wc3edit.net

There are many Europeans that have loads of American friends, and have a problem finding matches with Americans. I know you've already promised to bridge this divide...

[Bob Colayco: That's not the case.]

No, it'll be structured very similarly to World of Warcraft, where you've got the European region and players matched against the other players within their region.

[BC: We haven't promised anything like that. That's something we'll look into, but I just wanted to jump in and clarify that.]

But you're not excluding the possibility – you're just saying there are no current plans for it?

There are no current plans for it, and if you're a European player and you've got friends that are in another region that you want to be able to connect with, we definitely want to support that. It might mean that you have to access it through the US client, but those facilities will definitely be available in terms of, if you want the US client, go to the US website, download the US client.

So I can use my same account?

No.

So I need to don't click me two clients, that's what you're saying?

Yeah.

But I can have two of them in my Battle.net account?

You'd have an EU Battle.net account, and a US Battle.net account.

And that wouldn't be against the Terms of Service or End User License Agreement?

No. I'm pretty sure that's not against the TOS or EULA, but you'd be subject to the terms of the EULA for the region in which you're playing.

Another thing I thought you'd promised was chat rooms within Battle.net...

Nope. No plans for specific chat rooms at this time. You'll be able to open up chats direct with your friends, and when we add clans and groups there'll be chats for your clans and groups, but no specific plans for chat rooms right now. Do you really want chat rooms?

Loads of people within the community are wanting Looking For Group chat rooms, and that sort of thing.

Well, if we've done our job right in terms of the matchmaking service, then hopefully they won't feel like they'll need it for that service.

With the whole divide thing, though, Australians have ended up with the south-east Asia region. They've been wondering why you'd choose to do that, as obviously there'll be primarily non-English people playing with them.

That's an interesting challenge for us, because we want to make sure that the connectivity to the servers is such that the game experience is not impacted by a high-latency connection, and the latency between Australia and New Zealand to the servers in the US was such that we felt we would be able to deliver a better gaming experience by using their servers in south-east Asia.

You guys aren't the first people to do this, as this has happened recently with another game. Generally, this seems to be the problem with the Australasian reason. Is that across the board? Do you think that's the reason?

I can't speak on behalf of any other game developers, but definitely for us. A high-latency connection to the servers for StarCraft 2 is going to impact the game experience.

Is there going to be any kind of work to resolve that issue, to get them onto an English-speaking server of some description?

You know, it depends on the technology infrastructure provided by the telecommunications providers. It's something that we'll be constantly evaluating and looking at. In an ideal world, the Blizzard gaming community would be unified in one global region, but the technology's just not there yet. Ten years ago, we weren't making 3D games. Hopefully, in the same way that we're making 3D games today and we weren't ten years ago, down the road the connectivity in terms of the internet will be such that we can bring everyone together in a unified community, but it's just not possible right now. That's the ideal world.

[BC: The other thing is that the Asian players are playing on an English client, so they should be able to speak enough English to communicate a "gg" or "attack now," "help." Singapore is an English speaking country, the Philippines is an English-speaking country...]

Hong Kong.

[BC: It's not like it's going to be one Australian surrounded by 500,000 Thai people. There's going to be plain English spoken.]

Plus, isn't StarCraft 2 the universal language of RTSes? How much English do you need to speak to communicate with your opponent and kick his ass? [Laughs]