u/Few-Hurry-5210

Had a terrible day so I'm going think about something else and write a Q&A about something I see floating around sometimes and have wanted to talk about.

If you care about the SC2 CN server, it's good info. If not, meh. This is for all five of you out there who care about this!

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Q: Is MMR scaling different?
A: GM is not as good as global, but casual player skill floor is much higher. I'm M3 on NA, D1 on EU, D3 on CN. when I was D2 on NA, I was P2 on CN. It kind of felt ridiculous, you'll see people in Platinum with 300apm and they know what they're doing.

Q: Is meta different?
A: It was before the patch, can't say now since the patch is so new. It's usually very aggressive play with non-standard build orders and I see it staying that way when the meta settles. Sometimes they piss me the hell off lmao I've lost the dumbest shit, Alt+F4 and make a sandwich. Also, you don't see many reapers for some reason. If you do, it's four of them.

Q: Is the community different?
A: Less activity since the patch, you can feel the drop in chat activity. General chats were usually pretty active but also have soliciting spam. I hope this changes. People are overall very friendly! I haven't been bad mannered, made some cool people. Smurfing is less common but still a thing. Not as many mirror leavers.

Q: How many people play?
A: SCBOY forum estimates based on a lot of deep insight into the Chinese server about 60,000 daily ladder games as of a month before the patch.

Q: How do you play if you're not Chinese?
A: If you can't speak Chinese, you shouldn't. They only speak Chinese, and there's a chance one day whole NetEase account will get nuked. If you do speak Chinese, you can navigate the complicated systems to get an account. I got on through a friend, my country has payment issues but most countries there's ways to get money over there.

Q: Is the game any different?
A: Violence toggle in settings isn't there, all blood gore etc removed, game is only in Chinese. When you first download it, there's a chance it will be in English and say that the server doesn't support your regional settings, forcing you to select a new language from the drop down list at the in-game login but it's only Chinese lmao.. it closes and downloads, then you re-open it. Doesn't always work the first time.

Q: Great Firewall ping?
A: There are services that have servers to China which get the game from being unplayable to completely fine depending on the country you live in. The servers are in Hangzhou, I get better ping to that than Korea with a VPN but it's still about 180. Good enough for me. GearUP VPN works really well with SC2, I didn't notice a difference with non-CN games, to NA or EU it actually worsened my latency. Not a shill, it's just what I use and it works for me. I don't know if there's other VPN services to China specifically for video games but there probably are so if you know any please do mention!

Q: How do I know if I need a VPN?
A: If it's a laggy mess that's all, you don't need one to sign in and play.

Q: Does the medivac still say hallelujah?
A: Yes!

Q: What are the advantages?
A: Absolutely none, if you speak Chinese or are learning Chinese it's cool. But you need to speak Chinese. Don't go in there if you can't speak Chinese. If you go there and clearly aren't Chinese there is a chance you will get the whole NetEase account banned. There's literally no other use, I use it to practice Chinese and play customs with my friends who moved back to China.

So yeah, fun place I suppose

o2jam was the shit

Hi, I'm a 27 year old woman. I've got a lot of Chinese friends online old and new and have lived in a Chinatown for a decade. Most of my Chinese experience comes from long-term gaming friends and my local neighborhood's language barrier, osmosis basically. They really REALLY want me to do this and I'm wondering what people here would think.

The people here are hopefully a bit of everything, while the people I know are either Chinese and stuck in America off the books or Chinese and stuck in China. My friends work in factories for tech and stuff, some of them live around Shenzhen and I'd love to go there. They would let me stay with them and work with them.

China is cool, I could see myself doing something there but I'm not sure. I don't have employers to back me up but I have friends who would love to get me there. They've been teaching me to motivate me to go over there and try life again. I went through years of a deep depression and did nothing with myself. I was a good student with good grades, but dropped out and got a high school equivalency at 16 instead. Some might know that as a GED.

Is it realistic for a foreigner who is very average to do something any average Chinese person would do if they can socially integrate with regular everyday people? I really want to make the change.

I am from the US, but I live in the projects. I lost my health insurance, I can't get a job, NYC isn't as competitive as China yet I can't get a call back. I applied to community colleges and despite good assessment scores, was turned down. Even when I got near perfect scores, I was turned down. I guess they had to be perfect. I thought anyone could go to community college... I don't want to sound like the problem is my country because I don't know if it is, I only know I've been very depressed. My friends have always worked hard and put a special value in it that made me feel good to be around.

I'm not sure if I'd have go to college in China, I know that's very competitive. The friends I meet in person are often rich with high hopes in life, but the ones I meet online say it isn't easy and many have given up. Wake up, computer, bed. When I started learning Korean about ten years ago I noticed younger Koreans doing this as well.

My Chinese is decent, but I don't want to go there until I can confidently write everything in daily conversation fluently without hesitation. I want to finish HSK as well, I want to learn what anyone in China would learn in school.

HSK, friends, a job, but I have zero reasons on paper to be allowed there. I am also broke, if I go there that's it. I know I can't work at that place forever, I'd have to keep going from there. Cashier, college, data entry, enterprise, screw #35, I really don't know. I would LOVE to do it, but would China even let me in if I'm... a loser right now?

Even if the Chinese government would laugh in my face and tell me to leave, I will keep studying. I will still achieve native fluency and keep all my Chinese friends.

Thank you for reading, sorry it's a lot.

Studying hard, Terran main, and I feel the changes in gameplay of course but I really feel like I am not good enough for it to matter yet.

When am I worthy of it? All I can say is Terran changes felt like they went "oh right terran"

Hi, I'm mabi and I'm trying to rejoin DPJam. I left a lot over the years from health problems but I would like to rejoin. Everyone that's in there has friend requests disabled or haven't accepted them in weeks. Any help appreciated.

DP will know who I am, as will most everyone else.

Back in the glory days of this game, we were known for our fearsome whining capabilities! Removing observers solves nothing, you have to remove Protoss entirely. Where are your balls, fellow Terrans? Demand better, demand we remove both other races entirely and package them into their own separate expansion!

Clearly we had the most well thought out and financially responsible ideas that Blizzard would be quick to take up, if only we had the numbers? Where my fellow Terrans at?

Did we forget SoLiDSnAkE? Our lord and savior? AviIo was a false prophet, he knew nothing of our Terran struggles. Cast into the void as any other failure of this game has. While you focus on the likes of Hup's ideas, Artosis' empty complaints and ProTech abusing 2v2 queue by firewalling servers, you have been misguided like a moth to the flame of a Hellion.

Bring it back! RISE UP!

It's not about the balance, I haven't hit GM consistently enough to walk around like I know how to balance the game. My problem with the patch is that it's just... bad. It's not fun. It feels poorly thought out. I would genuinely like to know what their logic is. I don't feel like asking for one single response from Blizzard about their logic behind this is asking for much.

I get that we're on the back burner, but could the fourth most valued company by market cap in the entire history of humanity please give us just one single post explaining these changes?

It's not fun to play! I was so happy to see active changes, but this I am not happy with. I would have loved to see this stay on the PTR. Why live?