IP addresses also correspond to geographic areas. It is not unusual for games or other sites to use your IP to determine what country you are physically based in, and thus what services are or are not available. The problem is that depending on how your ISP assigns IPs and what service the game or site uses to resolve the geographic location, sometimes the result they get is incorrect. I know that when I visit various websites that automatically detect my location, where they think I am varies and can be as far away from my actual location as a six hour drive. That includes parts of Canada, and I do occasionally get the message that some service I'm trying to access is only available to residents of the United States. That's annoying since I AM a resident of the United States.
So when I read RogueElf's posts, it occurred to me that she might be running into something similar. I suggested that she test it by using a free webproxy to change her IP address, and told her about a specific one she could use to come from a Chicago IP. She did me one better and went German on me.
