There is a major issue I have with several MMO games. I have been aware of this issue since World of Warcraft was first released in late 2004. The way Blizzard structure their servers for WoW is in such a way that the United States and European servers were only accessible by people who had obtained a game key from the respective country whose servers they wanted to play on. So, for example, since I’m in Australia (and the Aussie retail of most MMO games uses a game key for the US servers only) I’m unable to play with my friend from Finland whose retail copy of the game uses a key for the EU servers.

Recently, it has come to my attention that the Age of Conan servers are also set up in exactly the same way. There are US servers and EU servers, and keys for the game are for either one or the other.

Whilst I understand that this is done on purpose for probably several reasons, I still think this is very, very wrong. Guilds that move from one game to another are being split into two separate guilds because they’re simply unable to play with each other. Basically, it’s like letting the game companies tell us which friends we’re allowed to game with and which ones we’re not.

From a networking perspective, it makes sense. You want players to experience the least amount of lag possible, so you set up server farms in each country and only allow people from that country to play on them. But shouldn’t it be the player’s choice if he or she wants to play on a EU server even of they live in the US? For many people, who they’re playing with takes priority over the lag time they may experience by playing on a server further away from their location. I’m one such person and I know of plenty more.

I don’t think Funcom or Blizzard are ever going to change the server setup, and we’re likely to see future MMOs with the same issue unless we speak up about it. For the majority of gamers, it probably doesn’t even matter, as their friends are likely in the same country and time zone as they are, or they go into a game not knowing anyone prior. But for quite a lot of us, it does matter. I read about it on game forums; about guilds with low numbers since they’ve been split in half, about people not being able to play with their friends who they’ve played MMOs with for the last three years. Sure, it can be easy enough to deal with; just get a game key for the US servers if you want to play with people from the US. But that’s only half a solution, isn’t it? What if you want to play with US and EU people? What if half of your friends are European and half are American or Aussie?

At the moment, it’s simply tough luck.