An American player in the EU realms
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 29th 2007 at 6:36PM
Kraylessa is, I'd guess, an anomaly-- she lives in the United States, but has actually obtained an EU copy of the game and rerolled on EU servers. She says she loves it-- her nationality is a topic of conversation, no one's been xenophobic, and while the lag isn't great, it's just about as bad as it was when she played cross-continent servers (she's living on the East Coast).I'm not sure how well I'd do playing on an EU realm-- while I'm sure the people are great (hi, EU readers!), it seems like I'd have even less chances to raid (with my schedule being so off), and as ocannie points out in the comments over on Kraylessa's post, customer service would be an interesting experience if anything ever went wrong. It would definitely be interesting to see the cultural differences, however, and it would make it a completely different game to be "the outsider" in Azeroth. Right now, the vast majority of my guildies are American (and quite a few of them are from St. Louis, my hometown), and it would definitely be a different experience to play entirely with people from the other side of the world.
Have any of you played on realms in a different country before? Did it make Azeroth a lot more like actually visiting another place, or weren't there too many differences? Would you recommend it or not? I don't know if I'm curious enough to try it now (since I'm good and situated on a server where I am now), but if I had the chance to start a new game on another region's servers, I might give it a shot.
Filed under: Realm News, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Nati Oct 29th 2007 6:44PM
I live in Europe and play on American servers. There's nothing fancy about it, mostly I get a lot of questions about my country... the schedule's a bit hard to work around for raids and such, though.
Kal Oct 29th 2007 6:50PM
For a variety of odd reasons my guild and my friends are all on EU and I'm in the US. There are some really nice things about it, like farming; a lot of places are easy to farm at 3AM Paris time. It's not so hard to find PUGs, but occasionally I'll have to wait. The good thing is that there are enough American friends on that we'll just go do things together.
It can be a bitch to find a profession crafter though.
hpavc Oct 29th 2007 6:53PM
From what I gather from talking to EU players on our forums and in vnet that the EU player base is much better as far as lacking a lot of elitist asshats the US realms have. They also tend to do a lot more content with lower level attempts and with a larger variety of mixed class groups.
forzaq8 Oct 29th 2007 6:57PM
well , i play from Kuwait , so every game server is on a different country :p
Moketronics Oct 29th 2007 7:04PM
We have someone in our guild from AU on our North American server (Turalyon), as well as someone from the U.S. stationed at an airbase in Germany.
The timing can be a bit off and on - but seems no more of a hassle then EST-PST issues.
I'd like to see some "world" servers for people who really want a more international experience. Lag might be an issue but I'm sure I could put up with it. Have to have a more communication oriented emote system like in FFXI though.
Scoottie Oct 29th 2007 7:08PM
Yeah there is nothing special about this article. Many people in the EU play on US servers and many people in the US play on EU servers
lilleas Oct 29th 2007 7:15PM
yes all of the servers are in another country.. i am canadian hehe :) but recently have contemplated moving to EU realms as the raid schedule being 4 hours ahead of my own time zone would be good for me.
Johnhansen Oct 29th 2007 7:24PM
EU player reporting in
i cant say how things are in the US, but i dont imagine it being anything that different, US probably have things in larger scales in elitism and newbies, since your playerbase is larger. though i guess you guys wont be asking your partymembers what their original language/origins is, since in EU theres atleast a dozen different on the "english" servers(german, french and spanish have their own set), but like, finnish, norwegian, swedish, danish (yay), portuguese, belgian, dutch, italian etc. and ofcourse the lovely brits :) so often there can be a language barrier since its not always people speak perfect or even understandable english.
xGeneric Oct 29th 2007 7:21PM
When I first played, I started on an Oceanic server as I was a total noob and Blizz had it flagged as a recommended server for North America(Khaz'Goroth). I actually really enjoyed it, it added something different that I never had in other multi-player games. There were of course many other Americans there, and there was a bit of Yankee bashing, but mostly because it was a high pop server with long que times, and the Aussies blamed us for it(though it was in part Blizzards fault for mixing them in with North American servers in the first place), so it wasn't that bad... it was all in good fun.
