Emerging markets get half price StarCraft II

[Tinman]

Great initiative

They're not forcing anyone to purchase this version, and are instead providing choice to consumers. Everyone wins.

Precisely. Basically, they are saying that it is going to cost you extra if you want to play on their servers, with Battle.net etc, for longer than six months, which is fair IMO. It's great that they are offering people who don't want to play on their servers (past six months) the option to buy the cheaper version.

How is this a bad thing?

Unless you are arguing that their starting price of R450 is unfair, which is an entirely different conversation.

[Dre]

Then in a year from now they start charging monthly regardless of what version you bought at the time. It could be a possibility...I'm in beta too, it's crap playing with this lag, you can not be competitive. I wish Blizzard will come to South Africa all ready.

[RoosTa]

Then in a year from now they start charging monthly regardless of what version you bought at the time. It could be a possibility...I'm in beta too, it's crap playing with this lag, you can not be competitive. I wish Blizzard will come to South Africa all ready.

AFAIK, its lagging because you are playing against someone half way across the globe, but since its using P2P means that if someone is on your LAN playing against you, you would get LAN latencies. So therefor there would be very little interest in supporting a server here, if all they need to do is match and group up the South Africans.

Just like MW2

[iOverflow]

This is a very good idea
+1 to blizzard for doing this

[Raven Gold]

Well aslong as this happens for all three installments. It's fantastic! And the subscription can be surcumvented by just buying the full version later, if you want it.