Discussion: One game, one global server access

Agree, that was a very short/harsh takedown, but Brighton closure was not that great on communication either. Europe never been very wealthy in communication regarding the changes made in the past, mostly it was done and afterwards there was some explenation.


Not shafted? For years, my case over 6 years, we've payed for a mere 4 servers (or actualy 2, since 2 are in native language that majority of us dont speak at decent level), eventualy less support, news, communcation, Euro vs Dollar different (yup, from the difference i pay between my US and EU account, i can give you a full year play), the problems with the shop (EU vs US items, yet non refundable), the events, the giveaways, the ingame-meet'n'greet, was there ANY moment in CoH history that EU did get ONE single thing above the US people?

Does it affect the game? Agree, it doesnt. Arent we getting shafted? You're totaly wrong in this. This is yet another blow in the face of Europe people pulling the short straw.

"It's a cultural thing. You're American, you wouldn't understand."

Thing is, we're a pretty tight community over here. Everyone knows everyone, and we know each other by global name. The global name is a part of our respective identities! That's how we're known to each other because that identity stretch across server borders. It is our digital selves in this game, built up for years. Our identities is not the characters; it is our globals.

At about this point in the discussion, someone (usually American) says "but it's only a game!"

Well, perhaps, but it's also a part of our social life. A digital one, granted, and one based on make-believe, granted, but we still travel all over Europe to see each other for friendships made in this digital make-believe world. We still mourn our digital friends when they die.

So, in all fairness to the NA players, if your global means so little to you, and they mean so much to us, why don't YOU lose it when the server lists merge? They don't mean anything to you.

Right?

Age of account +
Inactive accounts -

If you factor both, you'd be fine.

All those things listed are you getting shafted, this is not, get over it.

Even if we were to agree with your point of view (which most of us Euros are not, and that should be quite apparent after 15 pages in two days), ever heard of the straw that broke the camel's back?

Like i said, easy to say as US player.

Clearly u didnt read my post earlier, i'm getting shafted big time.

If @Nights logs on with Nights then this will happen. Otherwise they're global will be what ever toon they log on with.

This quote just made me do this:

Only thing I can think of is if they looked at all the duplicate names and found that more of the EU players with those names were inactive than NA players. Otherwise exactly the same number of players would be affected.

Gotta agree with Techbot, I find this a very narrow minded view of the situation.

I'm a 72 month Vet, I've been around a while and I'm proud of that but I don't go rubbing peoples noses in it. If people are doing that to you then I agree with Techbot, they're idiots and you should ignore them as such.

This isn't about us shouting about how long we've been subscribed, this is about fairness over 'ownership' (for want of a better term) of a global name.

All we're saying is that it's much FAIRER for the name to go to the person who has had it the longest, and not to simply be based on your geographical location.

I'd use the same argument for someone like me who's been around for 6 plus years and might lose my global to someone who signed up last week, as I would for someone who's only played for 6 months and would lose their name to someone who signed up US side last week.

If you're bitter about people rubbing veterancy in your face then I totally agree. You should be. Those people are just big headed cocky idiots. But this isn't about Veterancy in that respect. This is about what's fairer, getting a name due to having it the longest or getting a name simply because you happen to live on the right side of the Atlantic.

Honestly which is fairer?

It FEELS like we're being victimised simply because of our geography. When all we really want is to have everyone treated as if we're all the same. Regardless of where we are, what language we speak, and whatever other defining characteristic you want to throw in here.

To quote something a wise man once said..... "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Think he was from the US wasn't he ?

This is exactly why most people on this thread have been advocating Veterancy rather than 'creation' date of the account.

It just seems fairer that the person who has been using the name for the longest period of time should be the one to keep it.

Last I checked America wasn't in the EU and therefore doesn't have to follow their Directives.

All that is required here is for someone at NC to recognize that racking off their player base - irrespective of their location - is a bad idea.

To the US players saying 'so what', let me ask you one question. The situation is reversed. The global you've had for years - and are known on the forum by - is changed. That ok by you?

They wont care, by the simple faction, that will never happen.

Neither were they ever 'forced' to get another account to just to play a more 'populated' server, with the inability to bring along your characters (like in the old days you could transfer your US characters to your EU account - well actualy, copy them).

I'm fairly sure I play CoX from my house and last time i looked I was living in the EU, therefore there must follow EU laws if there want to operated in the EU.

So please get your fact right before u come up with a load of rubbish.

TBH (and TBF!) there will be people both sides of the pond who aren't particularly attached to their globals.

Way I see it people are falling into 4 camps here.

a) The peeps on the EU side who are very unhappy that they're about to potentially lose what they see as an important part of their online identity. These people are likely to be the ones who've been around a while, weathered all the other slights against our community and are tired of it. The way the EU servers are, I'd wager this is probably the majority of EU players. We're not a huge population, most of us have been around for a while and we're incredibly close knit.

