Conan Exiles Blocks Asian, Russian and South American IP For Official Servers
Funcom has begun blocking IPs of Conan Exiles players from Asia, Rusia and South America. Players from all three regions can no longer play on official servers.
According to Community Manager Jens Erik, the move was intended to separate the different play styles. The current combination has seen jarring play styles that negatively affect the experience for everyone.
Being in Asia myself, the news is particularly frustrating and seems like a low blow excuse to keep certain player bases happy.
Among the reasons mentioned were also language barriers and offline raiding. This is a poor attempt to sugar coat the issues because they should have expected this. Conan Exiles is after all, an open world survival game where anything goes.
Take Ark:Survival Evolved for example. The game has been incredibly successful even without IP bans. Language barriers exists, but that’s what guilds are for. If anything, that helps create cultures within the game, and isn’t that what the Conan world is all about? Different cultures exploring and possibly engaging in clan warfare.
Furthermore, offline raiding is unavoidable. You are always at risk when you play a persistent online world game so that should be celebrated, not avoided. If this is such an issue, then why make the game PVP centric?
I think Funcom dropped the ball on this one by alienating its audience reach by signalling that they are only catering to mainstream countries. However, they are trying to redeem themselves with a some good news for players in affected regions.
Funcom will be putting up servers in Asia, South America and Russia in the coming week. While this will no doubt make them seem responsible, it still leaves a sour taste. If I wanted to play on an official server with my American friends, I no longer can. Think about that, Funcom.
