Local Servers Coming To World Of Warcraft

October 24, 2014

Blizzard announced during an event held in Sydney on Thursday night that it will be deploying Australian-based servers for its MMO World of Warcraft. From October 28, players currently on Oceanic realms will automatically be transferred from American-based servers to ones hosted locally, resulting in lower latency for Australian players,

These new servers will not have any impact on individual characters, gold and guilds, nor will they impact the ability for North American and Oceanic players to play with each other.

Players currently on North American realms will have their Character Transfer fees reimbursed by Blizzard if they transfer between October 29 and November 13.

This announcement comes just before the next World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, which is scheduled for release on November 13.

World of Warcraft was first released in 2004, however Australian players have had to play on American-based servers up to this point. Blizzard have previously attributed the lack of local servers to “the number one ISP in Australia” (i.e. Telstra) and the company’s requirement for any traffic routed outside of Australia to go through its fibre connection in San Diego.

More details about the new servers are available from Blizzard’s forums.