Of all the upcoming MMO games, one game has been generating the most buzz, namely Star Wars: The Old Republic. This franchise has so much going for it, from internet buzz and a proven track record from Bioware, as well the idea of a storytelling MMO was gaining praise worldwide. So when I heard that Star Wars: The Old Republic was being released worldwide on December 20th, I thought I could download the game and play during the Christmas break.
Clearly I did not read articles from places like Kotaku AU. The game has been delayed for Aussie and Kiwi players.
This has stunned me, as Aussies have a bad time of it with notorious response times (or pings) as most game servers are based overseas. Some companies will run servers based on Aussie time zones (AION was one game that did this), but still based their servers in South-East USA. Add to this the infamous price difference Aussie and Kiwi gamers often pay for the new release games, the news that the worldwide release does not include Oceania is in my opinion rather insulting.
The question I need to ask is why the delay?
Are there going to be Aussie-based (or at least Aussie Time Zone) servers?
Is the amount of potential users from Australia and New Zealand going to add that much load onto the servers (given our peak times is generally outside US peak times)?
Unlike other regions, there is no language barrier (after all, we are divided by a common language), so there should be no language issue between US and Aus/NZ.
So it will be interesting what the local result will be. My guess? Amazon and US servers are going to become more popular for local players. That is what I am going to be doing.
