In an update to the game's official FAQ, Blizzard have detailed new "Global Play" functionality for Diablo III that will allow players from any region to get their game on outside of their home servers.

The three regions are defined as The Americas (which includes Australia and New Zealand for proximity reasons), Europe and Asia and players will be able to hook up with others outside of their region, with a few caveats:

• While you can access the gold-based auction house in any region in which you’re currently playing, the real-money auction house is only available in your “home” game region -- you can only access it for the characters you have in your “home” region, and you cannot use the real-money auction houses in other regions. Note that players in some regions do not have access to a real-money auction house at launch.
  
• Heroes, items, and friends lists do not transfer across regions.
  
• Players are subject to the policies in their selected play region.

Personally, we'd still prefer if it wasn't region-restricted at all, but at least there's an option now.

Hit up the complete FAQ for a much more detailed overview of the Global Play functionality.

Diablo III is coming to PC and Mac on May 15th 2012.

sweet as

Cute concept, but does this really change anything?
It's not like 'traversing north Americas Diablo 3' is gonna be any more difficult than SEAs is gonna be...

I presume this will only affect the auction house... it's not like there are any custom maps etc

Cute concept, but does this really change anything?

It does if you have friends in other regions that you want to play with.

"Real" money auction house? What the f***? They arn't selling items that change gameplay in diablo 3 are they? They never did this with WOW and i hope they arn't going to do it with d3...

"Real" money auction house? What the f***? They arn't selling items that change gameplay in diablo 3 are they? They never did this with WOW and i hope they arn't going to do it with d3...

Quick on the uptake, our gamer

Almost certainly will mean your achievements will be locked to the region. So if you start in one region, and decide to hop...buhbye cheevos...

Just sounds too much like SCII to think otherwise...

Quick on the uptake, our gamer

as always.