Lets talk about South East Asia, SE

[Kaethra]

snip

As I said before, Blizzard and Daybreak seem to think differently. There's a reason why most people I know from Singapore I've met through Everquest and World of Warcraft.

[Rufalus]

^ Yeah, those companies are exceptional in this online entertainment space. I think S-E are exceptional in some different ways like doing Fan Fests on multiple continents and streaming Live Letter information to the fans regularly. They have a good connection with the fans in the markets that they focus on, I feel, compared to industry average. More can be done to grow the game in other regions and I look forward to the continued growth of Final Fantasy XIV. I hope players in these countries who feel neglected can get what they want some day, regarding payment options and having designated worlds on an existing datacenter if not their own Oceanic datacenter.

[JunseiKei]

I mean games like Black Desert Online outright IP banned us :/

That's probably because there is a SEA version of Black Desert Online. This would force other versions to blacklist the region from theirs to force players to their specific regions. IE: SEA and ENG cannot play on KR versions; KR cannot play on ENG or SEA versions anymore than we can't play KR or CN versions of FFXIV.

Is there enough people in the SEA region to have their own server? Blizzard and Daybreak think so. Are enough players going to want to play FFXIV with bad exchange rates? Probably not.

Blizzard has SEA servers for Overwatch (World of Warcraft doesn't have a SEA server or it's AUS?), but their servers aren't exactly great. The ping is worse than using the American servers or the South Korean one. When I look up Daybreak SEA, I find there was a SEA server, but it was moved to Tokyo. It sounds like, in general, there is simply not enough of a draw from the region to have dedicated servers there.

[cakesphere]

Just posting to point out that South America doesn't have any dedicated servers, either, and those players got shafted especially hard when the servers moved westward.

I think it's safe to say that SE does not care about SEA or SA, which sucks

[duvvvv]

That's probably because there is a SEA version of Black Desert Online. This would force other versions to blacklist the region from theirs to force players to their specific regions. IE: SEA and ENG cannot play on KR versions; KR cannot play on ENG or SEA versions anymore than we can't play KR or CN versions of FFXIV.

OMG thank you for letting me know about this. I've given up checking the official BDO site for any updates on lifting the SEA ban. I mentioned the game because SEA BDO is new, I've been checking since 2015. It seems the SEA server closed beta only started around August of this year. my point was, Pearl Abyss didn't want to publish in SEA specifically until now. reason might be player demand, payment merchants, regional offices (as mentioned previously), possibly the same reason as Squeenix with FFXIV.