StarCraft II to get global multiplayer in upcoming patch

Blizzard has announced that one of its biggest games - StarCraft II - will get Global Play. In the past, multiplayer has only been possible with the region you bought the game in. Global Play will be added to the game in an upcoming patch in the coming months, according to Blizzard.

According to the announcement, Global Play will give you access to StarCraft II game servers in regions outside your own, expanding the possibilities for eSports, exposing you to maps and games that aren’t yet published everywhere, and making it easy to play with your friends in other parts of the world. 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. With Global Play, you’ll have other regions to choose from as you create new characters, take on different ladder opponents, and perhaps try maps that you’ve never seen before.

Starcraft II is getting a new major update

Here are some of the key points of Global Play:

• 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.

Back in September, Blizzard had announced the start of the beta for the next game in the StarCraft franchise – StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. The beta for Heart of the Swarm is set to be multiplayer-only and will mostly help Blizzard in ironing out the bugs and balance issues in the game. The good news is that the beta testers for the game are not under any NDA, so we will soon start seeing screenshots and videos of the Heart of the Swarm come up all over the internet. According to Blizzard, only the multiplayer and some of the units are playable in the beta right now, but “Additional Heart of the Swarm features will also become available in future phases of the beta test. More details will be announced at a later date.”

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Starcraft II was originally planned to be one game, but was split into three separate games, each dealing with the story of one race due to the scale of the game. The game was split into three complete games, titled Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm and Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void. Wings of Liberty deals with the story of the Terran Marine – Jim Raynor, Heart of the Swarm deals with the story of the leader of the Zerg – Sarah Kerrigan and Legacy of the Void deals with the story of the Protoss Dark Templar - Zeratul.