No Troll, Blizzard tend to change its mind very often:
Yes. Char data should of course be stored in your region. But just let people connect to others in another region, on that same character.
Iāve made chars both in Europe and America regions. But I dont really see a reason why it should be that way. Just let me use the same characters in both places.
Not like the latency for using my EU characters in US would be any higher than using my US characters in US.
(EU-US latency is actually not that bad either. It is hardly optimal, but I played HC on US servers, so it was playable at least. 100-200 ms typically)
Have a warning popup if you turn on worldwide play.
Other games are doing this; Souls games allowing you to meet people in your region only, vs. the world. Or Rocket League allowing you to pick whatever regions (including multiple at once) you want to be matched with. Iām sure others do it as well.
You think a warning will stop people from saying āthis game sucksā even though it is due to their own choices?
It would be far worse. Think about this.
You make an EU char. Your EU char has data stored on the EU server. You have to deal with the latency between the EU server and your PC client.
You make an Americas char. Your Americaās char data is stored on the Americas server. You connect to the EU server. Now you have the latency between your PC client and the EU game server as well as the latency between the Americaās data center and the EU server - in order for your game data to be accessed.
Unless they duplicate the character data so that each datacenter has it locally, you will be dealing with two non synchronized connections. Adding that second connection between the EU and Americas server for data transfer, on top of your latency between your PC and the game server would be messy.
It really comes down to how data heavy a game is, and where they store data.
EDIT - there have been requests for Region Transfers though - like the copy to the PTR. That would create a copy on the other Region server so that the server had the data locally to access.
So far Blizzard has said they wonāt do it, but you never know for the future. That would solve the issue of data access speeds. However, it would be more costly in terms of data storage.
I also donāt know how it would impact any competitive aspects of D3 like Region firsts in Seasons. Seasons donāt start at the same time globally. Getting a start in the first region to go live then copy to another region would give a head start. There are ways to stop that of course. You get the idea though, there are many things to consider.
Some will say that no matter what. You cant protect players that much from themselves. Hide it deep in the settings or something 
People can create this āworseā experience for themselves already, by picking another region to play in.
Not that Blizzard is new to making choices that allowed people to get a worse game experience, like hiding the, pretty much required, Elective mode in the settings in D3.
Then copy the character data to the local datacenter when you switch region, and back again afterward.
The benefits here seems to far outweigh any negative aspects.
If Blizzard want to promote the good aspects of online gaming, then they should start by highlighting such benefits.
Ummm 
That is not as easy or as cheap as you seem to think. At least not in a game with a heavy data load associated with the account. It may not always be that way, but right now it is a PITA and resource intensive.
Someone might want to smack me for this, but it might be something they do as a premium service? Subscription? Global Synchronization for the Bnet account and allow it to apply, where legal, to all the Blizz games on your account for a cost of X per month? That might offset database transfer costs, admin costs, storage costs, etc.
Does anything indicate that there is a heavy data load for each account?
Btw, according to google (I havenāt tried myself), Path of Exile works exactly like this; allowing you to play the same characters on servers all over the world.
If they can do it, I am sure Blizzard can too.
You mean exactly like what you are doing, maybe you should invest in a mirror and take a long look
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For D3 - kind of. It is part of why they have massive issues getting more stash tabs - apparently.
I have played it. Not a bad game, but a bit too in the weeds for my taste. That game has a newer engine and was designed differently from the ground up. They also have unlimited stash space. I donāt know anything about how the game is structured or how their data is handled.
I have no doubt Blizzard COULD do it. Of course they could. I just donāt know what it would take to get there. Likely a new engine and updated ways of handling data. I could see it being possible to explore for D4. They donāt have to be stuck in 2010 tech like D3 is.
People have been asking for the ability to migrate chars from one Region to another in ALL Blizzard games since 2004. I know it is on their radar. Given how popular it would be (and they could charge for it like WoW char transfers which are within the same Region) - the only logical reason not to is concerns about game quality, tech issues, and costs.
We have years to go before D4 comes out, so we shall see what they do with it regarding Regional play. I can say for certain, to take hints from how they handle other Blizzard games. They are on the same Bnet infrastructure which is currently what is planned for D4.
Oh, just in case it wasnāt clear, I am only talking D4 here. Not D3. I get that it might be impossible to get to work in D3.
To be fair this nut job would get run over by the car and STILL think itās fine to play in the street
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Just lvling your dodge skill the hard way.
true, you lost at least 1 post here;
i can find 1000 nonsense posts from others in 30 minutes though, i bet you can do that too.
i think maybe it was just a prelude from a certain poster that wanted to clean up before entering the thread, np, iām used to that. 
Fuzzy kind of logic
Anyone who ever has an opinion is biased.
You have every right to have your opinion 
I mean honestlyā¦ Who is actually affected by not having an offline mode now? Heres how it goes when i want to play diablo and i dont have internet: oh, no internet, guess ill just play one of the 100s of other games that are out in the world.
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People who would prefer to play without latency.
People who play HC and would prefer to remove the risk of DCs.
People who travels/commutes a lot.
Military personnel stationed around the world.
Etc.
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Currently thatās how it goes for me if Iām on the move. Then after a bit it becomes āwhy play Diablo 3, when Iāve progressed quite a bit in (game) recently? Iāll play that instead as that one is holding my interest.ā
Iām hoping Diablo IV doesnāt make the same mistakes Diablo III did, and that included the lack of an offline option among other things not relevant to this topic.
They want a uniform game. I think the old Blizzard way of making games easily modable and letting players live in alternate worlds is over.
The only quality reasoning I have seen here is about military personnel, if indeed internet is hard to come by.
If you have bad internetā¦this might not be the game for you. I dont think they will mold around so arcane a concern. Is quality internet not available in some parts if the US, or is it a cost issue alone?
I believe Iāve gone over this in this thread, but itās a large thread so Iāll reiterate:
My work is in rural Canada. I live in a city, but my job has me travel to small towns, oil field sites, power plants etc etc. In some cases I can spend an entire day there. Not all locations have open broadcast wifi and, in many cases, very poor cellular service in many of the more remote locations. Cellular reception so poor youāre lucky if you can even get a short call out, let alone a data connection. Sometimes I am stuck on site for several hours waiting on diagnostics or further instructions to arrive if particular work has to be done, so in that down time I kick up a game on my laptop. No harm, no foul while I wait for whatever it Iām waiting on.
This is when the offline options are nice. Given Iām in this situation, I think itās safe to say I am far from the only one in a situation like this. As such, Iād like to see offline options available so I can play my game without it feel like Iām being punished because of a few dishonest folks.
Perhaps youāre right, perhaps Blizzard now isnāt the Blizzard I remember and Iām barking up a dead tree. Iād like to think thatās not the case, that there are reasonable folks there that could see where an offline option is viable for myself and others in similar situations.
Modding the game should make no difference as the mods wouldnāt work on their servers, so shouldnāt be relevant to this discussion. Modding is not my intent. I just want to be able to play without an internet connection being required. Not everyone is out to āstick it to the manā.
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Your position isnāt unreasonable or frivolous. It simply is too low a priority for where they are heading. A company seeking to expand into mobile is unlikely to also move back to local client side games. I would not especially want them devoting their time or maintenance resources to it.
Games like HOMM are far more suitable to this lifestyle I fear.
Yeah, I understand that. Mostly Iāll have to wait and see. I wonāt damn the game out the gates if it ships without offline options, but it is a deterrent for me when I have a lot of other options available.
Iāve said my piece, and then some. And then a lot more on it. If they listen, awesome. If not, Iāll wait and see how D4 develops further to see if the online only is tolerable.
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