2) Peeps in the EU who really don't care too much, probably this implies they're more casual players, aren't really massively invested in the history of the game and may be the kind of players who flit between time in game and time playing other games. These guys aren't being vocal because they either don't frequent the forums or don't care much about whether they have a different name (cause they use different names in different games all the time so what the hell, what's one more!).

iii) Peeps on the US side who are being genuinely empathic because they know how they'd feel if the situation was reversed and are trying to help out by lending a voice or offering up support and solutions (I like these people and they're the ones I'm looking forward to meeting on the US servers! ) With what I know about guys and gals US side I'd hope this was the majority.

four) Peeps on the US Side who don't give a hoot cause it doesn't affect them so they're either not paying any attention to the thread or just want to make it known that they wouldn't care and have a pop at us for trying to discuss it (which is the name of the forum incidentally). I tend to think (hope) that the latter is a minority group.


I get where the Dev's are coming from. You CAN'T please ALL of the people ALL of the time, every solution will have people complaining about something. Can't avoid that. It's human nature to complain about things. LOL

But honestly they could take the approach that pleases the MOST people MOST of the time.

Just thinking about the statistics behind all this..... I'd love them to do some datamining and find out exactly who this affects. Not gonna happen I know, but it would be great if it could.

My gut feel (and admittedly this could be wayyyyyy off) is that this probably doesn't affect that many REAL users if the Veterancy way of doing things was pursued.

Think about how many subscribers CoX has had since launch and how many it has active now. I'll bet there's an awful lot of global names tied up with peeps who no longer play and probably have no intention of coming back. Just taking them out of the equation may put a huge dent in the number of clashing names out there. Then it just boils down to the smaller number who clash and still play.

Then think that there may be new players who are on trials or have only been playing a few months to try the game out. Cut out trials and the number of potential clashes again reduces.

Those that are still playing and trying the game? Who's more valuable to NCSoft, them or the people who have ploughed cash into the game for many months and years? who would understand the most? who would be pissed off the most?

I think when you start to slice down through the layers of user the problem gets smaller till I'd imagine that you'd only have a minimum of people that would TRULY clash and be inconvenienced by this.

And it that small number I'd hope that having the issue solved by Veterency would come across as fair to all parties.

Following this route, I'd probably still be miffed to lose out on my Global, but goddammit I'd understand that it's fair and equal. If US side Knightingale got the name then he deserves it in my eyes as he was using it longer. I'd move on and become Knightingale_EU or something as similar as I could get.

I think all but the most unreasonable people would feel the same.

And for NCsoft, nobody really gets upset too much, nobody leaves the game, subs continue to roll in from a loyal userbase who now are happy that they have superb Dev's who listen and care about them and express this far and wide.

Everyone wins.

As it currently stands US players win, NCSoft weathers a storm of unhappy EU players and risks a bunch of them quitting to go play something else (and it's not like CoX doesn't have it's DIRECT competitors now!) and the EU playerbase feels once again like it's a second class citizen.

It's not racial or ethnic origin. It's that you had one type of account (EU CoH) as opposed to another (NA CoH). Living in Europe isn't a race or ethnic origin, both the U.S. and Europe have a wide variety in this area.

I fully stand with those who are unhappy about the potential loss of long-used global names to inactive/trial/recently set up names (and am sort of half-crouched with those unhappy about the change in login name), but let's not be silly about this.

If you read the EULA for EU users, you will find this at the start of part 15:

Thing is that it's a bit tricky for a US company to offer services to EU customers. It's a lot easier to have a company based in EU under EU laws, and let that company do internal transactions to the mother company in the US.

As a result, we Euro players have a business relation with NCSoft Europe which is under European law (in this case specifically English law). There's not much left of that company, except for the part that takes our subscription money and passes it back to the US mother company. But it is subject to English law and EU directives.

So the anti-discrimination law may be applicable.

We're not being silly. Honestly what's the difference?

I agree we're not being discriminated against because of our race, ethnic origin, religion, sex, colour of our skin, what car we drive, what we have for breakfast, how many badgers we own......

Maybe this isn't as serious as the racial discrimination that happened in the 60's. It is, after all, just a game.

But discrimination is discrimination. Doesn't matter what the differentiating factor is.

FACT - Nothing is going to happen to the US accounts.

FACT - It's the EU accounts that will get appended.

FACT - the differentiating factor between who gets mullered by this change and who doesn't boils down to geographic location (generally. I do understand that there are US players on the EU servers already and vice versa).
ERGO - The EU players are being discriminated against specifically because we play on the EU servers.

Maybe it does sound all too much comparing it with the whole racial aspect of discrimination, and that wasn't what I intended when I quoted MLK earlier. The intention was to show that whether we play in the EU or on the US servers shouldn't we all be treated equally?

Surely people in the US of all places should be upholding this principle??