Tutorial: Buying / Setting up your Korean Starcraft 2 account
Setting up your Korean Starcraft 2 account
Tutorial by nirvAnA
20th Feb 2013 Update: Since the introduction of Global Play, the KR and SEA accounts serve as standalone WoL accounts too that can play on any region. They are available for just $39.90 AUD. Be sure to create a NEW account and apply the code to it.
(Video tutorial is longer then the text version below so only watch it if you hate reading. Thanks System for doing it!)
Buy a TW/KR account from our store rightHERE!!
(If you are looking for the SEA/NA version instead please go here.)
Sc2sea.com is the only English website that allows you to buy "Korean" Starcraft 2 accounts legally. To start playing on the Korean server you can simply buy Starcraft 2 from our shop now. These "Korean" accounts are actually Taiwanese accounts but because Taiwan accounts have access to the Korean servers, they are nearly identical to the Korean ones. Not only are they alot cheaper, the most important benefit is you are not required to enter a Korean social security number to activate your account (which is required by Korean law for all online games in Korea) which you would need if using a Korean account. Previously the only way to play on Korea was to obtain a Korean resident's identification number and use it, which is actually against the law. Once you have bought from our shop and received your code in your PM inbox, you can start playing on Korea legally in just two easy steps!
Please follow these instructions carefully to avoid disappointment.
Disclaimer: this is a guide I personally I created after going through the process myself, to help players get started playing on Korea as quickly as possible. As such, neither me or sc2sea.com will not be held liable for potential damages in any way, shape or form. This guide and the accompanying screen shots are not allowed to be replicated anywhere else without permission.
Step 1: Activate your Starcraft 2 TW/Korean license in less than 1 minute
Follow one of these this direct links that take you to the "Add a game/Activate your code" page on Blizzards Site. If you are an NA / EU user you can use the NA / EU Site to add the game, it doesn't matter which region site you go to as its all connected to the Blizzard global DB and they do the same thing.
It will prompt you to log in first. Your blizzard sc2 account works globally on all the region sites so just enter the userid/password you normally use to connect to battle.net. DO NOT create a new account as you will be asked for a Taiwan ID and that is not recommended. It is infinitely easier to just add your TW key to your existing account.
After logging it, it will take you to the "Activate code" page directly. All you need to do is enter the activation code given to you in your sc2sea inbox!!
They will prompt you to confirm and so click continue. Make sure the region shows Taiwan (Well of course it will show Taiwan!)
Success! You are now the proud owner of a Taiwan/KR account, and look you even have a free name change yay! Best of all you obtained it 100% legally, without fear of violating Blizzard's TOS. You can now download the appropriate installer for your operating system.
Aright so you have an account, what now? You have two options, download the official client on the page you are at now, or use a relocaliser.
The official client is 6GB and will take a few hours to download. However, with this method you won't have to worry about reinstall issues and corrupt versions that the relocalizer is notorious for, especially after patch changes. If you have the time and internet bandwidth I highly recommend this way of installing a new version of the TW Starcraft 2 client on your computer. I will only cover the official client install. Use of relocalizers falls into a "grey area" but I have provided some information to point you in the right direction if that is what you are after (or you lack in the internet bandwidth, have download issues, etc.) and it is covered at the bottom of this post.
Official Client Install:
Important: After patch 1.5 a few customers have mentioned Blizzard is directing them to download the KR client. This is WRONG. You need to download the Taiwan Client instead. Here are the official Blizzard links to download the client directly, you do not need to be logged in or buy the account yet and anyone can download it. Please use these links to ensure you download the right version.
After you save the region version you want, click Win or Mac. The file you download should end with zhTW.exe
Note that a clean install generally takes at least 1-2 hours to set up depending on your internet speed. The steps are self explanatory after being translated. Note: I've updated the key areas with screenshots for the new UI after patch 1.5 but some of them are with the old interface. However, they are more or less the same and are easy to follow.
