Blizzard to launch Aussie Battle.net server?

Jenna Pitcher
Tuesday, 20 July 2010 23:30

Your IT - Entertainment

After many years of waiting and praying, parched Australian fans of video game giant Blizzard Entertainment might finally be about to taste a drop of video game heaven, with speculation intensifying tonight that the maker of the World of WarCraft, Diablo and StarCraft franchises might finally launch a local server for its Battle.net online gaming platform.

According to the Twitter account of EB Games, the news may be revealed in the new issue of Gameinformer magazine '” due out on Wednesday morning. 'New Gameinfomer mag out tomorrow includes a world exclusive article on the new local Battlenet server! A MUST HAVE for all Blizzard fans!' the retailer wrote online tonight.

The news comes as Blizzard and partners gear up for what is expected to be one of the gaming industry's biggest launches of the year on 27 July '” the sequel to its immensely popular StarCraft franchise, a decade in the making. EB Games has already received copies of StarCraft II '” although it is not yet allowed to sell them.

Blizzard had originally planned to region-lock Australians to only be able to play on to South-East Asian servers for StarCraft II. The issue has whipped Australian gamers into a frenzy, especially on the Blizzard community forum. If the decision was to be enforced Australian StarCraft 2 gamers would only be able to go against South-East Asian players in multiplayer matches '” forget it if those Australian gamers had friends in the US or Europe they wished to play against.

The Asian server location also riled tensions for the reported bad response times Australians received to its location compared to the relatively good connection to servers in the US. Late last month Blizzard's community team followed up on the forums, stating: