Crossplay update soft region locked everyone

Battle.net’s regional cluster system comes from a need from the time it was designed, as things such as this interconnected cloud weren’t a thing 15-20 years ago. It wasn’t meant as a “lol ez vpn button”. It’s an outdated and preposterous design to keep in the world we live in, and has been a hinder on things for ages as the continents get better and better interconnectivity.

Also, no sane game developer will deliberately let players choose which region they want to queue in because it may severely hinder on the matchmaking system, generating unnecessarily longer queues.

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This update has ruined 5 years of the game for me,

I have always played USA servers, since the early days of the game.

Now 5 years of playing, I’m forced to play in a different region, with different ping, unable to do all the stuff I’ve been doing for years cause I’m just not used to it.

People say “just get a VPN” but there are many games I play that forbid the use of a VPN and imagine if I played the game, forgetting to turn off VPN… I’d find myself banned so it’s not worth the risk.

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Can confirm, flexible shift player on east coast here who got a aroun 20% chance of being put into 250 ms matches around 12:00am to 2:00 am. It’s annoying.

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You’ll have to explain that. If it leads to longer queues if some people play on another server, that isn’t the issue but a symptom of not having enough players play the game. I don’t see this being the case in Europe except for maybe GM, so it only really affects a very small percentage of the playerbase as well.
And that would be the only hinderance being on another server region could cause for the matchmaking system. For everything else it will just treat you like a player from that region, so there shouldn’t be a difference.

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I’m from South America and getting in EU matches. This is stupid. I’m getting more than 200ms latency and it’s annoying to play. If at least I play in NA with 120ms is ok, mas 200ms???

Won’t play if stay like this

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nah cross play is some complete :poop:. U bet im not playing this game until they remove this feature O_O

Hey everyone!

Today’s Global Battle.net update has caused some confusion in the community about region locking and swapping, so let’s take a moment to provide some clarity about details that might not be immediately clear:


Why can’t I swap regions anymore?

The simple answer is, you are placed into the best match based on a variety of factors including player skill and ping. Getting more technical, it’s because the regions themselves no longer exist (at least not in the way players traditionally understand them), so there is no region to swap to.


But my friends all play in a different region than I do!

You’ll still be able to play with your friends in other regions. In the case that you’re in a party, our systems work to place you in games with the lowest ping and best skill level for you or your party. These changes are aimed at ensuring that queue times are minimized and that the average ping is relatively low.


Outside of gameplay, some have noted that General chat contains players from all regions. Global chat is no longer locked to a particular region, meaning that you can see messages from players in other regions. However, this has no bearing on who you are matched with in games.

All that said, we’re currently tracking and communicating feedback that there are certain instances where the ability to change your region manually feels necessary. This feedback will be helpful as the design team prioritizes improvements and future development of the Global Play functionality.

We have made a configuration change recently (post-release) that should greatly reduce the frequency of getting into matches with high ping. Many of the reports we’ve seen today of players getting into mismatched regions have been at incredibly high MMR as the system expands its parameters to find a fair match. We’ll continue to keep an eye on this and making adjustments as needed.

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this is a matter of opinion

my opinion: I would rather leave the game than pretend as if I’m playing QuakeWorld in 1995 on a modem with a ping of 250ms

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Oh, I’ve been giving people that as the answer to solve their issues.

In OCE it is the standard way to end up on the US servers.

Makes sense, I can see why you would want to do that.

So if I want to play solo in a different region I will no longer have the option to do so? Any plans to let us switch “preferred data center” like we can in custom games but for matchmaking?
This is a big deal for people playing during off peak hours. ie at 2 am in EU support qs can take up to 10+mins in low masters meanwhile they are 2-5mins in NA. I don’t think you guys understand how much this change will affect your players.

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The problem I have with this is that it is forced.
I want to play on other servers.
I want faster queue’s on other servers because my main server isn’t in peak hours.
Why would you take away our option to do this?
I understand the decision, and in general it’s good change.
I don’t understand why you won’t let the players themselves choose to opt in or out.
It also certainly doesn’t help that we can still choose other servers in the Battlenet launcher while it won’t do a thing now.

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I want to be able to solo queue on different regions, this isn’t fair for people who want to do this.

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“it’s fine, you can wait 10+ minutes for the matchmaker to expand its parameters until it includes the region you actually want. working as intended”

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You’d think the correct option would be to make everybody matched into the Global region by default. Then have some difficult to find setting that blocks/filters specific regions.

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I know it’s a separate issue, but I’m still wondering why we’re even required to join General Chat in the first place. I’ve never encountered a situation where it benefited me in any way. All it really does is occasionally get in the way when reading private/group chat.

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Reread the post there are no longer any regions. So you can be placed in a games with players outside what would have been your region if that’s the best game the match maker sets up.

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No.
Literally just revert this.
It’s THAT simple.
Except that it’s not, considering it would be tedious to do so.

Preferred data-centers would probably be the closest to satisfaction.
Or maybe a simple dropdown menu where u can choose to get matches with either faster queue’s, or better ping.

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You and I know that isn’t happening.

But if they had an option that you had to dig a little too access, that let you pick and choose your data center(s), that would affect maybe 1% of players.

I’m sure they’d be up for that.

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“1% of the players”

I’m sure lots of big streamers with plenty of viewers enjoy getting randomly and unwillingly getting put in games with players that can’t speak their language + get crazy ping.
IDDQD and ML7 are an example.
So it definitely affects more than 1%

I’m not trying to sound entitled here, but this change just doesn’t make sense and I don’t recall anyone that specifically asked for this.

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Other way around.

I’m saying have everybody in the global matchmaking by default.

Then have a somewhat difficult to find menu to pick and choose data centers. Which maybe 1% of players would make use of.