This is the most important step of the install:
Remember to choose a different folder to install Starcraft 2. Do this by clicking on the button, which will take you to a place where you can choose the directory to install it to. Right click on a blank area in the directory tree to create a new folder, and rename it to something for e.g "Starcraft KR" After that highlight that new directory and click select folder. If you forget to do this step the starcraft installation will overwrite your existing starcraft directory and corrupt your SEA/NA/EU installation. So CHANGE the installation folder!!!
Click the bottom button. Basically it says you need a battle.net account to play starcraft 2. The first button just says go to battle.net if you dont have an account yet to apply your code. Second button says continue if you have your account activated already (you should have if you followed step 1 right) so click that.
Lastly, once you log on to the Taiwan client just agree to everything (left button) to continue. Great success! The end!
Note: Once logged in on Korea, when you go under multiplayer the practice league is the left button at the bottom and "skip practice league" is the right button.
For those getting the "You need an authorized language pack" error
Open up this file in your documents folder with notepad
e.g
User\My Documents\Starcraft II\Variables.txt
Change the two locale variables to the appropriate client language e.g zhTW or enSG or enUS depending on which client you are using, Taiwan, SEA or NA.
Code:
localeidassets=zhTW
localeiddata=zhTW
Alternatively instead of putting "zhTW" put "????" and it will automatically detect which client u are using and use the appropriate language pack, really useful if u are using 2 clients so you don't have to keep switching.
Fix 1: Without bootcamp - Credit to sfaf for the solution)
Go to (your username)>Library>Application Support>Blizzard>Starcraft II>Variables.txt
From there you can change these to:
localeidassets=zhTW
localeiddata=zhTW
or
localeidassets=????
localeiddata=????
The question marks is the better way imo and is tested and works for macs. Make sure you save the file.
Fix 2: Use a new account or bootcamp. - Credit to NoxGamer for alerting me to this and providing the solution
The language pack problem is a little more problematic on Mac. The Variable.txt is located under each account rather than the client (as it is on windows). Because the two clients are on the same account, the language packs conflict and it doesnt recognize the TW language pack.
This can be fixed my making a brand new SEA/NA account to apply your key to or by using bootcamp (more recommended). Bootcamp if you don't know allows you to run windows on a Mac and will also be very useful when encountering other programs that do not support Mac formats.
These errors are not common and you should not have to worry about them. But here they are in case, basically its all the errors our customers have ever run into.
"Failed to download patch, please make sure you are connected to the internet"
You likely have your firewall still up for this blocking access to the game as its not dectecting the games network connection to the internet.
"this is going to take a long time (15-60 mins), once it starts don't cancel it".
Basically the client needs to be patched / optimized. Left button to continue, right button to close. If you get another window with only one button after it's probably the one which says not enough free disk space; you need ~8/9 GB free for it to install the patch (just for the optimising process, you get it back afterward.credit: paperclip)
For this error, the official custom support has been unable to help either and its likely patch 1.5 related so here is a work around method.
Work around method
(This assumes your current SC2 NA/SEA/EU client works perfectly.)
Step 1: Copy your whole working SC2 directory somewhere else, so you always have the original as a back up that works perfectly.
Step 2: With the new directory you created, try using the relocaliser here and applying the relocaiser to it
Q: My SC2 installer gets stuck during the install at 1% and won't move anymore! Help!
This is because your SC2 CD is still in the CD-ROM drive and the installer is unsure if it should read from the CD or your hard drive. Simply take out the SC2 CD from your CD-ROM drive and try again.
Will I lag on the Korean server? First test your ping!
