At the last minute, video game giant Blizzard Entertainment has reversed an unpopular decision to block Australians from being able to play its upcoming StarCraft II game on American servers.

The company had been facing a wave of dissent from Australian players furious about its original decision to block local gamers from playing against their friends overseas by locking them into playing through a new server in Singapore set up to serve the South-East Asian region as a whole.

“We’re pleased to announce that all players who purchase the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ will also have the option of playing on North American servers following the launch,” the company said in a posting today on its Facebook group devoted specifically to South-East Asia.

“While we still encourage gamers to play on the local servers, which will offer lower latency and more action during peak hours, we recognize that many players have longstanding friendships and rivalries with North American players, and would like to continue playing with them. Because of this, we’re giving Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand gamers access to both regions’ servers, so they can choose where they’d prefer to play.”

Blizzard’s intention is to make the additional access available within 60 days of StarCraft II’s launch — which will take place on Monday 26 July at midnight — with the official launch day being 27 July.

When the additional functionality is added, the video game giant wrote, players with a South-East Asian copy of StarCraft II would automatically gain the option to download the US version of the game through its Battle.net online match-making platform. They will be able to use either copy at will.

However, the move does not resolve the questions of StarCraft II players who want to play on other international servers — such as in Europe or the highly competitive Korean zone.

“Players who purchase the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of StarCraft II will have access to the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand and the North American Battle.net servers. No other multi-region play will be available at this time.”

The news comes as Blizzard has been making wider attempts to resolve the issues of Australians concerned about poor speeds to its international servers for multiplayer games.

The company has long fielded complaints from gamers about the lack of a dedicated World of WarCraft server in Australia, for example. However, it has been working with Australian ISPs on providing the fastest transit path to the new Battle.net server in Singapore, with which it hopes to resolve many of the problems.

Image credit: Screenshot of a StarCraft II beta match between WhiteRa and The Little One, as commented by Husky and HD

Related posts:

1. Telstra the problem, claims Blizzard on Aussie servers
2. Blizzard mulls Aussie World of Warcraft servers
3. StarCraft II region lock angers Australian gamers
4. iiNet changes routing tables for StarCraft II
5. Blizzard to launch Aussie Battle.net server?

1. PointZeroOne
   Posted 23/07/2010 at 3:03 pm | Permalink | Reply

   shit, so we have to have it installed twice? Its just not a simple region unlock in your account?

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 23/07/2010 at 3:06 pm | Permalink | Reply

     It does make me suspect deep encryption in the game executable.

     • Pete
       Posted 26/07/2010 at 1:23 pm | Permalink | Reply

       I have it on good authority that the installer files themselves are deeply encrypted. So I think you may be quite right after all.

2. Pete
   Posted 23/07/2010 at 4:12 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Smells to me more like ‘Not designed to, but we’ll hack it for now any maybe patch later’. Suspect, given Blizz’s knowledge of patching, there *might* be a chance they’d just ship us a bdiff and take it from there. One would hope, at least…

3. Tobias
   Posted 23/07/2010 at 7:25 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Good news, I guess. Still can’t wait to play the game.

4. PissedoffHCGamer
   Posted 30/07/2010 at 1:39 am | Permalink | Reply

   I really dont care if i have to download it again (as stated in a previous post and from what ive gathered from other various sources), i just want to play with the friends that ive made over wow, i dont think ive ever attempted to dent my desk with my head but when i found out that i couldn’t add my buddy (who was on ventrillo with me at the time) to my SC2 friends list i had a damn good crack at it, Starcraft 1 had the regions fine, Warcraft 3′s Bnet was PERFECT, but this? THIS? REALLY BLIZZ? YOU DIDNT THINK THIS WOULD ANGER PEOPLE AT ALL? NONE AT ALL? BECAUSE YOUR OTHER GAMES DONT EXIST RIGHT? THE UNITY OF THE WORLD THAT WORLD OF WARCRAFT BRINGS (in the sense that you can talk to anyone from almost anywhere around the world, most people are surprised to find out im australian) AND THEN LOCK PEOPLE TO SPECIFIC REGIONS FOR “PING”? REALLY? sometimes i dont know what your doing in your design offices blizz, are you intentionally doing this shit just for the lulz? Is blizz a bunch of trolls?, let me guess, there IS a lan feature already coded into wow, you just havnt made the button to start up the HUD right?

