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Old Republic parallel imports okay, says BioWare
Sorry, can’t help with the ping times
Gamers in Australia have been reassured that they’ll be able to log into Star Wars: The Old Republic server ahead of the game’s official Australian ship date.
The company is pursuing a strategy of staggered launches, either as a hype-raising marketing ploy or to give it time to roll out local servers, a decision that had been causing angst among Aussie gamers, fearing that region blocking would stop private imports from working.
In a post to its Old Republic forum, BioWare says this won’t be the case: “There are no plans to ‘region lock’ or ‘IP block’ players from the game,” the company says.
Of course, with no local servers, Australian players will have to suffer the Great Pacific Ocean Latency, which, when routing delays are added to the trans-Pacific fibre run, can amount to a quarter of a second.
The post also hints that local launches will be accompanied by local servers; without, however, identifying which territories outside North America and Europe will be included in the list. ®