Before you decide to buy an account make sure to test your ping. If you're gonna lag hard on Korea, it simply won't be worth it to get an account. Although this is unlikely it is better to be safe than sorry! In most cases theres nothing to worry about because this isnt the era of 56kbps modems anymore and most of us have high speed internet! To begin, Click on Start (Windows Button) then type in CMD in the run box
It doesn't matter which directory you are in, just type in "tracert us.battle.net", "tracert eu.battle.net" or "tracert sea.battle.net" depending on which server YOU are from to find out your current ping to your current server. For e.g if you're from the US, to make comparisons with the Korean and NA servers just type in "tracert kr.logon.battle.net" and "tracert us.battle.net" respectively. The simple way of interpreting tracert results is to look at the last few hops and compare them to each other. Generally anything under 250ms is playable but it also depends on your tolerance to lag. As a guideline you would want a relatively similar ping values from US/KR (so latency is similar as well) and to not exceed 300ms. But hey if you built up your lag tolerance and are used to playing at 300ms and get a similar result on KR it just means that you will be playing with the same level of latency there.
Note: For those unsure, the most accurate way to test your lag will be by requesting a free KR Guest Pass from us, the steps can be found at the bottom of this guide.
My case is slightly different because the SEA server is located in Singapore so all Singaporeans get about 12ms which is similar to LAN latency haha My ping to Korea is very acceptable at about 220ms. My ping to NA (not shown) is about 210ms so there is very little difference for me in playing on NA and KR, and both KR and NA latencies are definitely playable as they are quite far under 300ms. A cute story to share is xGkingnMafia laddered on SEA with a 350ms latency for the whole of last year. This is why his LAN tournament results (where uses a better ISP) are so much better than his online tournament results! Lag is an important factor for any competitive game
Q: I'm new to the site where is my PM inbox? How do I receive the code?
Your inbox is found at the top left hand corner of the site. In addition, when your code gets send you will be notified of the message through your email as well.
Q: I'm waiting for my keys to be in my inbox and i'm really bored! What can I do now?
To ensure minimum waiting time, my advice to you is to start downloading and patching the TW client from the official blizzard site right away by following this link. You do not need the Taiwan account to download the file so it makes sense to just download and patch the client first. The account activation will take less than 1 minute once you get your key
Q: I got threw the installer part, but when it got too showing the patches and stuff it was still in TW and then it displayed the patch notes in english help?! Aka when i start patching the client the language turns into English. Is this something i should worry about ?
Not to worry, it retrieves the battle.net news reads based on Internet cookies from the battle.net portal you visit, so its likely to display in English. If you installed it right the client will be in chinese after you install all the patches.
Q: I can't log in, is the Korean server up?
TL has an awesome thread where they keep track of the status here. Check it here first before PMing me. Obviously if the KR server happens to be down for maintenance you won't be able to log in, but it doesn't happen often and it lasts for a few hours when it does go down.
Q: Why not just buy if off the tw.battle.net site?
That's because you can't! Digital licenses work differently for the TW region and you need something called "MyCard points", which are extremely hard to find because you have to buy them in Taiwan Shops or only through giving out your credit card and identification documents to Chinese websites you have never heard off. We at sc2sea.com make it extremely easy by going to the official distributor directly.
Q: How will it be shipped to me?
It won't. This is the digital version. You will be PMed on sc2sea your unique key which will allow you to activate the region on your account and download the game, like how all digital versions work.
Q: I bought my account but still have not received my order. Help!
Please allow one day for payment verification purposes. You will receive a PM when your order has been processed so refresh sc2sea every few hours. If for some reason so you have not received your key after 2 working days, contact me here. and you will be compensated adequately.
Q: Do I need a new account?
No, you can have multiple regions / games activated on a single battle.net account, e.g an NA and a Taiwan license is fine. That was the "Revolution" of Bnet 2.0 to make it easy for users to keep track of their games. However, you can only have a single license per region. So if you want to have TWO Taiwan accounts for yourself, you need two battle.net accounts as well.
Q: Do I need a Korean or Taiwan ID?