The only problem was that half my guild was made up of Aussies, so getting a raid together wasn't easy.
roguedubb Oct 29th 2007 7:24PM
I play on the RP-PVP servers and live in Australia. I usually get about an hour overlap when guild mates are on, then they all disappear and it's just me.
Not that it's ever mattered: I don't raid and I prefer to solo everything. BG waits can be frustrating sometimes, especially when you do finally get in and get booted out not long after because there are not enough players.
Lucious Oct 29th 2007 7:35PM
heh. Ai do play on a different continent even when im playing on us servers.
I am Brazilian, and i started playing on eu servers when some mate on eu server i idle on IRC gave me one account he had. I played for 3 months until i got addicted and decided to buy one account on us to play with my IRL friends. I had like 20 Brazilians from my city playing in same server.
I miss playing eu mostly because my experience playing with Europeans other games. They seems to be more focused and dedicated, tho they are "colder" than Canadians and Brazilians, which are the ppl i have more contact ingame
tool03 Oct 29th 2007 7:46PM
I play on a west coast sever and live in Japan.
jackolantern Oct 29th 2007 8:35PM
i am from NZ and i play on an American server - there are always plenty of people from my guild online whenever I play. My friend and I (both Kiwis) stumbled on a late night guild when we first started playing on a US server - it has worked out very well.
Procyon Oct 29th 2007 9:59PM
Mike I am in STL also....as is a lot of my guild. The rest are from the Oregon area and New Zealand and Australia. If you ever want to roll a new Alliance alt come on over to Daggerspine and look me up. Jirin is my main.
DeZo Oct 29th 2007 10:19PM
Israeli playing on US server. I just didn't knew about the EU servers when I 1st rolled.
It was fun till I hit 70 and wanted to raid. Most raiding guilds raid at my 4-6 am so it was a problem, even though I'm a noctornoid.
Finally I found a guild mostly from the far-east (aussies and Singaporeans and even some from Kuwait) that I can raid with, but in the middle of my day (around 3pm). Now my work comes in the way, or thrown aside, if being honest gives any points.
It still is a good experience, so much that even when rerolled, I didn't got me an EU account (like most Israelis) and I keep playing on US servers.
Only thing I hate about it is when I make spelling mistakes (English is my alt after all) and, sometimes, it makes me look like a moron.
On the other hand, the farming hours advantage is great. I made sure the SMV elementals will not have a boring moment even when most of the server is tucked deep in bad.
Gerb Oct 29th 2007 11:53PM
"Have any of you played on realms in a different country before? Did it make Azeroth a lot more like actually visiting another place, or weren't there too many differences? Would you recommend it or not?"
What you're forgetting is, that when you play in the EU, you already need to be used to different nationalities.
There are even some servers totally taken over by for example Russians, and some time ago Spaniards (who got their own realms now though), who refuse to speak English.
But it's quite nice, I know more about Swedes / Brits / Danes / insert random country here, than most people I know in real life do^^
Vortal Oct 30th 2007 12:38AM
I was on the Euro servers and lived in the UK but a move to Australia forced me to re-roll on the US servers.
Lag is crappy to the US (normally around 400ms, Euro is 600ms+) but it is playable.
Aigarius Oct 30th 2007 4:58AM
I am playing on US servers from EU. However, what is really improtant is that I can not reroll on EU servers even if I wanted to, because then I would have to buy another version of the game. Every WoW buyer should be able to play on every server, the world is global.
Mycaelis Oct 30th 2007 5:34AM
I am on an Oceanic server and live in the UK. Didn't know what i was getting into when i first started WOW, now been playing the game for about a year now. Its been a hard time trying to find a guild that has people on when im on.
Dipstick Oct 30th 2007 5:38AM
I'm on an EU server, and we had an American chap from Alaska log on and raid with us Pre-TBC. Unfortunately he decided to give up the game a little while after TBC came out because of the over-reliance on group questing and rep grinding, and whenever he had time to play was usually when the rest of us Europeans were in bed :<
He was a lovely guy though, we had a great laugh with him since he had a slightly different sense of humour to what we were used to (mostly being Brits and Dutch in our guild), but he fitted in really well.