Albion Online Announces Dedicated Server in Asia
Albion Online has been in the online realm for quite some time now. Released in 2017, it’s one of the few MMOs that receive genuine and positive reviews from its players. Now, Albion Online has announced that it’s getting a new server. Albion East will serve as Asia Pacific’s official server, offering a fresh start separate from the West server.
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Asia Will Now Have A Better Gaming Experience for Albion Online
The move by the developers to add a dedicated server for Asia was made to create a better gaming experience for the players on the Global Main server. Players that reside far from these servers (located on the east coast of the USA) often experience high ping. With that in mind, Sandbox Interactive, the developer of the MMORPG, decided to have a new server in Singapore. Besides being beneficial to the players in Asia, OCE region peeps can also take advantage of this.
To ensure that things go as planned with the Asia server launch, Albion Online had a closed beta recently, which required you to purchase a founders pack to participate. There are different packages and benefits; here’s what they’re offering now.
The closed beta lasted from February 20 to March 12. It included a short Guild season where you could compete with other players and guilds for rewards. The rewards range from custom guild logos for the top five guilds to personal furniture items for having a high rank in PvE Fame. According to Sandbox Interactive, certain rewards will persist beyond the server resets.
Mixed Feelings
Usually, having more servers for an MMO is often seen as good. It opens up the game to other players who previously couldn’t play it because it was region locked or due to high ping. Albion Online is unique in the sense that it only has ONE server running across the world. Whether you’re playing the game from Timbuktu or Japan, everyone plays the game simultaneously. This is a crucial facet for Albion Online because all content is derived from its players sharing a server. Once you’re done with the tutorial, you don’t have to follow a quest—you can simply go out and interact with other players.
So far, Sandbox Interactive has done a remarkable join when blending three gameplay types: PvE, PvP, and crafting. All these game modes rely on players; PvE players farm mobs to sell items to crafters, crafters use these materials to make equipment, and PvP players buy this equipment for combat purposes. It’s a never-ending cycle that makes past content relevant while minimizing inflation.
While I’m happy that a large group of players in Asia will finally get a better gaming experience in their region, I can’t help but worry it’ll cause an imbalance on the global server. Because of the migration, the global server will lose a hefty chunk of its playerbase, creating huge implications for those that remain.
Fewer players mean that almost all the quality and quantity of content would suffer. There would be fewer enemies that would show up for territory fights in the black zone. As a result, PvP players might get bored, log in less, and ultimately move to another game altogether. Since they won’t be as many PvP instances anymore, fewer people would buy from PvE players and crafters.
Will the in-game economy crash? Will the game world look empty now? What will happen to the price of gold? All these questions will soon be answered once the Asia server goes live.
The Possibility of Having More Servers
Albion East will ultimately set the groundwork for what’s the come for the game. Should the addition of an Asia server become successful, it could very well lay the foundation for having multiple servers across different regions. European players tend to bear the most brunt when it comes to having less-than-ideal ping, regardless of whether they stay in the global server or not. Who knows? Sandbox Interactive might cook something up for the Europeans if their decision doesn’t lead to a flop.
Albion Online’s Asia server is set to launch on March 20, where it’ll see the introduction of time-gated events optimized for the dedicated region’s time zones (East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia).