Nope, as long as you have an existing account all you need to do is add your Taiwan account to it. If you wish to make a brand new account, make it on the NA/SEA website first as a new account rather than the TW website and from there just follow the tutorial.
Q: Do I need to reprogram my custom key set up?
Nope, if you bind the TW client to your main account, your custom hotkey setup follows you there.
Q: How do I change the Taiwan SC2 client to English?
That is not possible, and that is one of the limitations of the different Starcraft clients. It is in Traditional Chinese but based on your past experience, everything should be intuitive enough and easy to navigate, all hotkeys are the same, etc! If this is your first copy of SC2 i strongly recommend buying the NA/SEA one instead to get familiar with the game first then move on when you're ready for the land of Korea!
Update: Gerlan came up with a set of screen shots / tutorials if you plan to do keybinding/gfx control customization and need help with navigating the menus - check it out here!
Q: Can I use this account with a KR client?
Nope this is basically a Taiwan account so you will need to download and install the TW client and log in through it as well. So it will not work in Korea PC Bangs unless you bring your own USB drive and play from it. But once logged in, it shares the exact same server as the KR client.
Q: I still have questions! How can I get Customer Support? I need help!
Not to worry, contact me here or here and I will save the day.
The tracert guide as above should be accurate enough, but if you are still unsure of the latency and want a 7 hour / 14 day guest pass to test your connection out, simply fill up korean guest pass request form!
Note: To prevent abuse you would need a minimum of 10 posts and they have to be of a decent quality to be given a free guest pass. If you cannot access the form it means you do not meet the minimum post requirements. If you make 10 worthless posts with one line gibberish your request will be ignored. We are handing out free passes so c'mon, the least you should do is write proper stuff.
Optional: Playing with Korean sounds in patch 1.5!
Basically this makes your TW Client have Korean game sounds without violating any of Blizzard's TOS or using any third party applications. Credit goes to KAiZ3R who discovered this and made a thread about it on TL. I have tested it myself and it works as intended, but only adds the Korean SOUNDS and not the menu changes. The fantastic thing about it is it doesn't use any third party applications. This guide here will be heavily based on KAiZ3R's guide. Although it allows you to have any language sounds for any installation, we will only cover the way to let you have Korean sounds for the TW client installation because thats what we want here!
Step 1: Install the TW client as explained in this guide. Step 2:Download this file - koKR.txt (Windows users: Right click on the words > save link as. Mac users: Command click on the link (hold the button with the apple, on the keyboard and click > save link as/ target as) and place it in the folder "versions" of the Starcraft2 directory you installed it in. i.e it should look like this
Windows Folder: C:\Program Files\StarCraft II TW\Versions\ Mac Folder: /Applications/StarCraft II TW
It should be in the same place as the folders named Base15405, Base16561, etc.
Step 3: Go back to your SC2 directory and this time to go to the support folder i.e C:\Program Files\StarCraft II TW\Support\ and run Repair.exe. If you did everything correctly, the main window will show that it has detected an extra locale and begin checking game files. Basically this tricks in game into thinking you have a Korean version of SC2 which was identified by the .txt file and it now begins downloading the sounds for it. The whole repair procedure will take about 2 hours to run. For me, the progress bar did not even come up till after 10 mins, so if it "hangs" just be patient and wait it out. It will look like this.
Step 4: Final step would be to edit your Variables.txt file.
On PC, it should be located within your My Documents folder at: C:\Users\YourNameXXX\Documents\StarCraft II\Variables.txt On MAC, it will be at ~/Library/Application Support/Blizzard/StarCraft II/Variables.txt
Look for the line localeidassets=xxXX (If you're from NA xxXX will be called enUS, etc) and replace it with localeidassets=koKR.
The cool thing is this will not affect your other installations, whenever you run SC2 it will check the directory its running from so since there is no koKR.txt file in your NA/SEA/EU installation folder it will still have English voices and of course if you want them to have it just follow the same steps.
