Oceans Apart: Planetside 2 Region Locked?

This is big news for all SOE games, actually, including EverQuest II, DC Universe Online, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, and Free Realms. PCG points out that SOE are signing a European publishing deal with Germany company ProSiebenStat. According to SOE's proposals this could mean that SOE customers will no longer be able to play on both American and EU servers, and in fact existing European players are going to be asked to create an account with the new company to transfer characters and continue playing. Of course, people aren't too happy about that, what with them having relationships with real people outside international boundaries and so forth. The inevitable internet shouting resulted in this response from SOE, indicating that they are "listening". The upshot of the current proposal would be that Europeans would not be (easily) able to play Planetside 2 with American chums. The RPS Planetside 2 outfit would be divided! Those are tears running down my cheeks.