Guild Wars 2

“We recently had a big press event in Beijing where our own Colin Johanson and Isaiah Cartwright announced the date for the first Guild Wars 2 Closed Beta Test In China, happening May 2nd through May 9th. Everybody attending had a great time, and Izzy was wearing a suit!”

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151558567044571.1073741825.42734604570&type=1

Anyone know this was coming? I must of missed prior info on it.

Normally with a lot of games, online chinese severs are cut off from the rest of the other countries in the world as they do not allow chinese citizens to play online with the outside world, so they usually have there own server networks that other countries do not have access to. This is not for all games but for most I have heard of anyway.

Now im wondering if this effected why we can’t play euro’s with usa servers all along, and it’s not a hardware issue like has been said before with their backend infrastructure.

I am also wondering if this is why they would not have an asian themed section in the game for a continent or for the section they removed in divinity’s reach? Since some of the reasons for blocking an online game in china can be like “Damaging the nation’s glory” “Threatening national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity” “Disturbing social order” “Violating basic principles of the Constitution”, for example they banned a command and conquer game because it smeared the image of china and the chinese army.

Either way doesn’t look like it would effect much since EU can not play (WvW,spvp, dungeons etc) with USA servers and vice versa’s anyway. The only thing that may be effected is will chinese servers / players be allowed to transfer to EU / USA servers or vice versa? Or will the chinese severs be cut off from transfers completely?

How will this effect the global server economy and trading outpost? Will the chinese have their own economy seperate to everyone else?

How do you think this will effect GW2?

Anyone interested in the restricted internet and online gaming in china here is more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gaming_in_China

In some cases china has completely banned online games or games from being played online, or they have had there own completely remade clients / games for china specifically.

I can understand why Anet would love to have a market there.

China is now the world’s largest online gaming market, contributing one-third to the global revenue in this sector in 2009, or 56 percent of the Asia Pacific total.

This was predicted back in December by a securities firm and has been talked about since before launch.

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/guild-wars-2-expansion-predicted/

I imagine because of Chinese law that the gw2 shard for china will be completely separate from the gw2 world servers.

Draygo.9473:

I imagine because of Chinese law that the gw2 shard for china will be completely separate from the gw2 world servers.

Does that include the global economy aswell which the chinese servers having their own market trading post economy?

Do you think they will have transfers still to usa and eu servers?

Izzy in a suit – what is the world coming to?

Reason they dont match EU vs US servers in sPvP and WvW is due to lag for whichever side that has to log onto the others continent.

It’s still possible for those in the EU or US to transfer to the other region, but it’s their choice, so the lag isnt forced upon one continent or the other.

And I doubt china will have the option to transfer, since it’s a very closed up country with a very special internet. They will most likely have just their own shards, both when it comes to the game and the TP.

TRON.1085:

Draygo.9473:

I imagine because of Chinese law that the gw2 shard for china will be completely separate from the gw2 world servers.

Does that include the global economy aswell which the chinese servers having their own market trading post economy?

Do you think they will have transfers still to usa and eu servers?

I think it will be it own server and they will not be allowed to come to the others unless the laws do not work that way in china i do not know them.

Yes, I`m guessing this is one of the main reasons we`ve been told we`ll never see Kaineng, Jade Sea et al

But if they do have separate shards, I don`t see why they couldn`t let the US & EU have those zones, just like warcraft has set models for EU & US & China due to its beliefs/laws has different ones.

Ah well, one can dream. That or visit Guild Wars

Fishbait.6723:

Yes, I`m guessing this is one of the main reasons we`ve been told we`ll never see Kaineng, Jade Sea et al

But if they do have separate shards, I don`t see why they couldn`t let the US & EU have those zones, just like warcraft has set models for EU & US & China due to its beliefs/laws has different ones.

Ah well, one can dream. That or visit Guild Wars

You do realize Guild Wars vanilla was sold in China?

