Apparently Blizzard and I have drastically different definitions of the term “Global Play.” I see it as a company offering unrestricted access for users to play with anybody around the world. Blizzard, well Blizzard respectfully disagrees.
Blizzard recently announced that Diablo III‘s servers will be region free, allowing you to forge alliances with no borders (their definition of ‘Global Play.’) The game’s servers will be split up into three regions – Americas (also including Australia and New Zealand,) Asia and Europe – but players won’t be locked into their region. However, it’s not the unrestricted access that you may assume.
For starters, every region you play in will require not only starting a new character, but you’ll also need to recreate your friends list from scratch. To top it off, while the normal gold auction house will apply regardless of region, the real world money auctions must be accessed by characters in your home region.
Sure, this is hardly the end of the world, but it doesn’t exact seem like true “Global Play” from where I’m standing. How about you? Is it worth your time rebuilding everything for new regions, or are you just going to stick with your home?