Oceanic Community?

[Ensabanur]

Hey Guys,

 

Sweet site. I've been checking it regularly for any new bits of info

 

One thing I have not been able to suss out no matter where I look is whether there is an established oceanic community ramping up behind this game.

 

In other MMOs I've been involved in, there was a concerted effort beforehand where the oceanic community got together to mingle/designate unofficial servers etc. Anything like that going on around the grapevine?

 

Perhaps I'm just looking into the game too early. It is looking sweet afterall!

[PREDKZL]

forgive my ignorance but what is an oceanic community?

[Miltiades]

Community from Oceania?

[Gurges-Ahter]

I was wondering the same thing - and how does anything oceanic relate to a story in a space setting?

[RogueJedi86]

WoW has Oceanic servers, maybe Ensabanur is hoping TOR will too. Not everyone is from North America or Europe. Oceanic is either the various Pacific Islands, Australia, Hawaii, or maybe a mix of all 3.

[Hallucination]

I was wondering the same thing - and how does anything oceanic relate to a story in a space setting?

forgive my ignorance but what is an oceanic community?

In MMO's the trendy thing to do for servers is to divide the accessible servers based on language groups. This makes places like Australia and New Zealand usually have to be lumped onto the US servers. When this happens, those communities will make an unofficial server for their region by choosing one of the normal servers and saying 'everyone go there'. This is done in WoW by Brazilian players, who have taken over one server because there are no Portuguese language servers outside of Europe, leading to people complaining about not being able to find groups that speak English.

 

In some games, like WoW, they'll have a group of servers officially designated for these areas. In WoW's case, they had a group of servers for the Oceanic players that were on a separate list from the North American ones that were still hosted in the US that are playable by North Americans, but their audience is Oceanic players. In other games they may host those servers in their market to reduce latency.

[Ensabanur]

I am unsure how anyone could think I was referring to anything to do with the story? But I digress.

 

The other posters are correct. I'm just checking in to see if there are any groups that anyone is aware of that are focused around the Oceanic region.

 

This makes it easier for us to recruit for guilds and get players from our timezone

[Gurges-Ahter]

In MMO's the trendy thing to do for servers is to divide the accessible servers based on language groups...

 

Thanks for the clarification.

 

I am unsure how anyone could think I was referring to anything to do with the story? But I digress.

 

I've never played an MMO before, like many others on this forum, and am only interested in TOR because of its RPG prequels (KotOR I and TSL). When I heard "Oceanic Community" the first thought that came to mind was something to do with the game play, or perhaps a region associated with the game. This didn't make sense to me since it's based in space.

[knight 12167]

I hope that there is a designated derver for New Zealanders and Aussies

[Ensabanur]

I hope that there is a designated derver for New Zealanders and Aussies

 

Well hey dude, if you're looking for some other players who are going to play in your time zone check out the links in my sig. We're an Oceanic guild thats been established for around 4 years and currently have completed all content available in World of Warcraft. We got a few players headed to ToR looking for some more Aus/NZ players to group with

[PREDKZL]

oh thanks for clearing that up thought i was missing something

[Jeff]

I haven't heard much about specific Oceanic communities, but even if there aren't specific servers for them I am sure there will be certain ones designated unofficially like you said.

 

On kind of the same topic, I hope you're not forced to play on a server within your region. I would be bummed if I can't play with my European friends. For some reason in WoW, US players can choose (by default) Oceanic and Latin American as well as US servers but not European, though I am sure people find a way around this.

[RogueJedi86]

I haven't heard much about specific Oceanic communities, but even if there aren't specific servers for them I am sure there will be certain ones designated unofficially like you said.

 

On kind of the same topic, I hope you're not forced to play on a server within your region. I would be bummed if I can't play with my European friends. For some reason in WoW, US players can choose (by default) Oceanic and Latin American as well as US servers but not European, though I am sure people find a way around this.

 

As for your latter point, I think I heard BioWare already confirmed that there won't be region locks.

[Hallucination]

On kind of the same topic, I hope you're not forced to play on a server within your region. I would be bummed if I can't play with my European friends. For some reason in WoW, US players can choose (by default) Oceanic and Latin American as well as US servers but not European, though I am sure people find a way around this.

That's because those servers are actually in the US, but are separated on the lists for their audiences. Also, South American players used to play on North American servers, so they probably didn't want to cut off everyone's contact with their friends.

[JesusIsGonnaOwnSatan]

I hope that there is a designated derver for New Zealanders and Aussies

 

for quality's sake, i hope so too.

 

but i dont want to be confined to a certain geographical region - i want to be able to play with people from all over the world. since ive never played an mmo. im not sure what the server concept is...

 

can you jump around servers whenever, or do you "live" on a certain server (accomplishments etc stay on that server)?

[RogueJedi86]

Each character is bound to a certain server, though most MMOs with servers allow you to pay a small fee to transfer characters to other servers. Sometimes they even open up free transfers from highly populated servers to lower populated servers in an effort to even out the populations on both the high and low population servers.