Didn’t seem like a humongous turnout for the event. Hardly any tickets in the box for the free give-away. Still, I wish ArenaNet much success in China. =)

killcannon.2576:

Fishbait.6723:

Yes, I`m guessing this is one of the main reasons we`ve been told we`ll never see Kaineng, Jade Sea et al

But if they do have separate shards, I don`t see why they couldn`t let the US & EU have those zones, just like warcraft has set models for EU & US & China due to its beliefs/laws has different ones.

Ah well, one can dream. That or visit Guild Wars

You do realize Guild Wars vanilla was sold in China?

Nope, hadn`t a clue.

There`s no reason for them not to release/make it then

nudge nudge

I hope they won’t require people living in China to access Chinese servers that will most likely be cut off from the rest of the world, and in Chinese language. Isolated servers and Chinese language only is exactly what we have with WoW and what happened in the foiled attempt of having Guild Wars 1 in China. There’s too many rules and different ministries vying for control of video games. Expansions can take years to be released in the Chinese market. I thought GW1 had been enough of a headache, but here they are trying it again…

The game has strayed from what I perceive as “fun”. But my wife still plays it every day. She’s Chinese as she would hate having to abide to yet another law/censorship that serves to isolate Chinese citizens from outside influence, in order not to break “harmony” with Chinese social and cultural identity.

The internet has been our connection with the outside world from an otherwise system of laws that serve to constrict access to outside influence. Making players in China having to access Chinese-only servers would be quite a suffocating experience, at least in our case. She has a whole network of good friends that would be heartbreaking to lose, and it would be extremely difficult for expats like me to play in Chinese language.

Amon.5042:

I hope they won’t require people living in China to access Chinese servers that will most likely be cut off from the rest of the world, and in Chinese language. Isolated servers and Chinese language only is exactly what we have with WoW and what happened in the foiled attempt of having Guild Wars 1 in China. There’s too many rules and different ministries vying for control of video games. Expansions can take years to be released in the Chinese market. I thought GW1 had been enough of a headache, but here they are trying it again…

The game has strayed from what I perceive as “fun”. But my wife still plays it every day. She’s Chinese as she would hate having to abide to yet another law/censorship that serves to isolate Chinese citizens from outside influence, in order not to break “harmony” with Chinese social and cultural identity.

The internet has been our connection with the outside world from an otherwise system of laws that serve to constrict access to outside influence. Making players in China having to access Chinese-only servers would be quite a suffocating experience, at least in our case. She has a whole network of good friends that would be heartbreaking to lose, and it would be extremely difficult for expats like me to play in Chinese language.

I have a Japanese guy in a guild I play with in wow and it would be nice if they had an add on that could translate chats for different languages. That would make a lot of gamers lives much easier.

Recycle.5493:

More news on GW2 regarding servers around the world from someone who’s known to bring a lot of accurate news on certain Chinese forum(said to be working in NCSoft).

1. There will be an “Asian server”, different from “Chinese server”
2. Asian server is worked by and will be ran by NCSoft itself, while the Chinese server is going to be ran by a company named “Kong Zhong”
3. There will be Chinese, Japanese, and Korean interface in the Asian client, as well as Korean voice-over
4. Simplified Chinese will be in Chinese server only
5. Players who uses client by Anet/NCSoft will be able to decide to join the Asian server besides NA and EU while playing the game for the first time

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Chinese-GW2-beta/

I’m going to guess that they have been working on the China localization instead of working on an expansion. I would guess that NCSoft probably lent them Chinese speaking staff members to help with the language localization, but I doubt Arenanet would have handed off the entire effort to NCSoft. (Plus, I remember a couple tweets in recent months that seemed to hint that Arenanet people were working on the version for China).

That would probably actually be a good thing, since it would help explain the some what disappointing level of live development and apparent lapses in cohesive oversight seen over the past six months.

I hope they will soon be able to refocus on getting the core game back on course and begin to pull together plans for intelligent expansion of the game moving forward.