Alright, so I’m jumping onto this conversation without reading all replies.
As I and a bunch of other players pointed out, LUG did, or does (I quit all of their games definitively in 2012, so I wouldn’t know for sure) a pretty bad job, basically ignoring their customer base. Not only they exploit to the maximum their cash shops at every oportunity, they don’t show interest in solving problems with trainers/macros/automation programs, which means for you to be competitive in one of their servers, you need to be really patient, or use those tools too.
But the worst offender was server stability, which was also really bad. Especially with RO, with Aegis not being known as lightweight, I suspect they used weak machines to run it without proper maintence, and this led to servers getting really unstable. There’s a lot of debate about why the latency and stability was so crappy but since they never clarified what happened OR solved the problem (AFAIK), we just concluded they’re incompetent or not interested.
Now, to the other issue. I’m favorable to regional servers, but without implementing ip-block on the international server. The reasoning for that was apparently pointed out already, still, as a reminder I’ll say that:
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It allows people from various places around the world to befriend and play together.
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It serves as a safety option as if our local publisher does something really bad, we can change servers. This means that we’re “voting with out wallets”, as we won’t spend time or money with them anymore. Otherwise, a lot of people would just give up, or worse, start to develop the well-known pservers.
Concerning the “hue” mindset, people pointed some important facts too. First, generally speaking, this is a issue with younger players, usually on theirs 13~17 years, that don’t respect anyone. They don’t respect you, they don’t respect me, their parents or their teachers. It’s actually a social problem we’re facing and I won’t lie, it’s getting worse. But, there’s a catch, my friends: they don’t give a sh*t about ToS. For them, it’s a game that looks crappy, even tho they spend all their free time playing Minecraft, LoL, Dota2 and CSGO, which aren’t the best looking games by a long shot. This is where, today, the majority of the “hue” players are.
What we see here in this exact thread (and in others) are players who try (and mostly succeed) to comunicate in english, trying to be constructive and not exhibiting toxic tendencies. Now, of course, it doesn’t mean that every brazilian ToS player is gonna be a chill guy who is capable to blend with an international community. For starters, the language is a barrier, most people can’t understand or write coherent english, and there’s always a jerk, even if we as a international community try to police every one of these. Ideally, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with that, but since it generates backlash to our community as a whole, that’s our only option.
Summing up, local servers for those who want local servers, and international for those who can live in an international community. Going both ways is the safest option.