Blocked from NCsoft store, blocked from promotion

Greetings everyone,

Quite a few people are unable to access the store section of NCsoft's site:



Anyone else not being able to get the free pane without a proxy?

UPDATE

Identified places with the same problem:
- China
- Hong Kong
- Japan
- Thailand

Other indicated locations:
As a Network Admin, it's a bit odd for me to be telling people to use a proxy in order to bypass this problem. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any other way at the moment.

Guild Wars is a very open game where players from different regions of the world are able to interact freely. I am personally very happy for that. It's a major reason why I continue to play and having fun with this game. I would certainly continue to do so with Guild Wars 2.

The problem is that NCsoft, the publisher, does not seem to follow the same open philosophy, very advantageous as an extra source of revenue from satisfied customers.

I hope that NCsoft - with ArenaNet's assistance - is able to see the light of reason and lift this restriction.

In the meantime, ArenaNet could (or should) allow this free pane promotion to be acquired elsewhere.

Original post:

I and my wife have been playing Guild Wars from China for the past 3 years. For a long time now, I've noticed that the NCsoft store blocks users from China to buy anything from there.

I wasn't too concerned about it since we could always purchase stuff from the In-Game store and nowadays even from Steam.

This problem is now hard to avoid since we are now unable to access the "Free Xunlai Storage Pane—Limited Time Offer", being only possible to get it from that store.

I think it's about time for that block to be lifted. Gold sellers and whatnot can always get what they want from elsewhere and this block only hurts legitimate customers. I can now buy from Steam a great number of NCsoft products but still not able to buy them from NCsoft's main digital distribution store.

If in the meantime the NCsoft block is lifted, that would be great.

You can use Tor http://www.torproject.org/ and Privoxy http://www.privoxy.org/ to anonimize your IP, so that NCSoft thinks you are connecting from a different location. I have been blocked too since December of 2008. Using this has allowed me to get past their block, although it is slow. If you use Firefox, FoxyProxy helps a lot since you can set the proxy to only be used my NCSoft's web sites.

Setting up Tor+Privoxy is pretty straight forward, just be sure to put " forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 . " in the Privoxy config, else it will not use Tor (and don't forget the "." after 9050).

Or they could just use a website and forgo anything technical...

www.hidemyass.com

And if that one doesn't work for you, there's a huge list of others on there that might.

Or they could email support and find out if there's another way...

I appreciate the tips guys.

But my point has to do with just that. Between legitimate customers that just want to play, and gold sellers, which would have less trouble to go around NCsoft's blockade? Which one would be more annoyed because of it? Who is NCsoft really hurting with their policy?

What's the point for that block when there's now a worldwide distribution of NCsoft games on Steam?

Yes, I could use a proxy server and the problem would be solved. But I choose not to because I cannot accept the policy of publishers that choose to punish legitimate customers, wherever they are, and do not provide for alternatives.

EDIT: I have already queried support on this problem. Though I think that this promo issue fleshed out a wider problem with the NCsoft store that needs to be addressed. Lifting the block altogether would be advantageous for both the company and the potential customers out there in similar circumstances. I think NCsoft to be a good company but with a tarnishing circumstance that needs to be lifted. ArenaNet, unfortunately, got in the middle of a "party pooper" policy...

I usually hate the trend companies follow when it comes to marketing in different regions. Why we can't all have access to the same items when it's the same @$@$%#@ game is beyond me, but you have a right to do whatever it takes to get around those restrictions.

I tried that in December-January, all I got was copy-paste responses on how to connect to their game client...

Another related problem for a lot of people in my guild is that they forgot the NCSoft account name...

Even though it is technically their fault for not remembering I'm sure most people that only wanted GW didn't think that there would be anything important to justify remembering the account, considering that the NCSoft account has some annoying password requirements that force people to deviate from their usual one.

Perhaps Anet could make the free storage promo available in the In-Game Store as well?

Unfortunately the NCSoft store isn't for all Guild Wars players...

