So I started playing OW1 and as a South African player I would sit at around 180ms which isn’t great but it was fine, the OW team did a great job with the netcode.
I met some cool people playing on the EU servers and then suddenly one day I was connecting to servers that didn’t have any native english speakers and where everyone was pretty much speaking some kind of middle eastern language, barely anyone would speak english. This was consistent in almost every single game on competitive and so I looked into it, and yep other people from my region were also having the same issue. This issue has been ignored by Blizzard for years now.
So not only do we get no server on our entire continent we are also playing with people that speak very different languages. High latency + poor communication in my games has killed a lot of the joy for me.
I have tried logging tickets and I get told to just post on the forums, so here I am posting on the forums. I wasn’t even told why this is happening.
I really do not want to use a VPN or anything of the sort, this is really something that should not happen in a game like this. I have played plenty of other competitive games and never had issues like this.
So here is me hoping someone from Blizzard sees this or perhaps this gets enough attention so something can be done. Local servers would be great but I can see how competitive rankings would be a problem with a smaller pool of players, but being connected to middle eastern players doesn’t seem right.
+1 to support this. South Africa has the infrastructure available to host servers in the cloud. The very same infrastructure that OW2 utilizes right now.
It’s amazing that Blizzard is pretty much silent on this whole issue, given their whole “inclusion, diversity and community” pretense, I must admit that I don’t feel included in the OW community when most modern FPS games have local hosting for us, but OW2 does not.
Even worse, the ME servers are toxic AF. EZ spam is the name of the game, along with KS AMK (whatever that means) and other such illegible trash talk. It’s a very unpleasant experience.
Additionally, when we are graced with the opportunity to play on an actual EU server, it’s a gamble every time you queue. If we are lucky, we get Frankfurt, Italy or France. If we are unlucky, it throws us all the way over to Switzerland for a very laggy 230ms+. Or if Blizzard is feeling kinda spicy, then we even get dumped on to the Indian servers for 400 - 600ms.
Yes, I have already firewalled those servers off. Unfortunately, Blizzard loves putting me on those servers when I queue as DPS, so it fails connection. Haha, very funny Blizz, good one. Like right now actually, which is why I am on the forums instead of playing your game (HINT: I CAN’T).
Their routing is completely scuffed right now. Hopefully they can fix it by just adding a South Africa server pool on AWS, and let us toggle only connecting to it (like a command line switch or something). Unfortunately, this will only be ignored as usual.
Thanks for adding your feedback on this. I honestly do not expect a SA server since I can imagine our competitive pool would be dismal at best. Maybe more SA people would play if the option was there though?
Either way I just want an experience where I can connect with people that are similar and speak my language etc. Not only would it improve comms in my games but it is also a nice way to meet people and find groups to play with.
I think it is nice that they are consolidating similar cultures into specific servers but putting South African’s with Middle Eastern players is an odd choice. I have spoken to gamemasters and they seem to shrug it off and tell me to post here instead. So there we go, essentially I paid for a multiplayer game where I can’t understand anyone else…
I also play from South Africa, apparently there is a way to change your servers via battle.net, but it’s unacceptable that we can’t change them in game, and so annoying, I can’t communicate with any of my teammates in a game where communication and teamwork is key to winning
Ah great, another night of failed server connections. Blizzard, I refuse to let your matchmaking needs ruin my experience. I will not remove these firewall rules, and your matches can start 1 player down. Not my problem.
Kiss goodbye to me spending any money on this game until South Africa gets their own server pool.
I’m also from South Africa whenever I would play on middle east servers there would be a ton of toxicity which I don’t really care, I’m not sensitive. As well as no communication, 80% of the games I’m the only one in voice chat and when there are other people they are speaking arabic or something.
But then I started using firewall to block the connection and I was working for months, I immediately started ranking up, teamates had amazing comms and teamwork, but now recently it started trying to put me in Middle East servers anyways causing me to fail to connect and get suspended, but whenever I turn the firewall off and get put into a middle east server it feels like low gold even though im high plat, on eu i would see a lot of diamond or even master challengers in my lobbies, now on me I dont. The one game i literally had a battle mercy that was front lining and dying the whole time on Me.
The high ping is a big inconvenience, but i’m used to it and can still carry, but the game is practically unplayable on middle east
Hi all, another fellow south african here. I legit quit the game since December 2023 because of the middle eastern player base’s extreme toxicity. They have this way to get under your skin quite frequently.
Then a friend pointed me to a OW Server Selector (google it, should find the reddit for it)
Unfortunately only works for QP, as ranked you will disconnect and be suspended for leaving the match. But it has a “block middle east” button specifically for EU users.
I tried it, and played 10 QP matches.
Probably the best experience I have had since launch day of OW2. No joke, I would take the disconnections back than play another match with a KSA logo player that always spams useless stuff in the chat. Seriously, no “EZZZZZZZZZ” no toxicity no racism no bigotry, nothing. Just good vibes and everyone patting each other on the back after a good match. ALSO no botter or hacker too. It was seriously the best night I have had in over a year with this game.
Some people also think that people like us speaking out about it are just being “bigotted” or something stupid like that, when they themselves have not experienced the horror of sitting in a match with some of these people. To prove another point, last year during the overwatch cup two middle eastern casters were banned for hate language towards a trans player. So you tell me, if this is what their most popular/top players are like, just imagine the bronze-plat ranks…
I hope this helps my fellow South African players who just want to have a good time playing this game in qp, without 3-6 players being extremely toxic. And hopefully Blizzard will do something about it if enough people complain about their playerbase enough.
Hi there, I learned to cook (like, the REAL DEAL) from my south african chef M.N. and S.A.K., when I was young and working clubs.
So in my book, you are all most welcome, to say the least. Its just a big distance, so server pings and all, I feel you. Anything else… you know what they say, its a small world.