Blizzard announce Global Play for Starcraft 2

Blizzard has announced that Global Play functionality will finally be coming to Starcraft 2. It’s been an omission that has left a lot of die-hard fans bitter for quite some time, but finally all players will soon be able to play against anyone in the world.

The possibility was first mentioned back in May, but Blizzard has now outlined how it’s all going to work – for each region you wish to play on, you will have to create a separate profile.

“Each region will have separate profile data, meaning that characters, profiles, ladder rankings, progress, and friends lists will not carry over from region to region,” says Blizzard.

The lack of global play has been a major hurdle for small, player-run tournaments since the game’s release, and the new functionality should allow the RTS to grow into an even bigger force in the E-sports community.

Blizzard will be releasing more information in the future, but for now they can tell you this:

Players will be able to freely switch between regions via the StarCraft II login screen.
When your region’s game servers are undergoing maintenance, you may be able to play in a different region that is not down for maintenance.
Your game language and user interface will not change when you change regions.
Players using Global Play will be subject to the in-game policies of their selected play region.

This will particularly excite players wishing to play on the Korean servers, as even buying a separate account wasn’t an option for many due to Korea requiring the use of a valid identity number. Now Blizzard just needs to add LAN functionality and everyone will stop complaining for 5, maybe 10 minutes.