[TheGentleman]

Global Play Coming to StarCraft II
Original post by Kaivax Nov 9, 2012 2:00 PM PST on battle.net.

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Prepare yourself for worldwide competition, as Global Play will be added to StarCraft II in an upcoming patch in the coming months.

Global Play will give you access to StarCraft II game servers in regions outside your own, expanding the possibilities for eSports, exposing you to maps and games that aren’t yet published everywhere, and making it easy to play with your friends in other parts of the world. Each region will have separate profile data, meaning that characters, profiles, ladder rankings, progress, and friends lists will not carry over from region to region. With Global Play, you’ll have other regions to choose from as you create new characters, take on different ladder opponents, and perhaps try maps that you’ve never seen before.

More about Global Play:

• Players will be able to freely switch between regions via the StarCraft II login screen.
• When your region’s game servers are undergoing maintenance, you may be able to play in a different region that is not down for maintenance.
• Your game language and user interface will not change when you change regions.
• Players using Global Play will be subject to the in-game policies of their selected play region.

We’ll have more details soon, including answers to your most frequently asked questions about Global Play.

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Source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/782...t_II-11_9_2012

[TheGentleman]

All I have to say is: Thank you Blizzard!

[Stallion]

about time

[Meatex]

The timing of this is very interesting
Possibly a try to artificially boost numbers for the shareholders benefit, to distract people from something negative whether it be the current negativity or something else to come or maybe even because they are considering pulling the plug on the SEA server.

Regardless of their reasons its good for use SEA players who can now play KR without the need for extra accounts with similar ping as to SEA maybe
Though I expect there will be some kind of additional restrictions otherwise blizzard won't be able to price gouge effectively on hots release. If not though double win! get to import hots for half the price

Quick Comments

	breadfan:	This was announced at least 6 months ago though, so bear that in mind
	Zepph:	way to take the pessimist's attitude

[syfSoundwave]

So if you have a KR, SEA, US and EU account on one b.net account, does that mean you get 4 accounts on 1 account or...???

[VB_Blake]

It probably won't change much for someone at my level but it will be nice to be able to try out Korea

[Meatex]

It will work like SEA client does being able to tell it to simply login to another region and use same login details

[TABjornbrandr]

KR is going to be full of NA heroes and all the juicy QQ that shall follow.

I suppose it'll be interesting to actually experience what KR is like without laying out the money for an account. Not too much should really change for casuals - should make KR more accessible for those who didn't know about/didn't want a TW account.

[TACeeSerps]

Trying not to be pessimistic here but I'm actually interested to see if you have free access to all regions with Global Play, or whether you must have a paid licence/copy under your Battle.Net ID to access those regions.

Sorry if this is mentioned in the OP or original article, but I couldn't see it clearly answered.

Quick Comments

	Demosthenes:	fair point. I'd expect it's like SEA and NA
	Dingobloo:	I imagine it's just the same way they did Diablo 3, so you wont need a licence for every region.

[Dox]

Originally Posted by FaDeMeatex

The timing of this is very interesting
Possibly a try to artificially boost numbers for the shareholders benefit, to distract people from something negative whether it be the current negativity or something else to come

This was announced over a year ago

[FaMe]

Originally Posted by Dox

This was announced over a year ago

A year, really?
I remember it being announced as something they wanted to do around the expansion, but that would have been maybe 6 months ago, certainly not a year?
Perhap's I missed it's first announcement.

Anyway, i'm not overly bothered by it, i'll be sticking to SEA if I do come back to playing sc2 purely because of latency. I just hope they implement Name Change's soon (or give another free one), how long have we been waiting for that?

Quick Comments

TACeeSerps:

it was announced at Blizzcon last year

[breadfan]

Originally Posted by Dox

This was announced over a year ago

Yeah, although the original announcement was "also global play, we'll give you more information later"

[Meatex]

Originally Posted by Dox

This was announced over a year ago

Yup announced some time ago for the HotS expansion
This is to be introduced into WoL a few months before the end of its life
And I'd bet all my monies that had I said that, you would be saying what I am now right back at me

[inFeZa]

I feel blizzard still has a few more features up their sleeves in the coming weeks...

Quick Comments

TACeeSerps:

care to share?

[QEDjuslai]

FINALLY!! wohoooo korean servers gonna get full lol

[FSDarkNemesis]

It's a good change. Global play.

SEA and NA servers currently i'm on....
Well those 2 are good enough for me. I'll prefer to stick to those servers. Can't be bothered to go through the ranking processes again.

Next one they should put up is the levelling system.

[ToRMaverick]

The idea is good, but do we have the numbers in SEA to support it? I suspect not.

The servers numbers at this point in time is getting lower and lower to a point that the game struggles to find opponents of similar MMR to you. This being the case the "Global Play" option will spread the remaining numbers (from SEA anyway) into other servers....

So basically I see the smaller servers becoming obsolete as everyone jumps ship onto the larger more competitive servers (KR / NA). Is this a bad thing? Well all depends on your ping I guess.

I think there will be a certain number of dedicated players that remain in the smaller servers, but when things get really bad and you can either no longer find a game or are getting matched with players that you shouldnt be everyone will just jump ship.

My opinion anyway.

Quick Comments

Dox:

everyone in SEA already has access to NA, and most won't last long on KR

[Satu]

Originally Posted by TheGentleman

patch in the coming months.

Wow!

Originally Posted by TheGentleman

coming months.

wait...

Originally Posted by TheGentleman

months.

;(

[mGGDrGooSe]

@Maverick, I would assume they will go in a similar way to with D3, having an Asia, Euro and NA server and then likely a Kr server on top of that. IME ping from Aus/NZ to all of the D3 servers is pretty crap. Might not happen straight away, especially I expect them to have more servers during HoTs launch, but I'm sure it will be scaled back eventually. Just like the merging that has already happened on WoL.

Quick Comments

ToRMaverick:

National Broadband may be out by then... ;)

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by ToRMaverick

*National Broadband may be out by then...

A lot of places aren't even on the 5yr or whatever the longest term rollout on the website is. That said, NBN will do absolutely nothing for global pings from aus, it will just improve speed. We'll still be stuck on the same old international links we currently have.

Quick Comments

ToRMaverick:

This is true... our options? Move to KR?