f13.net

How does a guy in Europe get onto a US server?  One of my UO Europa buddies might wanna come play with me.

You buy a US copy of the game, give him the code, and then pay for his account with a US credit card registered to a US mailing address.

Pretty much. Only, after you pay the first month, you can change to the Euro creditcard without any problems. Worked for me, and I've been playing on a US server as a Hungarian since closed beta.
Oh, and if you play on a west-coast server, he'd best prepare for constant 600+ ping, which definitely makes pvp, tanking / healing and melee (basically anything that's not ranged dps) "fun".


-- Z.

If memory serves me, all servers are in the same physical location, in California. 

I played for a year on the EU servers with a good group of people before I realized how much WoW revolved around end game raiding and switched to the US servers due to the time difference.  It may be different between the two, but I was able to pay for the first month of EU-WoW with my own card and US mailing address.

Or Australia/NZ.

We're part of the USA!  :wink:

Actually there's a set of east coast servers; they're in some server farm in Seattle [iirc]. My old server [Bleeding Hollow] was one; I distinctly remember running around with a 200ish ping that shot up to 450+ as soon as we transferred to a west coast one [Crushridge].


-- Z.

If it wasn't for term limits, you might be!  /rimshot

???
Seattle is on the West Coast. Unless you meant the eastern shore of the Pacific, in which case that would be accurate. I think. My head hurts now.

Yeah, I suck. :P The east coast servers aren't in Seattle, no idea wtf I was thinking there (in my defense, it was like 7am my time).. they're in a datacenter on the east coast. They used to not be managed by Blizzard directly either and would always come up after the west coast servers after patches (this was back in '05 before I transferred off, might've changed since then, but eh).


-- Z.

Way back at release I heard the East and Centra servers were in a server farm in Maryland while the west and mountain were in a farm somewhere on the coast. I think someone figured it out using traceroute. This is trivial to figure out if you have a linux box on your network. Just sniff the packets while you play and traceroute to the destination.

Apparently, the ToS have changed so that you are not allowed to access a US account from outside of the physical US region.

I imagine this is just an excuse to summarily ban anyone suspected of gold farming, but thought it worth mentioning.

Except for the times we're part of Europe.

And don't forget we were part of Asia, at least until Keating got the boot in 96.

Holy shit really?  I'm paranoid now as Bliz are ban happy fuckers.  :-(  Where did you read this?  Don't suppose they'll give you the option of transferring to Euro servers either.

Yes, they did that shortly after the expansion release. We bitched about it and Blizzard patched again the TOS to remove that part.

Sorry for the old rez. Roleplaying a Death Knight here. *nods*

So the only way for an EU player to play on an US server is to:

1) US player buys and registers the CD Key.
2) US player registers a new account under a US credit card.
3) US player gives that account info to EU friend.
4) After the first billing cycle the EU friend can change the account billing info to his EU-based credit card.

?

Well, honestly what should we do with you?  A few million english speaking whities smack dab in the southern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean?  Sorry, but you are stuck in a weird area of the globe, latency-wise.

I knew a Australian when I played Mech 2 way back when, his time zone was so far from ours, it was pretty much a 12 hour shift. Midnight for us, noon for him. Was always a little bizarre.

No.

Just buy an US cd-key, register, and you're free to pay with any international credit card from the moment of creation, from any country. No need to get anyone else involved.

At least it worked for me. South Amurrca.

As far as I'm aware, South America does not have a separate licensing requirement, unlike Europe, Korea, China or Singapore. So that would explain why you can play on the US servers with a US copy of the game. You're supposed to.