MMORPGs in Europe

One could easily think that playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game is the same everywhere. But there are some subtle differences. I'd like to point out some of the difficulties you could have if you play your favorite MMORPG in Europe, which is where I live.

Internet Connection

Broadband penetration in Europe used to lag behind North America and Asia, and is only beginning to catch up this year, expected to reach 20%. Many European countries had state companies with a telephone monopoly, ending as late as 1998, and those were slow to introduce new technologies. On the positive side, these monopolies had often invested heavily in good quality copper cable, now enabling DSL speeds up to 3 MBit/s in many places.

The cheapest forms of broadband flat rates cost around $25 per month in Europe. Dial-up is relatively expensive, at around $1 per hour (and usually no flat rates offered), so broadband is really a necessity for European MMORPG players. That explains why the European market for MMORPGs has been comparatively small up to now.

Game availability

The European Union has 20 official languages. Of course many people are able to speak English, but not all, especially not the kids, and that limits the market for games that are not translated. Some MMORPGs are translated, like Dark Age of Camelot, or A Tale in the Desert, but that usually means that every patch has to be translated as well, and thus arrives with a delay. Other MMORPGs are sold in Europe in their English versions, sometimes just with a translated manual, like Star Wars Galaxies. And some MMORPGs are simply not sold in Europe at all, like City of Heroes.

You can get US versions of games in Europe, either from special import stores, or by directly mail-ordering them from North America. Import stores usually charge much more for imported games; for example City of Heroes costs $60. With mail order, a European customer has to carefully check the shipping conditions. First-class UPS shipping gets you a game from the US to Europe in 2 business days, but cost $33. Some mail-order shops offer free worldwide shipping, but then you will wait 2 weeks before you finally have the game in your hands.

Server Location and Time Zones

MMORPGs that are not localized (translated) also often do not offer European servers. Playing on a US server is not really a big problem, but of course your "ping", the time it takes for a signal to travel from your keyboard to the server and back to your computer, increases if the server is on a different continent. On ADSL, a typical ping to an European server is 30 ms, but to a US server it goes up to 200 ms. A ping of 200 ms means that when you see an enemy before you and press the fire button, it takes 0.2 seconds longer before you actually fire. If you are playing a twitchy game, in which every fraction of reaction time counts, that is bad news, as you will never be the "fastest gun in the west". Fortunately in most classical MMORPGs it doesn't matter all that much, because it is not your reaction time that determines how fast you attack.

An additional problem when playing on a US server is that there is a time zone difference of 6 to 9 hours. Scheduled server downtimes for patches are often scheduled for morning to noon in the US, as the technicians prefer to work during the day, and in the morning there are less Americans that want to play. But 8 am to noon in Seattle is 5 pm to 9 pm in continental Europe, and thus the patches often fall in the European prime time.

The same time zone problems make participation in events difficult for Europeans, whether scheduled by GMs or by non-European guilds. Everything scheduled in the afternoon or evening US time happens in the small hours of the morning in Europe. Who wants to get up at 4 am to participate in a game event? Even some European games suffer from this, as long as the majority of players are from the US.

A European MMORPG gamer will often play at times when the US servers are relatively empty. That has both advantages and disadvantages. There is less competition for scarce resources or mob spawns, but it is more difficult to find people to group or to trade with. It gets even more complicated when more than two time zones are involved. For example, Final Fantasy XI runs on Japanese servers, with many of the players being American, but the game not yet even distributed in Europe. A person that would only consider grouping with other Europeans would find FFXI impossible to play, but if he doesn't mind grouping with Japanese in the morning and Americans in the evening, the game is nice enough.

Outlook

As you can see, it is not always easy being an European MMORPG gamer. But things are improving, as the rise in broadband connections makes Europe more attractive, and Europe is already rivaling the US for the title of largest market for computer games. The two big MMORPGs scheduled to come out at the end of 2004, Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft, both will have localized versions and European servers.

This article has also been published on Grimwell
- posted by Tobold @ 11:55 AM Permanent Link