Step 1: Copy your whole working SC2 directory somewhere else, so you always have the original as a back up that works perfectly.
Step 2: With the new directory you created, try using the relocaliser here and applying the relocaiser to it
People have played with this reloaciser already so its confirmed and tested to be working.
Pre-Patch 1.5
Basically a relocalizer allows you to have just "one" copy of Starcraft 2 installed on your computer. Each time you want to play on a different server, you run the relocalizer, which configured the files in that installation automatically for you, into those that suit the server you wish to play on.
Warning: We officially do not support the use of a relocalizer as it might be violating Blizzard's TOS so use it at your own risk and do not ask questions about it in this thread, they will be ignored. This relocalizer was last tested and found to be working by PurpleChef on 15th Feb 2012.
This is the relocailizer that LiquidJinro uses. Primadog does a very good writeup of it on TL here which has everything you need to know about it.
Before you begin - First step you should take is to copy and paste your current SC2 directory and call the new duplicate folder (SC2 relocalized). This way you will always have perfectly fine working backup to go back to should anything go wrong.
You should only be using this if
You have problems downloading the client.
Your have internet bandwidth / diskspace constraints.
You are prepared to reconfigure it every patch.
Remember that a new install with the official client will take longer but in the LONG-term it will save you a lot more time, whereas the relocalizer might be a "quick-fix" but every now and then you have to do the annoying process of updating or reinstalling SC2 as well as running it every time you wanna switch regions.
I hope your activation has been much easier with the help of this guide.
Feel free to use this thread to ask questions or to share your Korean account ID information with each other.
PMing ensures I get notified faster. Please do NOT make a new thread, if i'm not online at that moment ask in the chatbox or post in this thread and someone will likely reply quickly.
Disclaimer: Based on my limited knowledge of tracert, i believe the following.
The first few hop values are your router / settings, then next the isp and the host's router and the final values are the the ping to the actual host server.
US shows a ping of 200ish MS
SEA shows a ping of 400ish MS
KR shows a ping of 400ish MS
Based on the results shown, the best server to use in terms of the least lag appears to be the US server. SEA should lag quite abit more than the US server, and KR should be similar to SEA in terms of the lag. Can you double confirm that there is no difference in lag between SEA and US for you? (play some test games with the computer and spam the worker rally point at different locations to see delay) This is the part that puzzles me.
Conclusion: Although not 100% conclusive, it is my opinion that you should NOT play on KR unless you can stand playing on 400ms lag / on SEA. Hope that helps
I don't know where else i can post this, the general forum seemed like the most appropriate one so here it goes!
I just made a new account today and i believe it said that i will not have access to private messaging until my account is 1 week old. However i bought the Starcraft II Tw/Kr pack for 59.90 AUD. Does this new account thing mean that i can't recieve PM's as well? If so how would i go about getting my item? Would i have to wait a whole week or what?
Not to worry, although you don't have access to PMs yet you will still be able to see the msg through your email. We have had many people with 0 posts who have been able to check their msg and get their account activated right away.
Also, the maximum waiting time to receive your code is 12 hours. Most are done within 30 mins. I have just sent you your activation code. Have a look in your email and if you require anything else do let me know. Thanks
Just bought it, thanks for the guide looking forward to playing on these servers . Thank you for taking the time to write this, and help the customers out NirVana, wouldn't have bought it without this guide.
Awaiting the code can't wait :P.
Last edited by tate2j; Thu, 18th-Aug-2011 at 6:36 PM.