So I just went ahead and used a proxy server to get the free storage for me and my wife. I cannot stress enough how pointless and penalizing the restriction to the NCsoft store is.

Hopefully NCsoft will NOT continue with a policy that punishes legitimate customers, wherever they are,.

What proxy did you use?
I use proxies for many things but it just doesn't seem to work for me on this one.

I'm also hesitant to use a proxy since I know that they can record everything and have access to my account.

Its probably a restriction placed by China's communist government, not NCsoft

boo communism

Sigh... That is a wrong assumption. If it would be because of that, I would be unable to get in to NCsoft's website at all. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GREAT FIREWALL OF CHINA.

I log mostly to American districts to play GW and have an average ping of 200ms (logging to Europe is overall slower for everything, unfortunately). On a side note, I'm really grateful for ArenaNet to allow players to go to any districts!

I purchase games mostly from Impulse and download them at an average speed of 900kb/s.

Connectivity and speed to unblocked places isn't much of a problem around here, with my 5mb/s connection. The sites that actually get blocked are for political reasons, and THAT can be annoying sometimes (proxy is good); otherwise, they DON'T CARE about online computer games or sites selling computer games.

On the other hand, NCsoft seems to take extra care from "red flagged" areas of the world. THAT is my assumption, unless someone who knows what they're talking about tells me otherwise... In more than one occasion I had to ask support to either unblock my account or allow my credit card to be used (my account even got terminated in '08). Fortunately, support has been working well in solving all our immediate problems with GW so far.

I asked NCsoft, via support, for them to finally lift the regional restrictions. It doesn't make much sense since Steam has their games available worldwide. Every other major publisher with their own digital stores have worldwide capability, except for NCsoft. Let's see what their final answer will be...

I can also confirm this. And I'm in Thailand. Viewing NCSoft store - GW section without using any proxies gives me links to various online retailers. No storage sale, no nothing from NCSoft.

When using proxies, I can see various products in GW section of the store. I did get my free storage this way. But seriously, this is RETARDED.

I'm a network admin. I'm able to use a different number of solutions depending on the occasion. I apologize for not providing full disclosure but any number of proxy solutions, including the options mentioned at the start of this thread would do the trick.

Well, I and others have done this already. I wouldn't be too worried. You're not actually purchasing anything for there, it's a "free" promotion after all.

I also think that Anet will soon be providing other solutions since there's a LOT of people not being able to get it for other reasons.

QFT. With the regional restrictions to the store, I couldn't agree more!

This is what I sent to support (modified):

I live in Hong Kong, this might be why i can't get my storage...

If I may be so bold, for everyone ALSO with restricted access to the NCsoft store, why not send a ticket to support as well?

It might do the trick with more people complaining about it, since this is not directly related with ArenaNet, and even if you already used a proxy or will do so...

http://help.ncsoft.com/ (click on "Ask a question")

This is truly retarded.. I live in Japan, and this was my problem, I kept telling myself that they won't go that far as to block a country of their potential buyers, so I kept trying until 3 days kept hoping that that page as shown in the guildwars.com website will be shown to me as well.

no avail still, so I used my relation from another non blocked country to unlocked it for me. Now, I want to buy the makeover pack, but I don't want to input my freaking CC info in the GW program (God, how unsafe is that?). I want to use thepaypal. I mean I am a Mac user (don't start ) and my windows is as vulnerable as crap, because I installed just for Guild Wars, so it's only Firewall that active.. -_-

So, now I want to get the makeover upgrade, what should I do? tell my friend my paypal info? Hell, no.. -_-;

/sigh

A wide problem with Asian countries, eh? I wonder if South Korea is also unable to access the store.

Let me see... EA and Atari (the publishers on the top of my head) allow worldwide access to customers. They sell mostly single-player games with DRM because of piracy concerns.

NCsoft sells ONLY MMO's, that can be played from anywhere, with no need for copy protection... and they have regional restrictions?

Yep, truly retarded.

GW players from outside the privileged countries are left with no choice than to resort to the same tools as hackers and gold sellers. What a wonderful promotion this is...