   wall of text crits you for googleplex^8

   Bottom line – Blizz got drunk, Made dumb mistake, Fixed mistake…60 days down the track. (which by blizz’s timeline should be about 4 months from now)

   -Acquired Starcraft 2 – 29/07/2010
   -Installed Starcraft 2 – 29/07/2010
   -Quit Starcraft 2 – 29/07/2010
   -Next time im gonna boot up starcraft 2 – 29/09/2010

   PS : Change the way the custom games are hosted, PLEASE, the warcraft 3 model was 100% PERFECT, there was zero reason to change it, its like trying to change peanut butter and jelly… ITS FUCKING PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY, YOU DONT CHANGE IT, IT CHANGES YOUR LIFE!

   PSS: DONT DO THE SAME SHIT WITH DIABLO THREE, FOR THE LOVE OF BABY NINJA JESUS PLEASE DO NOT DO THE SAME SHIT WITH DIABLO THREE

   -AngryAustralianGamer

5. Asterope
   Posted 02/08/2010 at 6:36 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Australians bitched and whined for years about how the Battle.Net offered no solution to their latency issues when US West players were playing at a much lower latency competitively, and how their connection to Asia.Battle.Net was actually a reroute from US servers.

   Australians then bitched and whined for years about how World of Warcraft OCEANIC servers weren’t really located in OCEANIC regions but instead were dedicated servers in California data-centers.

   Australians now bitch and whine about how the new Battle.Net is much closer to home and offers lower latency. Yes, the hundreds of ping testers and hundreds of pro-Australian gamers posting all over Team Liquid and the forums were very much satisfied with their latencies in the Beta and during launch.

   You live in YOUR timezone, you play with YOUR latency, with the people in YOUR region. Europeans that wanted to play on US servers and vice versa for World of Warcraft bought their respective trans-atlantic copies.

   In a nutshell, stop whining, the decision has been reversed, can’t you wait 60 days? Stop sucking American dicks, please.

   -So Cal Gamer.

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 03/08/2010 at 11:57 am | Permalink | Reply

     FFS, it’s not like we’re whinging unnecessarily. I have had stacks of ping problems to the so-called miraculous SEA server over the past week since the game launched, and I have also been dropped from it multiple times — as have other people.

     It’s a fair call to whinge when you are paying full price for a game and you are simply not getting the same level of service as you are when you play that same game in the US.

     Blizzard have absolutely no real reason, technically or from a profit perspective from stopping informed Australian gamers being able to play anyone in any region across the globe. Other games don’t have this problem — why is it only StarCraft II? It smacks of the bogus DVD region-locking scheme that the content manufacturers enforced a decade ago.

     When are these sorts of companies going to realise that locking people down is not the way to satisfy their customers?

   • Lake
     Posted 08/08/2010 at 8:18 pm | Permalink | Reply

     It’s more than ping, I’m afraid. Lump us in with Asia, and sure, there’s heaps of people — but we’re an english speaking minority. I’m sure you can appreciate our reluctance having to know Korean, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and all the sub-dialects just to communicate with a community size that’s on par with the North American one.

     TD;DR?

     Stfu, bloody priveledged yank, we’ll complain as much as we like about being on a crappy hot-arsed Island with bad internet.

6. OakRaven
   Posted 24/08/2010 at 11:09 am | Permalink | Reply

   And what about people from Quebec state in Canada… Everybody here speaks french. But if you buy the french version of the game, you can’t play on local servers, that is US servers ! You need to play on european servers…

   So I’m laughing when I read ““While we still encourage gamers to play on the local servers, which will offer lower latency and more action during peak hours”…

   SO, FOR THE LOVE OF BABY NINJA, LET ME BUY THE GAME IN THE LANGUAGE I WANT, AND PLAY WHEREVER I WANT, WITH WHO I WANT !