Server Selection - Perth Australia

Hi, for the last few months I’ve been having a great time on Overwatch, i attribute this to being placed on PSE2 Sydney Server.

Unfortunately today I started getting placed in the PSE1 Singapore Server.

Its my understanding is the server is chosen based on ping? And the only way to prioritise Sydney is to have a vpn?

I cant really have a VPN running on my computer, can you please allow server prioritisation in the game launcher? I know that you have done this for Diablo.

There are really challenging cultural differences between Sydney and Singapore. Language barrier is a big part of the issues I am experiencing, which impact competitive game play.

In qp, there is a general hyperfocus on mechanical skill at the detriment of team composition and teamwork. When I ask kindly for people to change characters I often get “its qp”. Most of the time (except late at night).

4 Likes

That’s a thing on every server. QP=everyone just plays what they want which is usually DPS

2 Likes

That’s a thing on every server

true, there will always be a degree of it in qp. But I trust if Blizzard ran the statistics PSE1 would have a higher dps team composition.

I’ve played both servers extensively, and there is a difference with how qp is treated.

This has been an issue for years. There are multiple threads about it. Blizzard never seems to address it.

I’ve tried submitting tickets about it. Support just tells us that posting forum threads is the only way to bring the issue to the attention of the development team, which is not an efficient way of communicating, as demonstrated by the fact that this issue has still not been resolved.

This is not an issue that requires community debate. It is essentially a bug.

Perth players should not have to use a VPN to play with other Australians. This is not contentious. It doesn’t depend on the language barrier or skill disparity or anything else. The game should let me play in my own region, but it does not do so because Singapore is about the same distance from Perth as Sydney, and therefore, the ping is about the same.

Please Blizzard, can I just play on PSE2 without paying for a VPN and suffering with higher ping?

6 Likes

Like every time this issue is raised, no response. Let’s see how far back this issue goes:

February 2017 (7 page thread)

April 2017 (have to read beyond the first few posts)

October 2017

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20759349224

February 2018

July 2018

August 2018

There’s plenty more. Why is there no way to report this issue properly via support instead of making forum threads, which go unnoticed?

3 Likes

If an issue that’s been in the game since 2017 can’t be fixed or even get a response, is there a way to delete my Blizzard account? Thanks in advance.

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this only started happening to me today and its already driving me up the damn wall. Like I would actually be able to SPEAK to people. Not even just damn strategy just in general like this is a multiplayer game right? or did i miss something.

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To those who have just started to have this issue, it’s happening because the Perth-Singapore cable has just recently been fixed after being being broken for a good long time.

While the cable was down, the ping to SG was over 250ms and so we were all shunted to the Sydney server. Now that the ping to the Overwatch SG servers is better than Sydney again by a couple of milliseconds, we’ll almost always be match-made into this server.

Until the cable breaks again or Blizzard addresses it we’re pretty much stuck on SG, despite the massive hit to general game quality for us.

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Before the Singaporean - Perth cable was fixed I’ve been playing 4-6 hours a day, now i can barely make it through one game.

after reading post after post requesting server selection, and Bliz being completely silent.

The undersea cable breaking again is more likely to Bliz fixing this.

GG… onto apex?

The issue is that we don’t get to choose our servers for some reason. We don’t need a perth server - that would further split up the OCE playerbase for no reason.

I really feel bad for you Aussies. but what are the ramifications of server selection? is there someway to game the SR system by being allowed to select which server?

there must be a downside to letting you select a server or they would have done it by now.

We don’t need a Perth Server

yes, we don’t need a Perth server, we just want to play with the other Australians.

what are the ramifications of server selection?

some of the posts linked about talk about people purposely choosing a server with high ping, and how this may be unfair on the other players.

Perth to Sydney ping ~72ms
Perth to Singapore ping ~69ms

Those 3ms is the difference between playing an awesome game (with our peers, chatting, laughing, having fun) and a mind numbing soulless experience

We don’t really want the ability to select a server, we just don’t want to be put on Singapore.

I wonder if there is a good reason why they don’t let you. Budget and time aside.

That is rather ridiculous. It should prioritize placing Perth players on Aussie servers. Good luck mate.

poke, today i was placed on the sydney server and it was glorious. I hope it stays like this…

Thank God for that.

It could be that they are merging OCE and SEA at last.

I mean, it will mean bad ping time for nzers but a higher server population.

Did you get games with a crazy Mei called robotwizard?

Because I got a lot of games with a hiddensquid and they were awesome on the Sydney servers today.

Well balanced and a lot of fun.

not too sure about a robot wizard.

are the mods going to respond? im back on pse1 today :frowning:

this afternoon i got placed onto sydney, funny story. I realised I was on sydney after a bastion kindly asked for a shield tank. such community, such respect for your fellow players.