Well, this might be a self clear question for some but I managed to get myself worried enough so I had to ask. (Nothing else to talk about anyway...)
This "multiple step" beta got me thinking though of why they had to split the beta access by regions instead of taking a number of people from every region at start. I came to the conclusion that this might be a sign of that there will be multiple servers, possibly divided by region. I'd hate for this to happen since my old days in WoW as many of my friends were spread across different servers. The server split in LoL was frustrating enough as half decided to stay while the rest changed server.
I'd hate to have the Hearthstone community divided upon different servers. However, I also doubt that Hearthstone really needs to be split like that as things like higher latency is quite irrelevant for a card game compared to a FPS game or a MMORPG game. I can't be sure though and of what I know Blizzard have said nothing about their servers yet. Will they even have one or will the games be player hosted just like in MtG?
Anyhow, could someone please say if I should be legitimately concerned about the game being divided into servers or if there likely is nothing to worry about considering it's "just" a online based card game?
The only confirmation I know of that servers will indeed be region locked was from the EU Fansite Summit.
The game is region-locked to your region like all Blizzard games. It's undecided whether it'll be possible to change your region, like in Diablo or StarCraft.
Is this a restriction due to the Battle.net framework? Seems if anything could be cross-region it would be Hearthstone since there's no way to directly communicate with others who aren't on your friends list; everything else could be handled/translated via the regional clients.
I don't think it's a huge deal if it does end up being region-locked, but it's certainly possible different constructed metagames will evolve for each region. It would be nice to be able to mix everyone together.
I'm trying to understand the meaning of "region-locked" in this case. Having different "clients" would make sense considering not every region offers the same ways for payments. I guess having separate matchmaking is acceptable but I don't see why it shouldn't work to have it global. However, not being able to face people from other servers whenever you want to, like a friend or participants in a smaller community hosted tournament, will hurt the game in general and force the community to divide itself. That would most likely hurt the game's growth in general.
Considering community tournaments, a "enter name to challenge player" service would be really helpful for those so you don't have to everyone to add each other to the friend list only to play a single duel.
I believe the issue with having it global has something to do with laws and the way Blizzard takes payments from customers. I think if we do see some sort of global-play like Starcraft II and Diablo III, it will be limited so that you can not make financial transactions in a region that is not your home. It won't be much of an issue though for Hearthstone since you are able to get the full game experience without money, but, it does put you at a significant disadvantage.
At the end of the day, the technology just isn't there yet and the community gets divided up again because of it.
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Well, this might be a self clear question for some but I managed to get myself worried enough so I had to ask. (Nothing else to talk about anyway...)
This "multiple step" beta got me thinking though of why they had to split the beta access by regions instead of taking a number of people from every region at start. I came to the conclusion that this might be a sign of that there will be multiple servers, possibly divided by region. I'd hate for this to happen since my old days in WoW as many of my friends were spread across different servers. The server split in LoL was frustrating enough as half decided to stay while the rest changed server.
I'd hate to have the Hearthstone community divided upon different servers. However, I also doubt that Hearthstone really needs to be split like that as things like higher latency is quite irrelevant for a card game compared to a FPS game or a MMORPG game. I can't be sure though and of what I know Blizzard have said nothing about their servers yet. Will they even have one or will the games be player hosted just like in MtG?
Anyhow, could someone please say if I should be legitimately concerned about the game being divided into servers or if there likely is nothing to worry about considering it's "just" a online based card game?
The only confirmation I know of that servers will indeed be region locked was from the EU Fansite Summit.
Is this a restriction due to the Battle.net framework? Seems if anything could be cross-region it would be Hearthstone since there's no way to directly communicate with others who aren't on your friends list; everything else could be handled/translated via the regional clients.
I don't think it's a huge deal if it does end up being region-locked, but it's certainly possible different constructed metagames will evolve for each region. It would be nice to be able to mix everyone together.
I'm trying to understand the meaning of "region-locked" in this case. Having different "clients" would make sense considering not every region offers the same ways for payments. I guess having separate matchmaking is acceptable but I don't see why it shouldn't work to have it global. However, not being able to face people from other servers whenever you want to, like a friend or participants in a smaller community hosted tournament, will hurt the game in general and force the community to divide itself. That would most likely hurt the game's growth in general.
Considering community tournaments, a "enter name to challenge player" service would be really helpful for those so you don't have to everyone to add each other to the friend list only to play a single duel.
I believe the issue with having it global has something to do with laws and the way Blizzard takes payments from customers. I think if we do see some sort of global-play like Starcraft II and Diablo III, it will be limited so that you can not make financial transactions in a region that is not your home. It won't be much of an issue though for Hearthstone since you are able to get the full game experience without money, but, it does put you at a significant disadvantage.
At the end of the day, the technology just isn't there yet and the community gets divided up again because of it.