Heroes announces Global Play and new in-game reporting tools

As we get closer to the June 2 launch of Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard is rolling out more and more features. First up is the announcement of Global Play for Heroes, which is the ability to play the game in regions different than your home region. If you normally play in the Americas region, but it’s Tuesday morning and the game is down for 8 hours of maintenance, you can now switch to Europe or Asia where the servers are up and running. Sounds great? Well, there are more than a few caveats.

First, your account progression, friends list and purchases (i.e. heroes, mounts and skins) won’t transfer. You will be able to make purchases and progress in the new region, but none of that will transfer back. And if the region you switch to has a newer version of the game than your home region, your client will be patched and then you won’t be able to play in your home region until its servers are updated to that version as well. So, yeah, think carefully about that one. If you are still interested, you can switch between regions on your Battle.net client, from the in-game Main Menu (F10) or from the Heroes login screen.

Play Nice, Play Fair: Report players during a game by tabbing to the score screen and hitting the gear button. pic.twitter.com/cXzOlBxWRK

— Heroes of the Storm (@BlizzHeroes) May 21, 2015

Also announced is the new in-game reporting tool. Hit Tab while in-game to bring up a list of players and click on the gear icon to the right of their name to report them for cheating, harassment or other offenses. Though Blizzard mentions you can report a player for AFKing, currently there is no specific option for that on the drop down menu of offenses when you use the tool.

And in a final bit of news, an EU Heroes CM has said that the Wonder Billie mount that was only available if players made a purchase from the in-game store during Alpha and Closed Beta will also be rewarded to accounts making purchases during Open Beta. That gives you until Sunday, May 31st if you want this mount. We are waiting for confirmation on that in the Americas region as well.