[JesusIsGonnaOwnSatan]

Each character is bound to a certain server, though most MMOs with servers allow you to pay a small fee to transfer characters to other servers. Sometimes they even open up free transfers from highly populated servers to lower populated servers in an effort to even out the populations on both the high and low population servers.

 

 

aw.

i dont know what mmo lag is like, but if its anything like fps lag, then i'd have to go to a closer server.

 

but whats this about no region locks? what does that mean?

[Jan Gaarni]

MMORPG lags are not like FPS lags.

 

While you generally would like to have as low ping as possible in FPS games because of it's fast paced nature, in MMORPG's you can easily suffer higher ping without it detracting from your game experience.

 

I once had 6000ms in SWGalaxies and was still able to be connected and play. I know of no FPS games that would tolerate that.

 

Obviously, I noticed it, but I wasn't kicked, nor did it hinder me from moving around.

[RogueJedi86]

aw.

i dont know what mmo lag is like, but if its anything like fps lag, then i'd have to go to a closer server.

 

but whats this about no region locks? what does that mean?

 

 

MMORPGs are known to segregate servers according to continent, and treat hem completely separate, with no way to transfer between regions. The most common regions are Europe, North America, and Asia. In my experience, developers vary between whether they want to lock Australian servers to Asia(due to close location), or North America(due to Australia/NZ being a more Western area). They tend to do this for reasons of giving minimal lag in a given region I think.

 

TOR won't have the region locks, which means Europe and America and Australia can play together if they so wish, though I suppose they'll still have servers based in various areas for those who prefer to play with minimal lag in a server based near them.

 

 

And as Jan said, lag in an MMO isn't like lag in an FPS. The focus towards semi-turn-based, with cooldowns on abilities and such tends to make lag a little less noticeable. With the emphasis on TOR's single player aspect, I would think lag won't be so noticeable, at least until they start showing where the "Massively Multiplayer" part of MMORPG is in TOR.

[JesusIsGonnaOwnSatan]

I once had 6000ms in SWGalaxies and was still able to be connected and play.

 

TOR won't have the region locks, which means Europe and America and Australia can play together if they so wish, though I suppose they'll still have servers based in various areas for those who prefer to play with minimal lag in a server based near them.

 

 

And as Jan said, lag in an MMO isn't like lag in an FPS. The focus towards semi-turn-based, with cooldowns on abilities and such tends to make lag a little less noticeable. With the emphasis on TOR's single player aspect, I would think lag won't be so noticeable, at least until they start showing where the "Massively Multiplayer" part of MMORPG is in TOR.

 

so ping is exponentially less noticeable/affecting in mmos than fps's? excellent!

that would hopefully mean playing with other geographical locations should be easier.

 

i wonder... if ping is so much less a problem, how do mmos deal with dial up? do they even allow dial up? (i dont have dial up. im just curious.) what are ideal connection speeds for mmos?

[RogueJedi86]

 

 

 

so ping is exponentially less noticeable/affecting in mmos than fps's? excellent!

that would hopefully mean playing with other geographical locations should be easier.

 

i wonder... if ping is so much less a problem, how do mmos deal with dial up? do they even allow dial up? (i dont have dial up. im just curious.) what are ideal connection speeds for mmos?

 

Dial-up is still allowed, but it results in bad lag on your end I think. The game world and all the models for NPCs and such are in the installed software on your computer, so most of the data being transmitted is just coordinates for yourself(to the server) and different mobs and players(to your computer). If you are on a weaker connection, you'll have more noticeable delay on players and mobs loading and appearing around you.

[Jan Gaarni]

Dial-up is still allowed, but it results in bad lag on your end I think. The game world and all the models for NPCs and such are in the installed software on your computer, so most of the data being transmitted is just coordinates for yourself(to the server) and different mobs and players(to your computer). If you are on a weaker connection, you'll have more noticeable delay on players and mobs loading and appearing around you.

 

The other thing that is server side are all the calculations going on. You press a button or create an item, or start attacking a mob / player, that information is sent to the servers telling it you have just done so, it calculates the results and send it back to you and all other players that need to know that you just did so.

 

NB! No calculations are done on the client side. This to prevent players from cheating.

[RogueJedi86]

Hackers can mess with the information going to the server to cheat though. I'm mainly thinking of teleport hackers. Their end reports them as being in a location they aren't actually at(like say 500 feet away when they couldn't get that far in any short amount of time). If they do it right, they can convince the server they're just lagging and end up flying around. I've seen it in WoW, Chinese goldfarming bots using that to fly around the world taking resources without being seen by players.

[JesusIsGonnaOwnSatan]

Hackers can mess with the information going to the server to cheat though. I'm mainly thinking of teleport hackers. Their end reports them as being in a location they aren't actually at(like say 500 feet away when they couldn't get that far in any short amount of time). If they do it right, they can convince the server they're just lagging and end up flying around. I've seen it in WoW, Chinese goldfarming bots using that to fly around the world taking resources without being seen by players.

 

lol!

 

Thanks for the info, guys!