.

[iggie]

I'm surprised this hasn't been infracted; it's tough to get more racist than that. An entire country and all its citizens should be banned just because they have the most gold farmers? Do we know if the majority of them are gold farmers? No, we don't.

That's a pretty typical response. Whenever I tried making a thread on swtor.com the thread would get trashed full of racists then locked, every time. I've been inside a few gold selling companies here so far and they've all been pretty posh. I have friends who work there (foreigners) and they get most of their gold from writing their own hacks and farming that way. Given the massive economic gap here (almost no middle class) gaming is increasingly popular.

[Deleted]

Ok, sorry for the zombie thread. I'm working in China atm, and i've started to play swtor, and i'm experiencing the same issues iggie described. I hadn't noticed till a week ago, because i think that's when my vpn server must have gotten blacklisted* (i have to call my vpn company, i guess), so i've tried to play without it. It's impossible, the launcher doesn't recognise my login, the website is unaccessible... and i don't feel like paying for an international call to the UK after they decided to remove the toll-free customer service number that could be accessed with skype.

Thanks for the tip about using the vpn only to bypass the login, that worked wonders!


*My issue with the vpn (don't know if you can relate to it) is that as soon as i start using it (L2TP, not openvpn, i think openvpn has been blocked in China?) the connection becomes extremely irregular, disconnecting every few minutes. While this is not a problem for FB and youtube, when you are trying to play and talk through skype with a friend, and both things disconnect every few minutes, it becomes impossible.

[iggie]

It's been blocked, but they have access sites based in HK and other countries you can use to contact support/etc etc.

You're best off just not playing TOR, to be frank. I pretty much gave up when they blacklisted my credit card for trying to buy an authenticator off origin. You might want to try the Chinese version of WoW, I get 1 ping to the Shanghai server. It's very simple to change your client to English, and the game is ppm (cheap!).

Ping to D3/GW2/Rift isn't bad either, but nothing amazing. Marvel heroes is pay2win so avoid that.

[ruzdu]

Sounds as if I won't be able to play much when I'm back in China next month... Oh well got enough other stuff to do and it will only be for a month.

thanks for the update jotabe

[iggie]

Sounds as if I won't be able to play much when I'm back in China next month... Oh well got enough other stuff to do and it will only be for a month.

thanks for the update jotabe

Hope one of the other things isn't playing Planetside 2