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Blizzard Linking StarCraft II Regions For Multiplayer
StarCraft II has been out for almost a year now, but multiplayer competition remains intense and serious. To help keep things going smoothly, Blizzard has announced that it will be linking together some of the Battle.net regions for the next season of multiplayer.
ShackNews reports that each StarCraft II region will be linked with one other when Season 3 begins. North American and Latin American servers will merge, while Europe will be tied to Russia and Taiwan will team up with Korea. This change will happen with the start of Season 3 of StarCraft II multiplayer next week. Blizzard explains:
"Having a larger pool of players means the automated matchmaker for ladder games will be faster and more effective at finding opponents at or near your skill level. Similarly, more players means faster queue times for custom games, which benefits both players and map creators. From a social perspective, players will be able to create character and Real ID friendships with people from the newly linked region, which they couldn't have before.
"There should be no impact on game performance. All players in the linked regions will be connecting and playing through the same data centers that they were using prior to region linking, which is the main reason why linking these regions together is fairly straightforward."
A move like this makes us wonder if StarCraft II enthusiasm is beginning to dry up a bit as less hardcore players disappear while awaiting the Heart of the Swarm expansion pack. Whatever the reasoning, though, having a bigger pool of opponents to draw from for multiplayer can't hurt.
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