Concept art for Anima’s, the cute companions you unlock a short while into the game.
In March 2010 I noted that I would be starting my journey in Prius Online, playing on the TW server with a guild known as Fairy Tail (CLICK HERE). Sadly, I got over trying to manually translate key words from Chinese –> English, so eventually I gave up on that, however it was then announced that GPotato would be releasing an English version early in 2011.
Yippppeeee! I thought, immediately signing up for the facebook group, and getting an exclusive first 10,000 members key (Okay…. maybe not so exclusive), and getting into the spirit of getting to enjoy the game in English, possibly with some of the people from Fairy Tail if I could get back into contact with them.
Alas, this doesn’t seem possible as there has been a lot of word about IP Bans and a current list of supported countries is as follows:
Hey guys!
I’m happy to announce that we were able to significantly expand our territory coverage! Prius Online will now be open to players from North America, Central America, Europe, Africa and some Asian countries.Do not panic if your country is not covered by gPotato, it only means that the game has already been released or it will soon be released by a local publisher.
Territory that will be covered by us:
North America (all countries)
Central America (all countries)
Europe (all countries)
Africa (all countries)
Asia:
– Afghanistan
-Armenia
-Azerbaijan
-Bahrain
-Bangladesh
-Cyprus
-India
-Iran
-Iraq
-Israel
-Jordan
-Kazakhstan
-Kuwait
-Kyrgyzstan
-Lebanon
-Oman
-Pakistan
-Qatar
-Saudi Arabia
-Sri Lanka
-Syria
-Tajikistan
-Turkey
-Turkmenistan
-United Arab Emirates
-Uzbekistan
-Yemen
Now before going on, I would like to humbly apologize to a company if they are releasing an english version of the game catering towards Australian Users…… okay now to continue. As you can see, Australia is not on GPotato’s “supported” list and seemingly will be IP Locked out of the game.
They claim that this is most probably due to us having another publisher that has got the rights to this game….. yea, there is a SEA version of the game….. IN CHINESE! Sadly, most of us Australians have English as our first language and due to the decline in LOTE teachings, many will not do a second language for more then a couple of years at school (I was the last in the last Japanese cohort before they booted Japanese out of my school as a subject….), therefore it makes the Chinese server completely useless to us and making us unable to contact our friends overseas.
Now, I am not sure if GPotato is guilty for enforcing this IP Ban, that is not a topic I wish to go into, and I have my doubts that any company would willingly close their game to certain countries unless there is a sufficient need to due to many competing versions of the same game (Aka. Dragonica). However in the end, an IP Ban isn’t really going to make much difference in user numbers, infact, it is more likely you will have more users in total….. especially in those from your other games (Eg. FlyFF) who will move over with their friends from that game….. If someone doesn’t want to go onto their countries server, it is not like they will still use it, instead they will just not play the game altogether….
and as a gamer…. all I can say is…. that would be sad.
Anyway, I don’t go blaming GPotato or anyone or company involved since I do not know the whole story, however I would like to personally ask for considerations for countries such as mine which don’t have any distributor, since we all know how our local version of Ragnarok Online went……..
If anyone is aware of a local distributor of this game, please comment here and I will rectify my post. However, I still intend on doing everything in my power to play this rather interesting looking game!
Link of Interest: http://prius-forum.gpotato.com/
Spot on. Found this while reading the whole post about IP blocks, since as a South American player I’m in the same position as you. =__=
It annoys me that this is becoming a trend already. It wouldn’t bother me that much if the blocks made more sense, but blocking parts of the world that obviously will NEVER get the game just seems unfair. It’s like they didn’t even do the research. How can a whole continent being forbidden to play be better for business?
I really hope they lift the block for us. Best of luck for Australia, since it’s more plausible that you people get it.
I feel your pain, too. I’m from Argentina so I can’t play gPotato version of Prius. I’m probably never going to be able to play it unless I start learning korean since, let’s be honest, what are the chances someone makes a server just for South America? =(
I hope you have more luck in Australia.
Gpotato is also involved in this since its also them that are still sending Australians the invite to play the Open beta of Prius Online. Nothing in the email about bans, etc just an invite and a link to go download the game, which is what i did for 4 hours. at 150kbs a sec download for a 2.66gb file. I spent the time updating , then logged in to play the game, keyed in login detaisl to find it didnt work, so went to gpotato thinking it was a password problem, reset my password and tried again, still nothing, so i went to forums and found severals posts with GMS telling people to leave replys to a particular forums. So i went to it and sure enough it was IP Bans. Read throught he the whole forum posts in it. People from all over complaining. I even arrange to send a bill to gpotato for wasting my time inviting me to a game that i cant even play in australia becuase of the developers stupid IP bans. They claim as u have have shown above
****
Do not panic if your country is not covered by gPotato, it only means that the game has already been released or it will soon be released by a local publisher.****
Well all know australia has no chance of a local publisher to release prius online in our part of the world. Personally speaking i think the whole thing is racial, cutting off even people in the states based on what IP address they are trying to play the game from.
Whilst I do try and remain impartial to everything I write, this is one where I definately have to agree with you. I was convinced it was just the normal “Tell them the region restrictions and everything will be okay”, especially considering it wasn’t IP Banned for the Closed Beta, which is even more torturous.
The license for the SEA region, which includes Australia I believe is still held by a company, however this company in particular seemed to have suddenly stopped releasing games in English and focused on the Chinese-speaking market….. which is fine for some regions but I mean…. in Australia, Chinese is only offered as an elective in some schools, let alone spoken by a majority of the population.
I suppose in the end, we don’t know what the circumstances for the IP Ban, after all usually companies just leave it open, and in some cases give a warning and all that…. but I dont see why Australia wouldn’t be okay at the very least.
It is disappointing to say the least 🙁