The weird in-game Input Method Editor

[Valerria]

Now that the game has opened in Taiwan and Hong Kong, bilingual players probably would like the option to converse in Chinese. The good thing is there already is a Chinese IME in-game, called up by CTRL+SPACE (this may depend on your OS IME settings too), the bad thing is you can only use a subset of the characters. I'm not sure what the problem is but the game will highlight characters you can't send and tell you so. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the usable and unusable characters, it's not like a word filter. My guess is that it's an encoding problem, i.e. some might be Unicode but some are not.

Also, you used to be able to paste in Japanese into the game, and now it'll say you can't send out the words. Strange things.

[DrTranIsMyHero]

Are you playing in the international districts?

Perhaps some players machines do not have the proper language settings to display the text you might send them, and so the game is preventing runtime errors on their behalf?

[zweistein]

Are you playing in the international districts?

Perhaps some players machines do not have the proper language settings to display the text you might send them, and so the game is preventing runtime errors on their behalf?

You can see non-ascii text in international districts commonly (japanese/korean names and guild tags ..., even some text in chat)

Some update removed ability to type non-ascii in Eu (form my experience) and possibly Am vesrions/accounts ...

Why, is question - i am no longer able to comunicate with people from my country in native language with all those fancy ěščřžýáíé letters, nor am i able to talk to koreans with help of google translator ("use trade window dude" ...)...

[Chthon]

There's another thread on this somewhere.

As Gaile sort of explained:

GW operates under different billing schemes according to what a-net thought would be best recieved in local markets. While GW is "pay once & play for free in the Europe and the US," it's "pay as you go" in some Asian countries.

It would be unfair for people in these countries with friends in the Europe or the US to import a European or US client and then change to the local servers while everyone else in the country has to pay as they go.

I think she was implying that:

To prevent this, the European and US clients are blocked from posting messages in those character sets. (So, for instance, if you were to migrate a US account to the Japanese servers, you couldn't talk with anyone.)

Most bilingual fans seem to positively hate this restriction. So I'm guessing they'll remove t as soon as they come up with another way to prevent unfair account migration.

[fefe]

Now that the game has opened in Taiwan and Hong Kong, bilingual players probably would like the option to converse in Chinese. The good thing is there already is a Chinese IME in-game, called up by CTRL+SPACE (this may depend on your OS IME settings too), the bad thing is you can only use a subset of the characters. I'm not sure what the problem is but the game will highlight characters you can't send and tell you so. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the usable and unusable characters, it's not like a word filter. My guess is that it's an encoding problem, i.e. some might be Unicode but some are not.

Also, you used to be able to paste in Japanese into the game, and now it'll say you can't send out the words. Strange things.

There's actually a Japanese IME in the game, too. Or more appropriately, it uses the Windows IME that you've got installed... But this is most annoying...



Of course, it highlights all of the hiragana (did katakana as well), but lets me type in the kanji. Didn't used to. :(

[calderstrake]

There's actually a Japanese IME in the game, too. Or more appropriately, it uses the Windows IME that you've got installed... But this is most annoying...

Of course, it highlights all of the hiragana (did katakana as well), but lets me type in the kanji. Didn't used to. :(

You are right, i didn't used to highlight the kana, but then again, you couldn't type in kanji either. I don't want to beat the dead horse that is called ANet Japan, but until they fix the two issues: a) input editor for non-jp clients and b) joining the Japan world then it will continue to be more than just a sore subject for some of us.

[Gaile]

There is no "Anet Japan." ArenaNet is the development studio, with offices only in Bellevue, Washington, USA. There is a branch of our publisher called NC Japan, and they handle distribution in Japan. They are, as far as I understand it, still considering the matter of language and server moves.

As I have said elsewhere, a move to the Japanese server will be offered, which were you to know the business considerations involved in this would help you to understand that the plan to make this offer is really quite extraordinary. The addition of Kanji or other characters sets is a different matter, and one that we -- ArenaNet and NC Japan -- are well aware is very critical to many of you. I hope that we will all soon hear from NC Japan with a positive response on that issue as well.

I wasn't aware of the issue with Chinese characters, or not to the specifics given here. Thanks for the details -- I will pursue this, as well!

[calderstrake]

There is no "Anet Japan." ArenaNet is the development studio, with offices only in Bellevue, Washington, USA. There is a branch of our publisher called NC Japan, and they handle distribution in Japan. They are, as far as I understand it, still considering the matter of language and server moves.

Gaile, thanks for clearing this up. I think I actually knew the difference and made a mistake.

Is there a way to make the legal stipulations public so the rest of us can better understand the issue? I know that FFXII and other games here in Japan don't have any issues with language input OR server moves. In other words, GW Japan is not pay-to-play using game cards, it uses a one-time buy box copy just like the EU/NA. I guess it is just interesting because the laws here in Japan aren't that different from EU/NA for other things, so it seems weird that the gaming industry would be so different. Maybe its a customs issue? any light you can shed will be greatly appreciated.