Blizzard Entertainment has recently changed the way it allows gamers to access the Heroes of the Storm regional player servers.
Announcing that “Global Play has arrived” Blizzard has opened up the servers to allow gamers from all regions, outside of China, to access any regional server. Players are free to switch between the regions but will have separate profile data assigned to their account for each region. This means that any progress made in one region, or purchases, will not transfer across. Players will also have to remake their friends list when accessing another regional server.
There are currently three different ways to change your region on Heroes of the Storm; from the Battle.net application, pressing F10 at the main menu and at the login screen via region selection box. Fans will be pleased by the release of the Global Play feature as during maintenance in their region they will still be able to play the game; although as mentioned any progression gained would not cross over regions.
Blizzard have confirmed one minor drawback which gamers should be aware of. If you play on a region server that has received an update you will be locked out from playing on other servers until it has been patched to the same version of the game. To be completely clear here is the example released by Blizzard:
“For example, let’s imagine that the Americas region of Battle.net has received a new Heroes patch, and you’re a European player who swaps regions to the Americas. Your Heroes client will then be updated according to the Americas’ schedule. Since you’ve patched with the Americas’ game servers, and the Europe region has not been updated yet, you will be locked out from playing in Europe until the European servers undergo maintenance and patch as well. This applies to all regions.”
