Hey Blizzard, I love Overwatch to death and have bought it across multiple platforms and have supported it from the very beginning, but I can’t help but feel neglected as a Middle Eastern player. There are no servers to support my region and therefore am forced to use European servers; with the average internet here the game can seem somewhat unplayable at times with an average of 200png. As you know more than I do, that Overwatch is a very fast paced and reaction dependant game, having every action I do delayed and my opponents always having an advantage has led to me being genuinely frustrated and hating playing my absolute favourite game. I do not believe you are aware of how passionate your player base in the arab world is evident by Saudi Arabia fighting hard to join the world cup :). I know it is very had but if there is any way to put up servers in the ME it would mean the world to me and so many others. Thank you
I played for a few years in the Middle East connecting to EU servers and the ping is definitely annoying, compounded by the fact that people often need to use a VPN if they want VOIP to work (when the traffic is blocked in-country).
I guess having Middle East servers would also help communication issues, how many people on EU servers aren’t communicating because their English is limited?
You must really love a game to play it with 200 ping. I would drop Overwatch in a heartbeat if my average ping was 200, noway I would even entertain the idea of playing any game with that kind of latency.
Not sure why they don’t just drop a few servers in places like Israel, Turkey, which have good relations with the west.
I remember playing it on my old PC. Bad resolution, real choppy, overall unplayable. Could still play decently back then because that’s what I was used to.
Regionalizing overall is sensible, but you gotta ask how many people are even playing in a region and how many you need to get fair games. Sure, in gold you will find your matches, but what about bronze or m/gm? What about arcade modes? OW is already facing the issue of splitting it’s player base between CP, QP, QPC and several arcade modes. If you take 10% of the EU server players - would they be able to sustain? I honestly don’t think so.
I don’t think it would be an an issue. The main thing is it would give all those thousands of middle east players the feel of an actual low latency online game just how the rest of us enjoy Overwatch. it’s not fair that they should play with 200 ping.
Honesly I don’t hold my breath when it comes to anything with Blizzard. It took them 2 years to figure out scatterarrow was dumb, then another year to get storm arrow balanced after enough people complained that 5second cooldown 6 arrows that do headshot dmg isn’t good. They simply don’t get it until enough players scream it in their faces at times.
So honestly, I wouldn’t hold my breath for new servers in a part of the world that doesn’t really make Blizzard more money.
The only glimmer of hope is that maybe, just maybe with the release of OW2, they might install servers in the mid east, just to get more players, but even then I doubt it.
The sad truth is it all comes down to money. If the middle eastern gaming market was bigger and made a different in Blizzard’s income, believe me they would have servers there tomorrow. It’s just not a big market and it sucks for the players because they won’t get the true online gaming experience because of it.
the ping so annoying alwayes i play with 120 ping and 500
my connection 120 mb and download 50mb and ping 10 -15
As someone who thinks about immigrating to Israel I find it worrysome, haha. I hear a lot about European players complaining about people speaking arab languages. Tel Aviv seems to be a good place to put servers in the middle east, it’s a very developed city with lots of technology companies, very centered in the region and far enough away from Europe not to get their players by mistake. Istanbul is also a good place, but it might be too close to Europe.
Think theres a Bahrain server coming very soon ?
Blizzard has smart developers and they are responsive but when it comes to updating, they are the worst. I’m glad that many Middle Eastern players are quitting Overwatch since 2019 because that’s a sweet karma to the Blizzard team. They either think that we’ll force ourselves into 200 png servers (EU), the dead server (US) or just waste our time with bunch of cheaters (Asia). I was an Overwatch addict, meaning at least 8 hours a day on Overwatch and the most was 13 hours straight but then I quitted Overwatch for 6 months and now I only play maximum 2-3 hours.