Will there be an Oceanic server?

[Anurakis]

For HotS? By that I mean a dedicated server based in the oceanic region? Otherwise the game will be practically unplayable in some countries (AUS, NZ, SG et al) if it plays like a MOBA game (which requires good latency).

I mean evidently this can't be known yet, however it will be good to know in future.

[vizzle]

Do any other Blizz games have Oceanic servers? I know WoW doesn't. If SC2 and Diablo don't, then we really would be way too hopeful to expect one for HotS.

[Deleted]

Starcraft has Europe, North America, Korea and South-East Asia servers.

[Ryft]

I would like to play with my friends back in NZ, so (selfishly)....I hope it isnt too restricted.

[Deleted]

How would the latency be for aus and NZ on sea servers?

[Anurakis]

How would the latency be for aus and NZ on sea servers?

apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=5896 here's an interesting article, personally I've never played SC2 although this might be indicative of things to come.

Based on the LoL oceanic server you can expect anywhere from 30-100+ ms (although less than 150). I'm no tech pro although what the above article states is that the majority of australian internet traffic is US routed anyway.

To answer more definitively: ~100-150ms

Ping 202.9.67.254 in order to get a rough idea.

I'm getting a 75ms ping response from SG, and then a "destination unreachable" message (and it isn't going to attens.net, att.net, alter.net, telia.net etc). I live in WA, so probably over 120ms for someone in NZ.

[Anurakis]

Well... There goes any hope of playing this game competitively. MOBAs require split second reactions. Anything over 100ms and you get a delay. If they don't offer Oceanic servers they are morons. If they do then people will argue why can't they do it for WoW.

Well if Riot can work to place a server in Australia to look after their customer base I'm pretty sure Blizzard, a company vastly larger, would easily be able to do the same.

There was even talk of internode hosted servers years ago, although that fell through.*

*Should get iinet to host them, they aren't my ISP however they've got the most solid infrastructure and a history of co-operating with game companies over tech issues

[Nikkaszal]

Just throwing it out here - while I only started playing LoL a short while ago, several of my friends played in the upper leagues before Riot introduced an Oceanic server.

When you've been playing on Aussie ping for years, you develop some pretty damn fly reflexes. I've seen a lot of people declaring that 2-300ms would be "impossible to play with", and flat-out refuse to believe that you could have readily been on RoS interrupt duty back in BT when the actual window you had to interrupt was about 0.6sec on a semi-random timer.

Is it better, playing on an Oceanic-based server rather than a US-based one? Of course.
Will you be unable to play at higher tiers for the sheer fact you have a ping disadvantage? Hell no. We overcome it.

[Deleted]

Just throwing it out here - while I only started playing LoL a short while ago, several of my friends played in the upper leagues before Riot introduced an Oceanic server.

When you've been playing on Aussie ping for years, you develop some pretty damn fly reflexes. I've seen a lot of people declaring that 2-300ms would be "impossible to play with", and flat-out refuse to believe that you could have readily been on RoS interrupt duty back in BT when the actual window you had to interrupt was about 0.6sec on a semi-random timer.

Is it better, playing on an Oceanic-based server rather than a US-based one? Of course.
Will you be unable to play at higher tiers for the sheer fact you have a ping disadvantage? Hell no. We overcome it.

That is true, I remember when the first big HoN team from Australia, they always had 150+ ping and was still top contender in every tournament, then they got to Dreamhack and absolutely destroyed everything when they had the same ping as everyone else