New request for South African gateway, now with AWS flavour

Also voicing my support for South African servers here.

I Regularly watch Youtube Videos and Twitch Streams of how people play and do bossing because if I try to do it myself, I just need one flame dash to desync and you instantly die.

The game will feel a lot better if we didn't have to worry about a desyncing after every flame dash or {insert movement skill here}. Bossing would feel better as you can focus on the fight instead of one small blip in the latency.

One more thing is more people might give hardcore a go because it will actually be viable to try, but with 200ms it is not at all possible. I can remember from the streamers playing on the China server and how they complained about the high latency.

In general as everyone mentioned, if the game has lower latency more people might try the game and gives the potential for a higher player base.

If we can't have a South African server for Path of Exile, can we please at least have one for Path of Exile 2, otherwise I don't see myself playing the game anymore :(

Bump, because it is my turn.

also...If you make a server in South Africa happen i promise to buy a supporter pack.

Cross Posting from Reddit comment thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/hk1a4l/i_hope_we_wont_get_there/fwx44yb/?context=3

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Response from Bex:

Bex_GGG
Community Director & Producer

1 day ago
We have commented on this a few times in the past. Our server host doesn’t have a server there, if they open one we will utilise it.
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Thank you Bex for the updated response. I'd like to update this thread on the forum with the information and updated appeal to reconsider the decision to defer to Softlayer as the reason for not yet having a South African gateway:

Fact 1: Multicloud tenancy technology exists.

The costs cannot be that crazy - if there is such a small player base connecting from the entirety of Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Madagascar) and even further North, surely there must be enough of us to justify discussion around using existing data centers instead of passing the buck on to their hosting provider?

Fact 2: Cloud hosting is scalable by demand.

GGG obviously has the data of players connecting from the region, and can see the spend. I would be very surprised if that came out as "not financially viable, so good luck haha". I am certain that costs can be extrapolated with current data and determine if we are worth the exception of using another cloud host (similar to how they use their own hosting in Auckland for a special gateway in their own country, how bout dat).

Edit: They also have significant investment money from Tencent. This is a known fact. Tencent has significant investment from Naspers, in fact about 27%. Naspers is a South African company. They would literally be doing their investors "countrymen" a favor.

Opinion: With investment, comes return

I would be open to spending money again on MTX once a gateway is made available in South Africa. I cannot speak for everyone, but I think there is a good opportunity to capture more of the RPG audience with South African servers. As more RPGs come to the table, ones that make use of local hosting options for me would be more enticing for the very reason of low latency.

I don't think this request is unreasonable when it's purely a server hosting company decision. If it's possible, then make that commitment to the customers and reap the returns.
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It's sad that the answer is "wait until Softlayer decides to compete against AWS and Azure in the South African cloud space", which is highly unlikely to happen any time soon. That's just not smart business, and new datacenter builds can take years to plan and deploy, unless they purchase space in existing data centers (of which IBM surely has some form of local cloud, I am certain). IBM owns Softlayer, so technically that can be possible, right?

I am glad that the opportunity may eventually roll around. I just wish it could happen a lot sooner. As above logic shows, there seriously cannot be many reasons to hold back on using a different cloud provider while we await Softlayer to pull finger and start doing business with the rest of the world class cloud providers in the region?

If I am starting to sound persistent, it's because I am. I apologize for the direct tone about this, but the current status quo and deference to an uncontrollable 3rd party reason doesn't get absolved or resolved.

As a very supportive customer of my favorite game, I feel like this feedback should be taken as serious. Entitled much? Yeah...probably. Sick of triple digit ping? Definitely.

Bamp for some afternoon reading and hopeful reconsideration given the above wall of text that I submit as feedback.

Man its getting worst every league , playing from middle east and playing on eu servers with 100 to 130 ping and jumping like crazy this league with some instances having around 280 ping feels so bad, idk what to do we are getting data center opened here a lot can play Callofduty overwatch and fortnite on 50 ping but waiting for that company the host ggg servers to open one in MENA or any where close is like a dream at this point they keep opening gatways in NA and Eu and we are struggling here. i love the game so much but with the state of servers as it is idk how much long ill be around .

ps; sorry for the rant

GZ Toronto on your 20ms reduction :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/hmmhu0/toronto_gateway_up_for_testing/

Edit now that I have a keyboard attached:

Yes, GZ Toronto for reals. I am not salty about it, I am happy - it inspires me that new gateways are a thing and I hope that there is some awesome news heading our day soon.

Until that day, I'll be the thorn in the side of GGG constantly shining from Africa's sun :D I see that many fellow South Africans voiced their opinions today in multiple comments.

Show support. Engage in communication. Discuss it ad nauseum. All I have heard is a deference to "what thine gracious server host wills". I was not aware that IBM controlled gateway locations other than where they decide to plonk down servers. Both Moscow and NZ don't show up on IBM's global server map, just like South Africa doesn't. One of these is not like the other 2 for some reason?

From the above thread, this information seems obscure and outdated. Could this be looked into to satisfy your IBM requirements?

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2016-03-08-IBM-Opens-First-Cloud-Data-Center-in-South-Africa,1

Thanks.

"

KryptykZA wrote:

From the above thread, this information seems obscure and outdated. Could this be looked into to satisfy your IBM requirements?

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2016-03-08-IBM-Opens-First-Cloud-Data-Center-in-South-Africa,1

Thanks.

I remember seeing that article years ago. I think if you check their map SA still doesn't feature there. Interesting about NZ and Russia not having IBM/Softlayer data centers yet still having servers. Well spotted.


Haven't logged in for a few days now, and every day that passes my will to do so diminishes more. Quite like harvest actually but I'm sick of the ping, so meh.

Thread's dead, for now. Recording the following response regarding cloud hosting and multi-tenancy here for anyone looking to start up the discussion again:

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https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/hmmhu0/toronto_gateway_up_for_testing/fx9hwn3/?context=10

I understand that it is frustrating. We do hear the feedback being provided by players in South Africa - it gets raised often.

Currently none of our primary server providers have a presence in South Africa (IBM & Unity for bare metal, GCP for cloud). If they come to South Africa, we will most-likely open a gateway there as soon as we're able.

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The top reasons for this are:

We would want to avoid solely hosting on cloud. For the same performance as bare metal, it is 2-3x more expensive. It's good for short-term capacity increases, but long term it's not really financially viable.

If the above were not the case. Getting things in a playable state with consistent performance the other big cloud providers has been a big challenge. Additionally, things such as live migration functionality is disruptive to path of exile instances, whereas it works seamlessly on GCP.
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Appreciate the detailed and open response from Fitzy_GGG.
Back to the waiting game I guess.

Bump to add my name to the list that really want South African servers