Ok so i'm having a little trouble now. I did everything as you did and then when i open my TW SCII. It starts to update, but when it gets to 50% it just closes and the blizzard update app comes up in english. Now everytime i try to open my TW SCII, it just opens my NA SCII. My NA SCII isn't completely updated/patched, but that shouldn't exactly effect my TW SCII right?
thefritz make sure your CD is not inside the CD-Rom drive during the install. That is the exact cause that stops the install at 1% every time!
tate2j your code has been sent to your email / pm.
aasian your existing NA version should not affect the install. I believe its because you did not change directory as mentioned in the guide. Please try changing the directory to a fresh one (just add TW behind e.g C:\Starcraft II TW) and give it a go again
The most probable reason why the shortcuts are opening the same file is because they were installed in the same directory, perhaps by mistake when you first installed the TW client. To confirm this, what you need to do is right click on your shortcut icon, go to "properties" and look at the information path under "target".
If it was installed under separate directories correctly, it would appear different like this.
But if you see them pointing to the same identical target link, it could be because of one of two reasons.
Reason 1: You correctly installed in the same directory but the shortcut key points to the same folder (unlikely)
If this is the case just change the target to point to the actual taiwan installation directory.
Reason 2: You have made separate folders for the shortcuts instead of a separate installation directories during the client install.
Make sure you have changed the installation folder as shown in this step. If you didn't you probably installed the TW client into your NA client's directory which corrupted the install, so Blizzard is unable to correctly determine your game version and thus cant patch.
To fix this problem i would recommend deleting all versions of SC2 from your computer. After that do a clean install of the Tw Client following the installation steps carefully from the beginning. (Just run the installer you already downloaded). And to play on NA you would need to install the NA client as well and in a SEPARATE directory.
I've got the key for the KR/TW account, and it works great, and better than I've expected. I'm already playing on the ladder and it's a blast, much different than the NA server everyone seems to do a lot of 1-base tactics xD. If anybody else who has purchased this wants to play / practice and what not add me IdrALisK.251 on the Taiwan account. I'm lonely on it so far xD.
Hi tutsi, to answer your question our store allows you to obtain it 100% legally as we get the keys straight from the official blizzard distributor for Taiwan.
Sure you might find it cheaper on some other chinese / warez/ cd-key resale sites, I cant vouch for their legitimacy and it would vary from site to site. Many of those sites require you to provide credit card / IC verification scanned in and sent to them, and they also allow you to sell your existing CD keys to them so they can resell it - which makes you wonder what you are paying for.
We are strictly against CD-Key resale and you can purchase your account here 100% legally without any fear of violating Blizzard's TOS or having your account suddenly closed.
Added testimonials from tate2j and Sidoney to the product page.
Sidoney: I ordered my Korean account on SC2.com at about 10pm one night. To my supprise the details were in my inbox by about 7am the next morning! Everything went smoothly following the instructions from nirvAnA. Would recomend this way to anyone who is thinking about playing on the KR server. Thank you SC2SEA!
Note for anyone who installs the TW client alongside their current client: if you uninstall the TW client, your original client will most likely be messed up too, due to things that are shared between both installations in the registry (I believe).
Personal experience when I recently uninstalled my TW client.
It may also mess up the file associations for replays (in that it will go to the TW client instead of your old one, due to it being installed more recently)
Our supplier has made it even easier for you to activate your account. You can now do so by simply entering your game key directly and it takes less than 20 seconds. No more having to go the "myPoints" process.
Also a testimonial from SkyBreaker has been added!
SkyBreaker: I recently purchased the TW/KR account from the SC2SEA store; and everything from the transaction to the delivery of the code was nothing short of amazing! I was also lucky enough to be the first to receive the code with this refined method - which made an already easy process, even easier! The TW/KR license is a great way to compete in a different region of the world; and see how things are played differently in the Mecca of StarCraft gaming! Big thanks to Nirvana for his efforts and I highly recommend purchasing a TW/KR account via SC2SEA! Good luck & have fun!
Can't recommend this enough guys! Go purchase one now, everything from the transaction to following this guide is impeccable! Nirvana for doing this for the community!
Even the smallest donations help keep sc2sea running! All donations go towards helping our site run including our monthly server hosting fees and sc2sea sponsored community tournaments we host. Find out more here.