Thinking of returning the World of Warcraft and could use some help!

[PandaMango141]

Hi there, my names Alex.

I played from the beginning of BC into the early months of Cataclysm, when I had to move from the UK to Australia.

Now that I've settled in here I am thinking of getting back into my favourite ever game, but I have a few questions that I could use some help with.

1 - I am now living in Canberra. I have heard from the corners of the internet that the Ping times here in Australia can be pretty abysmal, especially when compared to the UK. If so, how do you guys get around it? And what kind of figures are you pulling?

2 - As far as I am aware there are no official Australian servers up yet, and that Aussie players have to connect to US servers. If this is the case, which US server is pretty buzzing with East Coast Australian activity? Or are we spread out across a broad range of servers?

3 - Obviously I had an EU account, with achievements such as 'What a Long Strange Trip it has been' and the 'Brewfest Kodo' etc on my main. Will these achievements carry across to my new toons in the US servers? And if so, do the mounts and rewards come with them?

Thanks for your time

[Duracells]

Welcome back!

I can only answer question number three for you.

If you are on a EU server you can not move to US servers. You are only able to move to other EU servers. If you want to play on a U.S. server you must start off another new account, and buy all the expansions again.

[PandaMango141]

Thank you!

Oh I know that, I meant with the account bound achievements do they carry through as they are bound to a 'battle.net' account, whatever that means!
Sorry I didn't make that clearer!

[Deleted]

The achievements don't carry across regions even if it's the same battle.net account

There are several realms designated as Oceanic: http://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/oc But the actual servers are based in America. Hopefully someone on one of those realms can tell you what your connection's likely to be like, I think people use tunnelling services but you'd need to check if they're allowed.

Good luck

[Splatter]

Aussie ping times are perfectly playable tho pvp can be a tad iffy. I am in New Zealand and i get 160-180 ms regularly (to the US Oceanic servers). Pretty sure one of my raids healers is from canberra and he seems to have no issues raiding.

There are no servers located in Australia but there are "oceanic" flagged US servers where you will find the big majority of aussie/nz players. Servers like Barthilas, frostmourne and Jubei'thos. When at server select for US servers there should be tabs down the bottom that say what region they are in. Check realm pop and faction balance before you pick one.

[Thage]

Just pointing this out there, you might be able to keep your characters if you get a US account and call Blizzard and ask them to transfer over. You'll need to prove your identity, of course, but other than that, it's one of those things where the worst they can do is say no.