There's no reason to think that Cyan will set up seperate servers/shards for the purpose that you've indicated, Nyrphame.

During the original Uru Live Prologue, we did have three servers/shards running just before it shut down, but they weren't set up to "house" people from different international areas. (I think all the servers were in the same geographical location anyway.) A person from any part of the world could set up a character on whatever shard he or she wanted. (Or all of them, for that matter...)

I believe we'll most likely see only one shard/server when Uru first goes live again. Everyone will need to be able to access it. Other shards will likely follow as they are needed... if needed. But setting up a server just for US players and another for everyone else is not something that is even practical... or likely.

Remember, Cyan has told us that their relationship is with Turner specifically... not GameTap. (Though, they will be developing products for Gametap.) We've been told that Uru Live will reside outside of the standard GameTap delivery system. But US users will have the benefit of being able to access both.

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Shadowcats wrote:

IMO It might be separate 1 server on the GameTap system and one set up for people
that can't (at this stage) access the GameTap systems.

We already have this setup now in a way
Public shards with Kagi key access to both public and D'mala
D'mala invites that only access D'mala.

The reason Kagi shards aren't available to D'mala invitees is, as far as I can tell, twofold, and likely has little to do with Turner specifically. Turner hosts the D'mala server, and Cyan hosts the D'mala authentication server. Cyan no longer operates the Kagi authentication server, and has very *very* little control (if any, really) over what goes on in the private shards.

Because Cyan can in no way guarantee the up-time of the Kagi shards, or the quality of experience (or userbase) that anyone may encounter there (not saying the Kagi shards are ill-behaved, just that Cyan can't guarantee it), and because they aren't in direct control of the Kagi shards, allowing people to use them would be a bit of a mess from a customer service standpoint. There's codes of conduct and license agreements that go along with using the D'mala shard, and nothing like that really exists for the Kagi shards.

Since Cyan (and more importantly, Turner, which is I think the bigger motivator in preventing D'mala invitees from getting into a place they don't control) would be in direct control of any Uru Live shards that come online after launch, I seriously doubt there will be any sort of segregation on the basis of whether you're getting in through GameTap or where on the planet you happen to reside. As has been noted, during the previous beta test, and during Prologue, folks from all over the world were getting into the exact same server, and the various Live shards were only opened because of overcrowding... and even then, you could choose which shard to create your character on, no matter where you lived. There's already internationalization stuff built into the Uru client, and several of Uru's interfaces (like the Nexus), so it seems pointless that they'd segregate everybody again when so much work has been done to bring us together.

Also, speaking strictly off the cuff here, Cyan knows how important the community aspect of Live is, and presumably - based on the positive attitude Cyan has towards their cooperation with Turner - Turner is willing to go along with Cyan on this point, so separating the community into groups based on location or client access point seems a bit contrary to the community-building efforts. Additionally, and continuing to speak off the cuff, I would gather that Turner is going to allow the Live client to be released for download outside of GameTap... the servers and staff will likely receive funding from GameTap's portion of Turner's massive budget, and the Live client will be accessible through GT in much the same way an other game provided by the service would be... but the Uru client available through GT would probably not differ from the standalone client beyond being dependent on a GT subscription/account for play.

Quote:

The silence out of Spokane on this issue is deafening.

Well, this "separate server" issue was just brought up in this thread for the first time yesterday.

That's not enough time for someone at Cyan to even SEE the thread since yesterday was Sunday. Wait a week and then maybe "deafening silence" would be an apt description.

It's never even been suggested by Cyan that there would be segregated servers/shards based on where the players live. We didn't have it for the original Uru Live; we've not had it for Until Uru. It would be more hassle to set up that it would be worth... and I can't think of any reason why it would be "worth" it.

Quote:

...they have made no public announcement regarding the international issue beyond their FAQ, a few posts, and Town Hall Meetings...

That's not public enough for you? Seriously, I don't think this is worth worrying about.

I think it's great that people can post their questions on this forum. The only problem is that every other day it seems that someone comes up with a question that hasn't been specifically answered and then rampant fear and speculation take over.

I could post a question: "How do we know that Cyan won't disallow DSL customers access to Uru Live with connection rates slower than 512 kbps?"

That's the kind of question we technically already know the answer to... but it's the kind of question that would cause half of the good folks here on the forums to panic.

Cyan has been trying very hard to communicate their intentions and what they know to the fans. I think we should take their word for it.