Servers Will Go Live Based On Local Time

According to Bahamut, the Traditional Chinese Client will be going online at GMT +8 – a full 15 12 hours before US servers do – assuming Bahamut’s information is not haughty.

A 12 hour difference is a fairly large margin, and it’s awesome that they’ll be playing the game nearly a full day before everybody else. However, it makes me wonder why they are not making it a flat global release. Prior to this, most were assuming that servers would pop online in tandem with the 12:01 AM PST countdown. This, of course, made sense. With a global release, everybody would be able to start playing the game at exactly the same time. This raises a few questions: Will other regions be able to start playing when their clocks strike 12:01AM as well? Will you be able to hop to other regions that have had their servers turned on to start playing before your region’s servers go live? Why don’t I live in China?

To some, this might look like an unfair advantage. Having a 12 hour head start is no pittance of time for those that are racing to 60. It would certainly make you hard-pressed to compete at all – perhaps this is why there is no feat of strength to have the first level 60 character. But I’m not entirely sure if any of it matters all that much. Thinking more on the matter, characters on other regions are non-transferable and items found cannot be sold on other region’s auction houses.

If all servers go live attached to their May 15th 12:01AM time, that means that the Diablo 3 Release Countdown site needs to get a lot more complex. And ours as well, it seems. How does the community view this new bit of information? Do you find yourself a peeved? Or are you cool with it and patient enough for your region? Or… don’t care?

Update: If there are any Chinese translators reading this, it would be appreciated if we could get a full non-google transcript. – Thanks Ganoidyn

Update 2: It would seem that all regions will go live at their respective times based on a supposed Blizzard quote taken from a blog. I can’t seem to find the actual source – since nobody actually has it, and all other blogs using this quote link back to the Diablo III Countdown Widget that says the following:

If anybody has the actual source to the blue quote, please post in comments.

Click past the fold to see the translation of Bahamut’s site, complements to Ganoidyn.

Headline: Diablo III Asian Edition Morning of May 15th (Taiwan time), Traditional Chinese client will have priority access

With the preorders for the Diablo III Collector’s Edition opening today, many gamers are watching the May 15th release date and impatiently wondering – when (what time) exactly can we start playing? In an interview with Blizzard, Bahamut confirms that the Traditional Chinese physical copy version of the game, as well as the digital version, will have access to the servers on 0001h Taiwan time. Thus we will lead the US version to be the first to experience the joy of Diablo III! (don’t hate me bro I’m just the translator @_@)

According to Blizzard, those that purchase physical copy of the Traditional Chinese version, as well as the digital copy, may select the Asian servers and log in from 0001 on May 15th, local time (in Taiwan) and begin to play.

For those that purchase the Diablo III Collector’s Edition, however, after installing the default English version, if required they may choose to select Chinese in the “other language” clients available. In addition, they will have to wait until 3pm local time, when the US service opens, before they can log in and play.

The following table shows the different versions of DIII, for those interested:

The left-most column of the table, from top to bottom, reads:
Type
When You Can Buy
Where You Can Buy
Installation
Language
Server
Mac-Compatible
Price

The top row, from left to right and excluding the left-most which is “Type”, reads:
Traditional Chinese physical copy
Traditional Chinese digital copy
Digital copy (all languages)
Collector’s Edition (all languages)

The When You Can Buy row says that the Traditional Chinese physical and digital versions are available from pre-order/download. The all-language versions will only be available from 15th May.

The Where row just lists retailers (as expected, for the digital versions it’s a link to Taiwan’s Battle.net).

The biggest row – the Installation row – states that the all-language client will only be usable in Traditional Chinese on the Asian servers UNTIL 3pm Taiwan time. The Collector’s Edition will be completely unusable until 3pm Taiwan time.

Interestingly, the Traditional Chinese versions are NOT Mac-supported. According to the second-last box on both of the All Languages columns, only the English, French, and German clients are Mac-supported.

The Server row says the same thing across all versions: Free selection.

The Collector’s Edition is twice the price of the Traditional Chinese version. The Traditional Chinese physical and digital copies are identically priced – although no doubt retailers will be undercutting each other. The non-Collector’s Edition version with all languages is available at 4/3 the price of the Traditional Chinese version.