New request for South African gateway, now with AWS flavour

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HanSoloDK wrote:

But Chris has already replied to this buy saying that the amount of money coming in from your region is to small to support the expense of making local servers....
So you will properly need to find some sponsors.....

Was this recent? I don't recall that particular response. Does the same situation exist for Southern American (Sao Paulo gateway) players? Did they need a "sponsor" to get a gateway? Regardless, how would one expect money from a region if they don't care to put any hosting there in the first place?

As mentioned previously, cloud hosting (which GGG uses) is cheap and scaled up easily if demand increases in the region. What matters is, initial investment from GGG would be minimal, only slightly more than what they bother with now (none).

GGG also make one game...and it's F2P. That already is an invitation to play the game, monetization is an "at will" kind of thing for players. Suggesting that South Africans cannot afford GGG's MTX is just ludicrous.

Currently, they have lost money from me and in future as long as they ignore their playerbase in Southern Africa. I got plenty of shiny pixels already, and while I wouldn't mind some more, I just don't feel it's worth it for the suffering that is 150 - 200ms ping. That's on a good day when the servers aren't crapping themselves.

Once again, it surprises me that GGG, who are also geographically disadvantaged when it comes to online hosting, just ignore an entire continent for years. Us South Africans at the very bottom of the continent have heard "reasonable excuses" like no data center in the country meets the minimum requirements for us to consider hosting there from other game studios. That situation has changed and has stayed that way for months now. What was once a distant dream is now a much closer reality, which is why I am willing to kick up a fuss about this and keep on going until answered / appeased / muted.

Bump, time to go sleep - hoping that this is seen by GGG during their working hours.

Maybe we should be lobbying Tencent to drop their version of the game in South Africa, instead of just being ignored here?

/s

Yeah China is already invested here, so you might have a good point.

Dear GGG, daily reminder that we are still waiting on a South African gateway, so that we can enjoy your game the way it's meant to be and not with 150-200ms latency. I don't think the current experience is worth supporting anymore.

Its mainly because many companies don't think there is much of an African gaming community. Most of the companies that say this are usually the ones that probably don't even know we have the Nag Lan which is basically the biggest gaming convention in the Southern Hemisphere. But no Africa has not enough gamers.

I tried appealing to league for the same story since Valve managed to get an RSA server for Dota 2 surely it wouldn't be out of Lol's territory but they said there isn't enough players from Africa. Yeah well if you bothered with a server at all you might have that entire viewpoint change. Most people don't play games with 200 ping or more here and simply opt out. If they bothered with the servers they might get the numbers they deem necessary for a server regardless.

Exactly! Build it and they will come.

As mentioned previously, I doubt that launching small and scaling as demand increases would put a dent in GGG's currency tab. The benefits of cloud hosting (which GGG already utilizes for current gateways).

I support this. Also from SA and have put thousands of hours into POE. Many here don't play because of the high ping. I work around it by playing builds that auto-target and I also don't ever use movement skills.

Put a server here and there will be a lot more SA players.

Yeah I feel that for movement skills.

This league has been particularly annoying when the servers have a wobble, leap slam is not my friend. Bounce bounce bounce, rewind selecta, death. Or getting stuck in actual scenery like corners, doorways (to the point where I have to leap slam out, moving yields no movement) and walls.

Was having fun on EQ but when nothing happens after hitting a flask, it's annoying to just die in that short timeframe.

The server list is all filled with triple digit ping and there is nothing to do but hope.

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KryptykZA wrote:

Hello GGG,

I hope that this request is seen, as it's purpose is to make you aware that AWS just launched their first African region in Cape Town, South Africa: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-open-aws-africa-cape-town-region/

I know that GGG currently doesn't use AWS for their current hosting. I would like to appeal on behalf of all South African players and supporters of this game for this to finally change "as an exception".

Your current hosting partner does not offer "good enough" or "at all" hosting to play PoE in South Africa (with decent ping) for this to be a reality currently. We are at the literal bottom of the second largest continent without any options for "strong hosting"...until today. The closest hosting is in Europe/UK.

I vaguely remember it being mentioned that AWS was previously looked at for hosting. I am almost certain that having hosting on multiple providers may have it's own set of problems.

GGG - we want that sweet sub 50ms ping. Some of us will have even sub 10ms ping. From the Q&A with Chris Wilson that recently came out, he spoke to the very same experience we have also had for decades of online gaming. The capability for us is here now and I hope that you will consider this request seriously...and hopefully soon!!! :)

Bumping with the hope of atleast receiving a reply from GGG.

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KryptykZA wrote:

Yeah I feel that for movement skills.

This league has been particularly annoying when the servers have a wobble, leap slam is not my friend. Bounce bounce bounce, rewind selecta, death. Or getting stuck in actual scenery like corners, doorways (to the point where I have to leap slam out, moving yields no movement) and walls.

Was having fun on EQ but when nothing happens after hitting a flask, it's annoying to just die in that short timeframe.

The server list is all filled with triple digit ping and there is nothing to do but hope.

Glad to hear more ZA players struggling with movement skills. I am at a point where I do not use any movement skills. And choose builds around not needing them.