About IP Banning Malaysian Players Enquiry

cybermagix

Thank you for reading this thread first and foremost.
I'm not too sure where this thread should actually belong to
So if the mods deem this thread inappropriate for this section
Please feel free to move this thread to other sections

To cut the long story short, My friends who had been playing PWI for quite some time migrated back to Malaysia where we as all know is banned from PWI.

What i would like to know is the logic behind such a ban for PW-MY(If i'm not mistaken) allows anybody from anywhere to play in their servers.
And truly, if PWI is to honour its namesake of being 'International" , It would be contradictory to IP ban certain countries. Furthermore, my friend was able to log in from KL(malaysia) for a few hours and we helped her complete her FB 19 before she was unceremoniously booted out from PWI. As we can see, its is not a problem in letting people from these banned countries to play.

So the question ultimately is why the need to IP ban?
I hope someone can clear this up.
I thank you for your time=)

P.S I do not know if this is an illegal request(mods feel free to censor this if need be) but is there any way to get past the IP block. Thank youb:pleased

deshin

I suspect the ban is to protect MY market share. This is most likely part of the license that MY has with PWE regarding future license. I am kinda surprised that something similar didn't happen to prevent US players from playing in the EU version but the agreement must be different.

How to get around it is the same as people get around the **** filters at work or the Chinese get past government censorship. Find a proxy server. You traffic then appears to come from that address rather than you real one.

There are many pay services that offer this but you run the slim risk that those too will be on the ban list. Our **** filter block know about most these sites but it depends if the game company agreement requires them to go that far.

If all else fails you get a friend in the US to setup a VPN. You log into his router and then go from there. It appears you are in his house. This is impossible to really detect or stop. VPN capable routers used to be very expensive now they are less than $100.

You will take a small performance hit but it should still work.

Twilyte - Heavens Tear

The conditions for the operating Pw-INT and PW-My are quite different.

PW-MY is operated through a hosting licence and run by a company that is not affiliated with the game developer in any other way. They simply are paying for the "right" to host their verison of PW. They can not affect code or changes to the client, and their staff has said this on many occassions.

PW-INT is run with the direct support of the developer and is not a sub-leased version. It is an offical "branch", so to speak, of the developement company, through partnership.

When PW-INT came out, they made it very clear that the version was open to all IPs that did not currently have their own version. This, if one would think about it for a second, makes good sense for existing versions. It means their local players would not leave in mass exodus to a new version, thus insuring some amount of continuity in their player base.

Of course PW-MY would wish to allow any and all IPs (other than the IPs they blocked from China which were associated with numerous Zombie Bot attacks). They have to continue to pay the developer for the right to host the game, so they need to maximize their market potential in order to maintain a helathy profit margin. Now if PW-MY could only support their version with competent staff and eliminate the coruption and hackers that run rampant in their version...

PW-INT did not block IPs just to be mean, or to pick one anyone, as some have claimed in the past. If anything, by them blocking IPs from countries that had versions already, they were being "nice" and helping those versions keep as many players as possible.

And just in case anyone decides to ask (again), PW-INT has stated that it has no plans to IP block Europe since their version was not in existence at the time of PW-INT's release.

Kimyrielle - Heavens Tear

Twilyte - Heavens Tear wrote: »

PW-INT did not block IPs just to be mean, or to pick one anyone, as some have claimed in the past. If anything, by them blocking IPs from countries that had versions already, they were being "nice" and helping those versions keep as many players as possible.

Maybe so, but I still hate the very idea of blocking people out of from online content based on the region they live in. For example, MY doesn't have a non-PK server, so people who aren't into PK are still screwed. And last but not least, the very idea of online gaming (at least to me) is to play with people who are NOT from your own country.

It's funny that companies are all for so called "free markets" as long as it serves their interests...

deshin

Kimyrielle - Heavens Tear wrote: »

It's funny that companies are all for so called "free markets" as long as it serves their interests...

As twilyte says it appears the US version is directly run by PWE. They sold MY the right to run the game as part of that right I suspect they agreed to not compete with them. MY has to make money so it is in their interest to be protected and it its in PWE interest to honor their agreement if they want to continue to license their product rather than run them all themselves.

This works the same way as McDonalds they sell a franchise and as part of that they agree to not sell more franchises in the same area and not to build a corporate store right next door. As a customer of McDonalds you can do little if you do not like your local store other than to go to burger king.

Kimyrielle - Heavens Tear

deshin wrote: »

As twilyte says it appears the US version is directly run by PWE. They sold MY the right to run the game as part of that right I suspect they agreed to not compete with them. MY has to make money so it is in their interest to be protected and it its in PWE interest to honor their agreement if they want to continue to license their product rather than run them all themselves.

I know that it's common business practices. What I am saying is that those need to be outlawed. Companies want US/EU employees to compete with Chinese employees ("We need to lower labor costs, or your plant will go to China, so no, you can't have a raise" - ever heard a line like that?), so it's about time they learn that the same free markets apply to them, too.

dvorak

Twilyte nails most of the points, spot on.

Kimyrielle - Heavens Tear

Dvorak wrote: »

Twilyte nails most of the points, spot on.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand fairly well that these were the exact reasons why this happened, too. It's just that I feel sorry for the Malaysians who would want to to be with their international friends here or even escape the mandatory PK on their own server. They are the ones who're getting shown the "We don't serve Malaysians here!" sign when they'd try to be on PWI, and I still think that's a very, very bad thing, whether or not it might have been perfectly sound to do from a short-term business view. Funnily enough we outlawed those signs in restaurants a few decades ago, so that's why I think we need new trade laws for the internet today - and those basically need to be "Nobody has the right to refuse service to anyone".

Call me naive, but my general view is: If you don't want the entire world to use your internet service, don't put it online. The mistake might be too late to correct now, but maybe for next time: How about not negotiating exclusive agreements with some local service provider with an interest to turn their region into a virtual prison to avoid any sort of competition?