Guild Wars 2

Is there any chance for game to get russian language?
More that half of my friends, who play mmorpg, decline to play gw2 with me even if its a great game only because of no russian language/
i’m not talking about russian only server, but only russian text. I’m sure player base would increase greatly.

(Your English is fine.)

This has been requested many times, along with support for other languages. Unfortunately it looks like Anet see it as an ‘all or nothing’ system – they won’t just add Russian text (even using the Latin alphabet) – they’d want to add Cyrillic text, Russian voice acting (which requires 10 new voice actors just for player characters), a Russian version of the website, the option to contact Support in Russian (and therefore Support staff who speak Russian) and probably at least one dedicated Russian language server (not sure if that would be EU or NA, or both, I don’t know which region most Russian players choose).

And all of that is a lot of work and expense for Anet. Apparently more than they think attracting more Russian players is worth.

Personally I don’t understand why they can’t settle for just translating the text. That’s still a lot of work to do, and would require hiring at least 1 new person to do it but much less than a full translation.

Russia is always considered another region by MMO devs. Dont know if it has to do with laws or otherwise, but it really wont happen. Just play the game in English. I have seen different Russian guilds advertising ingame, I am sure they exist.

Excelsior.

As Dawdler put correctly, server localization (often in terms of laws and also connectivity/ping times) is easer when the world is divided into several parts.

The problem I often see in other games like LoL or FF14 is that a natural hurdle can save a lot of mad beef. Look, people usually speak English to get together, so do you. If there is Russian text,it invites Russian players to the game that can not understand English. And this is more alienating as it sounds in the first place.

I am already kinda annoyed when there is a French or Polish chat going on in /all, but fine, it’s an MMO and I enjoy the social aspects. But please, in English. It’s just a matter of time before cyrillic chats go on. I am German, yet I stick to English.

In FF14 it causes a bad climate when you have a bunch of French players that immediately refuse to speak English because there is ONE more Frenchman in that group. The other 6 players in that 8-man group is excluded and the Frenchmen are distracted. In MapleStory 10 years ago it happened to the Spanish community.

There is one common denominator: The English language. More or less basic.

People who don’t speak/refuse to learn/speak English – especially in a digitalized world as of now – are severely limiting themselves. I know this is not a solution, but sometimes I wonder what people think if they don’t learn the world’s most spoken language…

I for example played my first RPG back in 1993 – 13 years old and barely any English knowledge – I had a dictionary next to me (no internet back then!) and looked up every single word I didn’t understand.

ProtoGunner.4953:

but sometimes I wonder what people think if they don’t learn the world’s most spoken language…

I don’t know Chinese or Spanish but I get by on games pretty well.

See also:

• Adding russian language to the game?
• Question from Russian community
• Cyrillic in game ?

The business proposition is:

• How much would it cost to translate text into Russian? How much does it add to the cost of developing future content?
• How many new Russian-reading players would spend money to buy the game?

Translating text is generally a lot more work than most non-translators think (even people who are fluent in multiple languages don’t always realize how difficult translation is). That work would have to continue for the entire life of the game, for each new story, each new skill update, etc, which adds ongoing costs (and time) to development.

And for a business, all that additional effort has to (ahem) translate into new customers. Are there really that many Russian readers who aren’t spending now, but would if the game added Russian localization?

thank you all for answering.
i want to be clear i am fine with english/ i can even say i love play with english much more than with russian localization (mostly because or russians, who refuse to use english (as Photogunner said “world’s most spoken language”, i agree with this) because or their “cultural proudness”), i just wanted to emm coax (google translate Kappa) my friend top play the game i like.

It would be nice if it were simple to add more translations to the game. I’m sure there are plenty of Arabic & Japanese and Hindu players that would appreciate it, too. It’s just too costly relative to how much income it would generate.