Woot! This is fantastic news. For those unaware, until now, US and European servers have been completely separate, using different clients. If you wanted to play on both you would need two accounts, and would need to pick expansions and bonuses up for them individually. This was annoying, as I had a European account, unsurprisingly, but most of my friends who play are in the US. I would have been willing to start a new character, but I wasn’t prepared to repurchase everything on top of that.
We’ll keep our individual servers, but we’ll now also be able to roll on the other side at no extra cost.
It’s not going to happen for a few months, but I’ll be looking forward to getting to say Superhello to my US Superfriends!
Here are the full details:
Global Server Access FAQ
1- When is Global Server Access going to be available?
Global Server Access will be available to all our active subscribers by the end of summer. We will have a more definite date for you at a later time so watch this space!
2-How will I be able to access the new server list? Will it have all of the North American and European servers?
All you need to do is launch your City of Heroes client via the NCsoft launcher, log in to your City of Heroes account and all 15 North American and European servers will be accessible on the Server selection screen. Read on if you are a European player.
3- What will happen if my European account name is the same as someone else’s in North America?
We wanted to keep this process as simple and manageable as possible to allow European and North American accounts to access all City of Heroes servers. All European accounts with a name conflicting with a North American account will be prepended with an “EUâ€. For instance, let’s take a hypothetical European account called “Cityofâ€. Pre-pended with “EU†would make it “EUCityofâ€. That is the only change to account names in that respect. We determined that this was the lowest number of users that would be affected by this account name change. North American accounts with conflicting names won’t be affected by this change.
4- So if I’m a European player with an account name conflicting with a North American account, what do I need to enter at login to get into the game?
All you need to remember is that, if you are a European player, you may be required to add “EU†(without he quotes) before your account name if your login fails the first time you try to access your account after Global Server Access has been implemented.
Don’t forget that you can check your City of Heroes account name by logging into your NCsoft Master account at https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-bin/accountManagement.pl. You will be able to find all your NCsoft games accounts on the account management page and will be able to verify the name of all your City of Heroes accounts if you have several of them.
5- How do I know that my account name is conflicting with another account?
We will be emailing all users who will be affected by this change at the email address registered on your NCsoft Master Account. However, emails sometimes don’t reach their destination so we recommend you keep in mind that you may need to “EU†before your account name if your game login fails. See 4- above.
6- Can previous bonus codes (Good vs Evil Edition for instance, or a costume code, etc) still be applied after the serverlist has been unified?
We have endeavored to have serial codes continue to work as they have before Global Server Access. However, it is possible that some codes may be affected as part of the transition. If a code fails to apply to your City of Heroes account, contact Customer Support (North American or (European) and they will be able look into it. Please note that codes will still not be interchangeable. For instance, a European code will not be usable on a North American account or vice versa.
7- What about global handle in game? Will those be affected by name collisions?
Yes indeed. All European players with a global chat handle name collision will have their global handle changed to the character they log in with. If the global handle still has a collision after the initial change, letters will continue to be dropped from the end of the name until no collision is present.
The European players that are affected by the chat handle collision will receive a global name change. This name change will only be offered to the players affected by the automatic name change.
Please note that character names will not be affected. We are merely unifying both server lists and as such, all characters will remain on their original server.
8- What are the advantages of a unified serverlist/Global Server Access?
The advantages are manifold and include the following:
• Access to 15 servers means more character slots if you have altitis.
• Access to the same Training room and the same Beta server so everybody gets the same treatment when it comes to trying out upcoming features or new builds.
• Better and easier interaction between our North American and European users not only on the City of Heroes forums but also the game servers.
• No need to update 2 different sets of clients now if you have a North American and a European account.