In the interview conducted by IncGamers, Pearce's statements seem to disregard some of the opinions of the fans of the game, and the large and loyal Starcraft 2 community. For a more subjective view, be sure to check out the opinion piece below.
Here are some of the key points in the interview. The full interview can be found in the link below, and is a strongly recommended read:
From the IncGamer's interivew with Frank Pearce:
IncGamers: 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.]
FP: 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.]
IncGamers: 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.
IncGamers: So I can use my same account?
No.
IncGamers: So I need to buy two clients, that's what you're saying?
Yeah.
IncGamers: 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.
IncGamers: 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?
IncGamers: 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.
IncGamers: 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.
IncGamers: 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...]
FP: 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.]
FP: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]
Continue the interview in the link provided below.
Editorial piece:
It seems obvious that Blizzard has sent the message out to the community that they are not going to implement cross regional play, and the hope of chat channels has seemed to go out the window. Some things that I would like to address:
Chat window madness, hey at least we're increasing the entropy of the universe! That's a good thing... right?
FP: "Do you really want chat rooms?" Obviously this is a rhetorical question, with the intended response "No", however ironically, anyone that follows the Starcraft/Starcraft 2 community right now can easily tell you that the implementation of chat rooms is exactly what a large majority of the community wants. It just seems ironic, and almost shows signs of ignorance or disregard of the large and loyal Starcraft community; especially through some of their very dry and even close to arrogant responses. "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]" The consumers and the community at large made Starcraft 2 the way it is today, which unfortunately is a fact that many large corporations, not only Blizzard tends to forget.
Regarding their adamant rejection of cross server play:
Latency is an easy excuse for this matter, and I am no network expert, however for a large scale corporation with deep pockets, how hard would it be to implement what iCCup and other "3rd parties" have done with SC1 latency?
Come on Blizzard stop looking at the world as it was, and look upon the world as it is now.
And going further on the issue of latency, I would just like to throw a thought out. I feel that their "excuse" for trying to make the latency as small as possible does in fact have some degree of justification. Since Battle.net for SC2 will become the sole platform for all tournaments and pro-gaming matches, (since they disabled LAN) they would need to provide the best possible latency. However it is almost poetic, how this problem has its roots in their discard of LAN, as the issue of LAN play was one of the earliest complaints the community had against Starcraft 2.
Edit: I seemed to have missed something that I couldn't help adding in. OK, I understand that Pearce did not have a lot of time to think over the answers to these questions, and maybe was put on the spot; and I don't want to come off as criticizing someone personally. But in regards to this answer, I think everyone will agree that it definitely comes off as BS.
"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." - May 28, 2010
We love Starcraft 2, Blizzard, however please take a second to address the concerns of the community that has supported you, and helped build the franchise to what it is today. Or at the very least give us real reasons why some of them cannot be addressed, and not ambiguous equivocations.
For an alternate perspective on this matter, be sure to check out Phantom's editorial piece! - Here
Links
Incgamers - Interview with Frank Pearce
