Blizzard Announce European WoW Team

Blizzard Announce European WoW Team


During a press conference held today, Blizzard Entertainment announced plans to build a local World of Warcraft team in Europe. The team will be responsible for community relations, customer service, and technical support for the game. Additionally, they will manage the distribution and hosting of World of Warcraft on local European servers. With a regional team in place, Blizzard intends to affirm its commitment to the European game community by delivering a massively-multiplayer experience of unparalleled quality.

Based in France, the pan-European team will serve as an integral part of the game's development process. In this role, they will help manage both text and voice localization, assist in the synchronization of development schedules, and communicate player feedback directly to the World of Warcraft development team. Furthermore, having a team located in Europe will provide gamers with faster response times, direct game master (GM) support, and personal communication with local call-center representatives dedicated to helping players with questions regarding gameplay and/or technical issues in their native languages.

"The European gaming community is very important to us," stated Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. "With a dedicated World of Warcraft team in Europe, we can provide players with an extraordinary level of customer service and community support."

As further example of its commitment to gamers in Europe, Blizzard intends to make World of Warcraft available in French and German, as well as English. Further details regarding additional possible languages will be announced in the months ahead. Furthermore, Blizzard plans to release a beta version of World of Warcraft in Europe shortly following the North American beta test.



There better not be a GOA logo on the European WoW box

Interesting.

Wonder if GOA are going for the franchise on this one.

Cyradix said:

Blizzard Announce European WoW Team
<snip>
Based in France, the pan-European team ....
<snip>

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oh joy

Based in France....

Mwehehehe.

Cyradix said:

The team will be responsible for community relations, customer service, and technical support for the game.

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I really doubt they would pick GOA to do this tbh. These are hardly the things GOA do well.

But will see and wait.

Absolutely everything in this game looks exciting and promising. Blizzard games are always excellent. But if GOA get to stick their big fat hairy French noses into it, I think it's doomed before it arrives

Please Blizzard, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

<-- usa version for sure

no more 6 month delay in patches for me

rofl

Go Goa! Go Goa!

old.windforce said:

<-- usa version for sure

no more 6 month delay in patches for me

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Ditto

aye if this is true, i will be buying the US version aswell.

old.windforce said:

<-- usa version for sure

no more 6 month delay in patches for me

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read the press release again, the team in france will NOT run the servers so they will not be responsible for patches and so patches will be in europe at the same time as they are in the USA.
Also France is a logical place to put your team as it is more or less central in europe (atleast alot more central than scandinavia or the UK). Setting up a team in France doesnt have to mean that GOA will run it and if blizzard hasnt done any check on GOA's customers (in other words read these boards) and still hired them, then I really doubt WoW will be even close to what people think it will be.

Ive learnt from my errors, i wont be buying the european version no matter who hosts it here, ill be playing the us version.

Driwen said:

read the press release again, the team in france will NOT run the servers so they will not be responsible for patches and so patches will be in europe at the same time as they are in the USA.
Also France is a logical place to put your team as it is more or less central in europe (atleast alot more central than scandinavia or the UK). Setting up a team in France doesnt have to mean that GOA will run it and if blizzard hasnt done any check on GOA's customers (in other words read these boards) and still hired them, then I really doubt WoW will be even close to what people think it will be.

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no the patches will be a long way behind usa in Europe - they are not launching the european servers until sometime after the us / korean ones have opened. i wouldn't be surprised if we see a christmas or even early next year release for europe

Pandemic said:

no the patches will be a long way behind usa in Europe - they are not launching the european servers until sometime after the us / korean ones have opened. i wouldn't be surprised if we see a christmas or even early next year release for europe

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where did you hear this? I cant find it (atleast easily) on their website and what has it to allow Europe in their beta, if they are planning on setting up servers for Europe later on? The Europeans are allowed in the beta to test lag and help with stress tests, if they have plans of getting another company to run European servers than why do this.

Also the announcement doesnt speak a word about running servers, it says that the team (part of blizzard) is there for customer service, technical support and customer relation. That means not running servers nor patching it. Off course this could still mean that there will be european servers later on, but then still those might be run by blizzard and can still be patched on the same time as the other servers.

