Diablo III Gets Australian Servers - Update

[Steven Bogos]

Diablo III Gets Australian Servers - Update

Australian Diablo III players are reporting pings as low as 33ms.

Update: A blue posted on the battle.net forums has confirmed [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12163546457] the servers, stating "Blizzard Entertainment is pleased to announce the deployment of local Diablo III game servers for Australia and New Zealand to coincide with the launch of Diablo III: Reaper of Soul on March 25, 2014."

Original Story: reports [http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=213&t=200700] are coming in from Australian gamers being greeted with a nice little surprise upon logging in to Diablo III today. Noticing the game running shockingly smooth, players have hovered their cursors over their latency bars to discover not the 150-200ms they are used to, but rather, pings in the low 50ms range as their North American brethren experience. It would seem that Blizzard has added Australian, or at least, Oceanic, servers to the game, though there has been no official announcement.

IP sleuths have pinpointed the source of these new servers to a company called this thread [http://www.equinix.com.au/], but the post seems to have been deleted.

Either way, so many reports are coming in, and the reported pings are so low, that it seems pretty obvious that the server is real. Here's hoping it's not just a test, and something that will become permanent for everyone pretty soon, as Oceanic servers are something Australian and New Zealand gamers have been asking for for a long time.

We've reached out to Blizzard for an official comment on the servers, and will update this article as we get more information.

First Titanfall [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132919-Titanfall-Servers-Confirmed-For-Australia] now Diablo? It looks like game developers in the US are finally learning that trying to play an online game with over 200 ping really, really sucks. Good news for those of you down-under!

Sources: games.on.net [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12032493437?page=3]

Permalink

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

It would be even better if we didn't have to deal with any sort of server latency.

Still Always Online? Still not getting it and I doubt I ever will at this point.

 

[Steven Bogos]

It would be even better if we didn't have to deal with any sort of server latency.

Still Always Online? Still not getting it and I doubt I ever will at this point.

Why even bother posting?

 

[fix-the-spade]

So, a minor plus point of the push to all online all the time is that publishers and developers finally have to admit that people outside America (Australians especially) exist.

About damn time! Begs the question, when will Xbox Live stop prioritising US players to host peer to peer matches and sending all of us European peasants to lag city?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Nice that we are getting some local servers. I wonder if this means that EA will reopen the ToR Asia/pacific ser... yeah, I couldn't keep a straight face for that.

Though I agree and offline mode would be ideal, it's nice that Blizz is looking after it's Australian customers.

 

[otakon17]

Whooo boy! As low as 33ms?! My GOD that's SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH an improvement over zero latency if they hadn't foisted that stupid ass pointless pedantic piddling tee-totaling always online on everyone because THEY couldn't just make to separate tiers of characters: offline(data is saved to your computer, but you cannot play online) and online(data is saved to their servers).

 

[Shinkicker444]

That's pretty awesome, still wish they had added wow servers in Australia... Played on the ToR servers in Aust spoiled me something rotten when I had to go back to Yee olde Proudmoore,

Capcha: night owl - well that's apt, it is 2am

 

[black_knight1337]

Yeah, so good to be having a ping of <100ms. Hopefully it'll mean we'll be getting servers for the rest of their games too.

 

[VanQ]

I'm highly surprised and moved by this. I wonder what this means for Blizzard's other online behemoth? People have been begging for actual Oceanic WoW servers since 2004. Maybe we'll see it happen one day after all.

 

[Weaver]

I still wish they just had the game offline. It's a very fun game, but the latency issues are real and pervasive to this day.

 

[VanQ]

I'm highly surprised and moved by this. I wonder what this means for Blizzard's other online behemoth? People have been begging for actual Oceanic WoW servers since 2004. Maybe we'll see it happen one day after all.

I was about to say - even playing on the 'Oceanic' Servers I'm seeing a ping of 300-400 average with WoW, so being able to play that without stuttering like a son-***** would be great.

Then again, I've been playing with that latency stutter for so long, if I ever do get a 33ms ping in WoW it might just throw my entire rhythm off.

Well yeah, that's because all Oceanic servers are located in Los Angeles. In fact I raid heroic on Thrall server with a ping of 200-250 and actually find that little bit of lag lets me cheese boss mechanics here and there. An example would be being able to cast Choas Bolts on the move during the Garrosh intermissions.

I remember hearing that the reason Blizzard wouldn't do AU servers was because they went to Telstra to get a quote on a datacentre and they were quoted some astronomically retarded amount of money. Which honestly, wouldn't surprise me. But that was years ago, perhaps there are cheaper options nowadays.

 

[Compatriot Block]

One day, we will have a thread where good news is announced for Diablo and the first response won't be a rehashed complaint about the online requirement.

One day.

Happy to hear this for all the Australian players out there. I didn't realize that the latency was so bad over there.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

It would be even better if we didn't have to deal with any sort of server latency.

Still Always Online? Still not getting it and I doubt I ever will at this point.

Why even bother posting?

Why bother with anything?

Sure its nice that we're finally getting some recognition but D3 didn't really need to be tied to a server in the first place.

 

[major_chaos]

It would be even better if we didn't have to deal with any sort of server latency.

Still Always Online? Still not getting it and I doubt I ever will at this point.

Why even bother posting?

You are my new favorite news guy now. Its times like this when the site needs a thumbs up button.

OT: While this doesn't affect me its certainly good news. Having tried to play LoL on a friend's shitty connection I know that 200 ping is no fun.

 

[shintakie10]

It would be even better if we didn't have to deal with any sort of server latency.

Still Always Online? Still not getting it and I doubt I ever will at this point.

Why even bother posting?

To voice his opinion in an ultimately pointless exercise just like everyone else who has posted here. Might as well wait a day and quote every reply next time.

OT: Blizzard have really been ramping up the support for Diablo 3 lately, eh? They will probably win back some people for Reaper of Souls but for me its too little, too late. The kind of patches they've been releasing over the last month or two are the kind of patches the game needed on release.

You should at least give it a try for a minute or two. Sure these patches should have come sooner, but there's been a huge uptick in both communication and actual goodwill since Jay Wilson moved on to other things.

I really dislike heaping all the blame on a single individual in a development team, especially a team like Blizzard because everythin they do is hugely collaborative, but at the same time there was just a massive shift in policy in the last year that he's been gone that its hard not to notice.

On topic!

Good for the Australians out there. I've had to deal with 300+ ping once in my entire life and I barely could stand it, I have no idea how you all out there deal with it every single game you play. Hopefully this means we'll see some WoW servers over that way too in the future.

 

[Ferisar]

It would be even better if we didn't have to deal with any sort of server latency.

Still Always Online? Still not getting it and I doubt I ever will at this point.

Why even bother posting?

To voice his opinion in an ultimately pointless exercise just like everyone else who has posted here. Might as well wait a day and quote every reply next time.

OT: Blizzard have really been ramping up the support for Diablo 3 lately, eh? They will probably win back some people for Reaper of Souls but for me its too little, too late. The kind of patches they've been releasing over the last month or two are the kind of patches the game needed on release.

Not really judging the decision as it is totally understandable, but there was reasons for it not happening on release. The mindset they had for D3 as a game was totally different on release than it is currently. I don't think Blizzard expected the reaction they got for Inferno and how loot functioned, to be totally honest. One big fumble that only got worse because of the launch conditions and the always-on thang.