Playing from Japan?

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Forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this. not sure if it will even get much traction or response.

Anyways I was curious if anyone had info. or experience playing from Japan. I have been living here for 3 years now. I want to come back to the game to give classic a try. I miss PvPing, old BGs, etc.

I played BFA for a while after skipping most of WoD and all of Legion. But I only made to max level before realizing it just wasn’t for me. I was playing on a US server and the ping was okay for questing, but I know it wouldn’t cut it for PvP.

I debated on playing Oceanic to avoid the language barrier. When I run a pingtest there it runs 140-200ms. Which isn’t horrible, but still worries me a bit.

Anyways I just wanted to pick some other folks’ brains if I could.

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I knew of a few people that played on the NA servers from Japan, ping times wasn’t all that great, but it was playable.

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As is my understandings, ping is more or less the same from Japan to US realms and Japan to Oceanic realms - I believe it tends to be a bit better for Oceanic realms, though. The fact our (I’m Oceanic) timezones are similar to yours tend to win out in the end.

You should know however though that when PvPing, unless it’s rated and specifically against other Oceanic teams (or in our prime time), you risk being placed on a US realm first. This means you will likely get the same type of latency you received while questing that you originally thought wouldn’t be viable for PvP.

I suggest reaching out if possible maybe to the Oceanic WoW Facebook group, they might have other players from Japan who can give you the run down on how this would work for you. =)

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Hmm What do you mean by being placed in a US real? Like even if I quest on an Oceanic server, if I Queue up for let’s say AB, that will put me into x-realm in the US? Sorry if I am misunderstanding.

Also I will check out the FB Group. Thanks.

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Yes, so for example if you were to make a character on my realm (Nagrand), you could quest on Oceanic realms no issue. However, the moment you used the group finder tool you risk being placed in a group that could be hosted from a US realm. So if you join a dungeon or a battleground group where the leader is from a US realm, you will play that dungeon or game on a US server even though you’re ‘naturally’ from an Oceanic server. For dungeons you can opt to be a leader which makes it less likely for you to end up on a US realm, not sure if the same option is there for PvP.

I know for things like rated arenas, the game will try it’s hardest to place you in games against other Oceanic teams but if the queue is taking too long, it’ll just place you against a US realmed team.

I hope this makes a bit more sense but if not, let me know and I’ll take another run at it. My brain’s a bit muddled with the flu at the moment!

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No that makes sense fine.

Well. We’ll see how things go in a couple of months haha

Thanks again.

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No problems, good luck on your travels! =D

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Make a starter character. Run around. Queue up for some BGs. You can get a feel relatively soon on how it would be.

You can play any toon, up to and including level 20 without an active sub. Use it to your advantage ge to test pings etc in a real world setting.

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Oh. That’s cool. I did not know that. I’ll give it a go.

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When I’m back home in JP for work, it’s not that big of a deal with playing on US servers. Like Mastodon says, give it a try to see if it’s okay for you.

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So I played around a bit on a few different servers using my regular US account. It allowed me to choose US, South America, and Oceanic servers.

The best pings and experiences were with the Oceanic servers. getting around 150-180 MS ping. (Us servers were 250-400) I didn’t do any BGs though.

I’ll do more testing when Classic goes live.

Thanks for the advice bit it does look like Oceanic will be the best way to go for me overall as of this time.

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