However I might be wrong, but I dont see what you are claiming in this announcement nor can I find it on blizzards page.

Hey if it's run by the french and they balls it up, we can frog bash as much as we want (see WoW beta thread to understand this comment). As long as one army doesn't get all the attention (i.e humans and elves. there kingdoms are supposed fckd by this point) we should be fine. We want dwarf and orc wars, the way warfare is SUPPOSED to be! Axes, clubs, sharp sticks and foul language!


Bring it on

Vivendi Universal owns Blizzard Entertainment.
Vivendi Universal is French.

BTW wake up, there is no american (there is no english MMORPG anyway) MMORPG based in UK. Microsoft in Ireland, SOE in Holland, DAOC in France, AO and Horizon in Germany. I think there is a good reason.

i'll be going for a euro one cant stand the idea of not playing in primetime... but on another note i just hope that ppl dont expect to much of blizzard or it could be another swg failure...

so WoW will have an EU and an US version? man, that sucks when the rest of their games have got all the servers within one version

This "news" doesn't mean shit.

Darkchylde said:

so WoW will have an EU and an US version? man, that sucks when the rest of their games have got all the servers within one version

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no sure, it seems it's a Blizzard's office in Paris so the same company.

Actually when I think about it, it just means that there will be differences in patching again... that is the only negative effect of this decision. French company? So what?

SFXman said:

Actually when I think about it, it just means that there will be differences in patching again... that is the only negative effect of this decision. French company? So what?

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hum, AC2 is also localized in French and German, and these servers are patched at the same time as the US servers. When the game is built to be translated, it's very fast.

Please someone make a petition so people can sign it if they don't want goa hosting another mmorpg. They have made their standards of competence and service clear, the consumers should get to express their views.

usually blizzard makes sure their games get released worldwide at the same time, but if they dont then its the US version for me

already made this europe mistake once.....

<Shudders> I'm agreeing with Morcharon. I feel all grubby and dirty.

But yes, if it looks like a Euro-English version will get lumped in with lots of delayed translation stuff I'm not going to waste time on Euro servers.

The patch and update delays didn't bother me that much most of the time with GOA but now with the benefit of hindsight I don't see the point in having that all over again.

You want a version that isn't in the original language, knock yourself out, but don't make those that play the original language version suffer for it at the same time. There's pretty much bugger-all localised in the Euro-English version of DAoC.

Now if they started doing the quests in cockney rhyming slang, then they could justify translating for the English speaking players

Where do you people get this whole europe servers idea from? There is going to be an european team for customer service that hardly means that there will be european servers? Besides that they have announced that this team will exist probably means that europe will get the game at the same time as the US does, as the game wont be launched for another 5 months yet and why announce 1 year ahead that there will be an european CS team?

But yes for people speaking english getting the european version would only be good, if you can get it at the same time as the US version (or 2 weeks later) and play on the same servers or atleast patched on same time and run by same company (with same price as USA servers only use english, so why pay for the translations on the european servers?).

Ning said:

Vivendi Universal owns Blizzard Entertainment.
Vivendi Universal is French.

BTW wake up, there is no american (there is no english MMORPG anyway) MMORPG based in UK. Microsoft in Ireland, SOE in Holland, DAOC in France, AO and Horizon in Germany. I think there is a good reason.

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Because its next to impossible to get over a 2mbit conection in the UK without having to go out of your way to let ISPs milk you for a connection good enough to support a MMO server?

Sharma said:

Because its next to impossible to get over a 2mbit conection in the UK without having to go out of your way to let ISPs milk you for a connection good enough to support a MMO server?

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doesnt really change the fact that there is no mmorpg based in UK and that basing yourself in France doesnt mean the game will be ruined.

Sharma said:

Because its next to impossible to get over a 2mbit conection in the UK without having to go out of your way to let ISPs milk you for a connection good enough to support a MMO server?

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Sheesh, they should base MMORPG headquarters in Finland... we get 1 gig connections for LAN parties