Skip to main content

Blizzard announces Global Play feature for Diablo III

Stephany Nunneley-Jackson avatar
News by Stephany Nunneley-Jackson Former News Editor
Published on

Blizzard has announced a Global Play feature for Diablo III which will allow you to play online with your buddies no matter which region they reside in due to region-free servers.

There are only a few few restrictions when using Battle.net's new Global Play functionality, with regions broken down as follows:

  • The Americas - For players in the US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.
  • Europe - For players in the European Union, Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and Middle Eastern countries such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
  • Asia - For players in South Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Players will create characters and play in their “home” region, determined by where they live. Afterward, you can go into Global Play and switch to any of the other game regions via the in-game options menu,before or after you log in to the game.

Characters, items, and friends lists do not transfer across regions so when playing on a different region’s server, you will have to create characters and friends lists specifically for that region and will have to use the gold-based auction house for that region as well.

In addition, players will only have access to the real-money auction house when playing in their “home” game region. That means that, for characters outside of your home region, items "cannot be bought or sold in any real-money auction house."

Awesome.

In other news, Blizzard has also posted a guide to the Auction House through here. The gold-based auction house launches alongside the game, while the real-money auction house will go online approximately one week after launch.

Those who sell items for real money will have to give Blizzard a $1 to 15% cut of profits as outlined through the FAQ. The firm will also take 15% should you use PayPal or you can deposit funds into your Battle.net account to use in the game or through the purchase of future Blizzard items.

More information is through the link, and the game's out May 15.

Read this next