Capcom’s Ryozo Tsujimoto, the producer for the Monster Hunter series, has revealed that the online servers for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate will be region locked. This means that North American players will not be able to play online with European players, and neither group will even be allowed to contemplate playing with Japanese gamers.
Tsujimoto revealed the extremely disappointing news to Gamereactor, saying (via bad Google translation):
“In principle, the online game in Europe is only among Europeans. Capcom made it clear then that the fighters are: Europeans with Europeans, Americans with Americans, Japanese with Japanese”
Basically, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate will be region locked because of reasons and because Capcom said so.
Yuri Araujo, Capcom U.S.A. associate online/community specialist, later confirmed the server split on the Capcom Unity forums, saying:
“Hi all,
I’m not thrilled with the servers being split either… I am definitely aware of the demand and feedback, not only in this thread, but also from threads before finding out these bad news; so be sure that I will pass it along.
There is no guarantee this will change though. =/”
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate runs on Nintendo’s servers, which actually makes this news even more confusing because 3DS games that have online play over those same servers do allow for cross-region multiplayer. Whatever the reason for the server split, it does appear that this is a decision that was made by someone and not a result of technical limitations.
We will update this post with additional information if and when it becomes available.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate launches on March 19, 2013 in North America for the Wii U and 3DS, and on March 22nd across Europe. The game will be available for purchase on launch day as both a boxed retail product and as a digital download on both systems. A Wii U/3DS demo of Ultimate will be available via the Nintendo eShop on February 21st.