At the risk of blizzard getting mad at me for this, I’m trying to help an EU friend (who is unavailable to be my guinea pig atm) get NA only games again. She’s currently stuck on ams1, but I’ve heard this process might work for other EU/etc. players who only want NA. It involves blocking the specific IP regions that blizzard uses, forcing you to (hopefully) only connect to the NA available servers.
I’m going to borrow someone elses guide for the most part, but make some small changes. Make sure you exit the battle.net application and close Overwatch before proceeding.
The easiest way to load the firewall controls is the following:
- Use Windows-R to bring up the run box of the operating system.
- Type WF.msc and hit the enter key.
Once you have opened the firewall controls
- Click on I̶n̶b̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ Outbound Rules on the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security window.
- Select New Rule under Inbound Rules on the right.
- Select Custom rule on the next screen and click on next.
- S̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶"̶T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶g̶r̶a̶m̶ ̶p̶a̶t̶h̶:̶"̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶n̶a̶v̶i̶g̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶l̶o̶c̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶(̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶n̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶,̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶>̶ ̶G̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶S̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶>̶ ̶I̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶L̶o̶c̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶’̶l̶l̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶.̶)̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶̶̶̶M̶U̶S̶T̶̶̶̶ ̶s̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶̶̶O̶v̶e̶r̶w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶.̶e̶x̶e̶̶̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶N̶O̶T̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶e̶r̶.̶ ̶T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶r̶t̶a̶n̶t̶.̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶x̶e̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶/̶O̶v̶e̶r̶w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶/̶_̶r̶e̶t̶a̶i̶l̶_̶/̶
Select “All Programs”
- Leave everything as is on the ports and protocols screen and click next.
- Select “These IP addresses” under “Which remote IP addresses does this rule apply to”, click add, and enter the scope using these values
Add these ranges:
From: 157.175.0.0
To: 157.175.255.255
From: 15.185.0.0
To: 15.185.255.255
From: 5.42.160.0
To: 5.42.175.255
From: 211.234.96.0
To: 211.234.127.255
From: 54.144.0.0
To: 54.221.255.255
From: 15.179.0.0
To: 15.188.255.255
From: 5.42.176.0
To: 5.42.191.255
From: 185.60.114.0
To: 185.60.115.255
From: 185.60.112.0
To: 185.60.113.255
From: 35.192.0.0
To: 35.207.255.255
From: 34.64.0.0
To: 34.127.255.255
- Click ok, the IP range should now be listed under these IP addresses. Click next.
- Select block the connection on the next screen. This blocks those IP addresses so that connections cannot be established anymore.
- Leave everything as is on the next screen and click next.
- Name the new rule and add a description to it if you want.
- The new rule appears in the outbound rules list now.
This should block the majority of servers that aren’t US. I’m sure there’s some sneaky data center somewhere, but we can figure that out in the next step.
Now go ahead and launch the bnet app again, and load up Overwatch. Join a QP or vs. AI game, and once inside press CTRL+SHIFT+N and you’ll get a screen full of data. Check the upper left corner, and see what server you’re connected to. If you see ord1 or lax1, congrats. You’re in NA. If not, you’re still connected to the wrong server.
If any non NA players are willing to give this a shot, I’d love to hear your results. The solution used to be to apply this to all programs, not just the overwatch.exe, but apparently somewhere along the line blizz made a firewall exception when using the launcher, and this is supposedly the bypass.
EDIT & UPDATE - I’ve made some changes after fiddling around with this and reading some other comments. All we need is an outbound rule that applies to all programs. I’ve also updated the IP list as well, however please note that I might have missed some. Verified it worked on my system by blocking myself from the above IPs along with NA’s IP range, then removing one of the blocks (ex. from KR servers) and was only able to connect to the unblocked region’s games.