Region Lock?

Found this on the beta forums:

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Can I change Gateways like in StarCraft I to play with people in other regions?

Unlike StarCraft I, there is no gateway selection to allow you to play with players in other regions. You will only be able to play against players within the same region as you.

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In this age of connectivity, many people have friends who live overseas that they like to talk and game with. Do you think locking people out of playing with one another based on where they live is a good thing for this game? Do you think this will see its way to the game's release, or is it one of those things that only shows up for the beta tests?

*SPECULATION WARNING* I would think that currently they want to see how the game works within certain parameters, one of them being a reasonable ping from player to player. Locking folks out of playing with each other permanently would just be stupid though. Xbox Live allows you to play with anyone and you run the risk of the game quality sucking by playing with friends from South Africa or Hawaii. Blizzard should allow this same choice. If not they're really clamping down on our choices. "No you can't play lan. No you can't play with people from other countries."

However the new battle.net is a connected service right? If I get a friends ID from somewhere far away shouldn't I just be able to hook up with them that way? Maybe the gateway is only talking about your ranked games.


*END SPECULATION*

The only reason that they are doing region locked games, is due to a simple fact: World Of Warcraft. WoW as we all know has 3 different reigns - US/South America, EU, and Asia. This Bnet2 will be the backbone of WoW/SC2/D3 as well - all people who play SC2 for example can msg and talk to people who is going to play WoW or D3 at the same time.

Lets say you have a US WoW, you surely will need a US SC2 in order to talk to your friends from WoW.

That is simple and logical decision by their side - retarded decision by our point of view.

It sucks, I know - I want to play on US servers - and I'm far away from US. I guess I'll end up buying SC2 from USA ;)

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However the new battle.net is a connected service right? If I get a friends ID from somewhere far away shouldn't I just be able to hook up with them that way? Maybe the gateway is only talking about your ranked games.

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Actually i'm pretty sure the gateways are not connected in any way between each other. So if you search the name of a player on another gateway you will just find nothing...

Im pretty positive it will only be for beta. They wont make it that way in the real game, cause that would ruin all competitive play.

I'm almost positive this is beta/for launch only. Hasn't WoW been promising ways to communicate between servers for a while now?

I'm guessing that for laddering automatching (serious games), you'll always be paired with someone on your server. They'll implement a way to communicate and set up games with friends in between servers.

Between servers, but not between regions. EU realms will never be able to play with US realms. Why they chose to drive a wedge between regions is beyond me. Latency isn't much of an excuse given today's connection speeds.

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Originally Posted by Mutiny

Between servers, but not between regions. EU realms will never be able to play with US realms. Why they chose to drive a wedge between regions is beyond me. Latency isn't much of an excuse given today's connection speeds.

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Connection speeds are barely a reference for ping...

I do expect servers to be able to mix though. Asking for a "world server" might be a bit much though... which is very sad. I can't believe iccup does it but Blizzard won't.... :/

I'm really hoping this is not a permanent thing...not being able to play with friends I've met in other games who live in Europe or across the country would be pretty disappointing.

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Originally Posted by Hammy

Connection speeds are barely a reference for ping...

I do expect servers to be able to mix though. Asking for a "world server" might be a bit much though... which is very sad. I can't believe iccup does it but Blizzard won't.... :/

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^Yeah connection speed is irrelevant.

To take a personal example from one of the oldest games I've played online is Command & Conquer: Renegade (A first/3rd person shooter with vehicle gameplay);
2002 - I had a 256/128 Kb back when the server were split up into europe/US/Pacific and my average ping to the UK based server was 25-75
Present - I have 10/1,5 Mbit internet and an average ping of 200-300 since the server is US based.

You can't change "location ping", not even with a lightspeed signal.