WARDOGS 175 Ping Cap: What Bulkhead's Region Lock Means for OCE, SEA and International Units

WARDOGS just drew a line on the map, and it's measured in milliseconds. On October 21, Bulkhead announced that official servers would drop to a 175 maximum ping "over the next few hours," with full region locking still being built behind the scenes. The reason was blunt: protecting "the largest amount of players from an influx of regions that are more prone to cheating."

The studio didn't pretend it was a clean win. "It's disappointing for us to have to put these divisions in place with social experience being such a core focus of WARDOGS, but we must prioritise the largest group of players over the minority," the announcement on X reads. It closes with an apology for letting things "get to this point," and a promise to get "stricter on cross pollination of regions."

That post has passed 2.1 million views and nearly 2,500 replies. Plenty of them are angry, and some of them are thrilled. Not many people are shrugging.

The image Bulkhead attached to the ping cap announcement. Image: Bulkhead via @WARDOGS on X.

How the cap actually works

Ping limits aren't brand new. The Season 2 patch on October 15 added region-based limits to official servers, and Bulkhead said at the time the first values would be "quite lenient." Some servers let people in at up to 250 ms, according to GameWatcher. The rules from that Steam patch still apply, just with a much tighter number:

• If your ping stays over the server's limit for a sustained stretch, you get kicked. Short spikes and server-side lag don't count against you.
• Once you're kicked, you can't rejoin that server until the next map.
• The server browser shows each server's max ping, and you can filter by it.
• Community server admins can set their own ping limits, looser or stricter.

That last point matters a lot for anyone running a unit, and we'll come back to it.

What Bulkhead hasn't said is which regions it means, when real region locking arrives, or how it plans to handle VPNs. WARDOGS Hub also notes how fast the stance changed. On October 13, CEO Joe Brammer said the studio wasn't going to region lock "just yet." Eight days later, here we are.

The case for it

A lot of players on North American and European servers say they can already feel the difference. One Steam user posting in the "175 ping limit isn't enough" thread said the cap "does make a difference from literally the night before where I was in a lobby with 10+ cheaters," but still wants it cut to 125. Over on Reddit, GameWatcher found players pushing for 120 ms.

Creator TacticalBrit backed the studio: "Wardogs is going to catch flak for a change that will punish 1% of legitimate players." The post added, "We finally have a dev team willing to keep players in region for healthy reasons," and asked fans to leave reviews before the review bombs landed.

It isn't only Americans saying it. An Australian player named Reaper Redcap wrote that a match before work "felt diffrent...a good diffrent," and called region locking "the right move until anti-cheat is working properly at least."

The players paying for it

The other side of the replies is mostly people who live far from the big server clusters. "As an Aussie, my ping is over 170 in every international server so @BULKHEAD have essentially region locked Australia!" one player wrote. Another Aussie on Steam said they bought the game to play with American friends and are now "effectively locked out of the US entirely."

OCE players have a second worry. Sydney-based Tim pointed out that "ping from SEA to OCE is less than 170," so the cap could push the cheaters they're trying to avoid straight onto Oceania servers. He suggested a lower limit, around 80, just for OCE. RedOpz said the same thing in fewer words: "OCE is now gonna get flooded with the leftovers."

Further out, it gets harsher. A player in Pretoria said the closest official server for South Africa is South America at 167 ping: "A minute into the game, I get kicked for high ping and lose all the money I just spent on my loadout." A player in Bangkok wrote that it's "even worst news for SEA and Asia server player," because they can no longer get away from the cheating on their home servers by queuing into EU.

Then there's the tone problem. IGN quoted an Asian player who said a normal kill from a high-ping account gets you "instantly labeled a 'Chinese cheater' in the public channel." A Korean creator, POTATO MAN, wrote to Brammer about DDoS attacks on Asian servers, and Brammer replied that the attacks are "making that region difficult to play in during peak times."

One of the most shared takes came from Silk, an OCE player who wrote: "I grew up playing Arma with an international friend group. Americans, Aussies, Germans, Brits, a Japanese dude! Nobody cared, it was fun." The post goes on to say WARDOGS was bringing those vibes back, and that its "no friend left behind" motto doesn't fit a cap like this.

What Bulkhead says comes next

Brammer has been in the replies all week, and he's not walking it back. "We went in eyes open knowing this would happen. It sucks, doesn't help the game grow," he told one player. He also wrote, "We're working on solutions for global players.. sucks."

He's been just as clear that this is a stopgap. Replying to Silk, he said the cap "is temporary" and that Bulkhead is "working with Valve, Amazon, and lots of other big companies" on a fix. Elsewhere he said real region locking "takes longer than it needs to be" because "tracking where people are actually based is not straight forward (VPN etc etc)," per IGN. There's no date for any of it yet.

If your unit is spread across the globe

This is where community servers come in. Official servers enforce 175, but a community admin can set their own limit, so an international unit can still host its own nights with a looser cap. That doesn't help the guy in Johannesburg looking for a pub match at 2 a.m. It does mean a mixed US and Aussie unit doesn't have to split up just yet. One Steam commenter warned that many existing community servers are "militant with removing high ping players," so the server you pick matters as much as the one you run.

It's also a good week to look at where your members actually play from. The cap will settle a lot of recruiting decisions for you. If most of your roster is on one coast and your two Kiwis are already sitting at 180, they need a plan now, not after the next kick costs them a loadout.

If you're an OCE, SEA or South American unit looking for players who can actually reach your servers, list your unit on Milsim Units so they can find you.