[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Europe & Distrubution

[Vincent Archer]

According to Johan:

> After reading about Blizzard's (VU?) decision to only allow
> localized server play and a 2-3 month delay for Europe I couldn't
> help to think why no MMORPG, at least to my knowledge, has ever
> been released over the Internet from the start. If any type of
> games could pull this of it would be just MMORPGS.

No large-scale MMORPG, you mean.

A Tale in the Desert was released exclusively over the net. As was
the ill-fated Rubies of Eventide, if my memory is right. One is
alive and well after over a year, but the other went down promptly.

> Also, if we go back to Blizzard's decision to lockout European's
> from the American servers (until the game goes live in
> Europe). The real reason for them doing so I presume is because
> they don't want an additional huge amount of people storming their
> servers at release causing problems, although they have stated the
> "official" reason for the lockout is to save us from lag.

As a veteran of very large corporation (Alcatel), I assume that it
probably has more with the directory of Blizzard Europe wanting to
keep his sales at home, so that he presents a better report to
Vivendi Universal, and get a bigger bonus for 2004.

This is called "market segmentation", "internal profit centers" and
other buzzphrases that are used in multinationals like VU.  Which
means that Blizzard US has to accomodate Blizzard Europe in this
segmentation, because that's corporate policy at high level.

  (note that I'm not working for VU, don't have contacts at VU
  management, and it's all out of familiarity with other
  multinationals and the "modern management")

There are no real technical reason for the move (including the
lockout by billing information, not just by which box you buy), so
one has to look for the financial/marketing one.

> (This is my first post here so if this ends up on a mailing list
> for Chinese nuclear scientists, my apologies)

Boom! :P

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)
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