Found this support article: https://www.bungie.net/en/Help/Article/46125

Blizzard regions are the player's selected environment through which they are accepting to play with other players. Players may only play with other players who have selected the same region, and cannot join the games or activities of players in other regions. The player's selected region will also limit who appears in-game in a player's Friends Lists and Clan Roster.

When players launch Destiny 2 from the Blizzard desktop application, they will have the option to select their region of play. If the player takes no action to change their region, it will match the default region of the player's Blizzard account.

Players who wish to change their Blizzard region may do so by closing the Destiny 2 application, visiting the Destiny 2 landing page in the Blizzard desktop application, and selecting their desired region from the drop down above "Play".

For more information on Blizzard regions, please see this Blizzard article on Global Play: https://battle.net/support/article/7558

So best case it will be like Overwatch on PC is currently with region specific friends lists but your progression carries over. Still you will never say "oh hey, my friends in *other region* are playing, I'll send them a message to invite me." because they will never show in your friends list in the game until you switch.

Worst case it is like Diablo 3 is on PC now and if you want to play with a friend from another region you can but one of you have to start over from scratch. Sure that seems crazy but you never know with battle.net and a game that hasn't been on PC before. EDIT: Looks like this won't be the case.

Any case it will be more of a hassle than the console versions... Hopefully they patch in some global friends list into battle.net someday and this won't be a problem.

Here are the regions:

• Americas for players in North America, Latin America, South America, Australia, and New Zealand.
• Europe for players in the European Union, Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and the Middle East.
• Asia for players in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

mod edit:

Well shit... I hadn't even thought about that... I hope it doesn't affect the GB PC clans all that much, hopefully there'll be a good spread of players from all regions in there so that everyone has someone to play with at least

If it is indeed like overwatch and not Diablo the hassle will be minimal, so keeping my fingers crossed

@onarum: The only thing they say about clans is this "The player's selected region will also limit who appears in-game in a player's Friends Lists and Clan Roster." so I guess the clans will seem less active than it is in game? Or we just joined a clan locked to whatever region the creator is and if we are in another it won't show up? It will be an interesting beta to be sure..

Looks like the progression is safe at least:

@forcen: Yeah that tweet is from David Shaw, the PC lead for Destiny 2. This is more hassle than anything, mostly for our EU brethren. In all honestly the easiest thing for us to do with the PC Clan is just have everyone (mainly the EU guys since I don't think we will have many Asian players) set their regions to Americas. The reason being the vast majority of the Clan will already likely be in the Americas region to begin with, and if those other players who aren't just choose Americas, the entire Clan will all show up together. I will update the Clan Post to suggest this though.

@hestilllives19: I hope this doesn't make playing on EU a waste for the clan or something because EU players will play on the EU region at some point. Hopefully you still contribute even if you can't see the other players.

I just wish this whole issue didn't exist... maybe some day battle.net will fix this and you can chat with all your friends cross game and cross region. All modern consoles don't region protect games by now so online play should just work without these hoops. Make it like PUBG and let me pick regions after inviting my friends.

This concerns me because Battle.net is garbage for Northern Canada. I had to do a test to see how many stops my internet traffic makes to get to the USA based server for Overwatch (there are none for BC) and it was over 15 hops. Each hop introduced 8-12ms lag leaving me with a consistent RTT of >100ms.

@forcen: Why would EU players ever play on the EU region? The only concern I could think of is if those Regions define which of Bungie's Mission Host Servers you attach to. I'm not positive it will even work that way though, but it might. Still, that should be that big of a deal and wouldn't create a whole lot of excess lag for EU players on American Servers since most of the actual action happens Peer to Peer anyways.

@monetarydread: It shouldn't be anything like Overwatch though since Overwatch uses Dedicated Servers. Destiny 2 uses a crazy hybrid Server slash Peer to Peer networking architecture. My understanding is that region locking only defines certain aspects that handshake with Bungie's Servers. Here is the information on exactly what those are.

https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/45919/7_This-Week-At-Bungie--05252017

"Every activity in Destiny 2 is hosted by one of our servers. That means you will never again suffer a host migration during your Raid attempt or Trials match. This differs from Destiny 1, where these hosting duties were performed by player consoles and only script and mission logic ran in the data center. To understand the foundation on which we’re building, check out this Destiny 1 presentation from GDC. Using the terms from this talk, in Destiny 2, both the Mission Host and Physics Host will run in our data centers... The server is authoritative over how the game progresses, and each player is authoritative over their own movement and abilities. This allows us to give players the feeling of immediacy in all their moving and shooting – no matter where they live and no matter whom they choose to play with."

@hestilllives19:Well, I would not see my EU friends in my friends list ever because they would just hit the play button on battle.net and play on EU. I would also be invisible to my normal battle.net friends and they might not even notice I own destiny 2 if I play on US only.

@forcen: Ah, guess I didn't think about players who actually have Battle.net friends. That makes sense. I don't know how to get around that then. At least the rewards are Clan wide?

The friends list situation on Battle.net has always been, and still is, straight up garbage. For instance, I wanted to add my friend in London to my Battle.net friends list and I'm on NA. Well, he's on EU. So in order to even add him, I had to sign out of Battle.net completely, sign in to the app on EU, and then add him. Oh and guess what, when I'm normally playing I can't even see if he's online or not in his region, and vice-versa. In order to play a game together, one of us not only has to sign completely out of our home region (thereby losing access to the rest of our friends list) but then we have to switch game regions in the app to match. And oh...purchases and progress don't carry over between regions for Hearthstone or Diablo 3.

I mean, can't really blame Activision for using their own existing platform for this one, beats having to pay the freaking 30% valve takes.

Just hope they change this in the future because it really makes no sense at all.

@forcen: It looks like your friends list and Destiny servers are separate. People in the Beta are claiming they can be in the American Server and see their EU friends, but I assume their EU friends would also have to join Destiny on the American Servers. Wouldn't this just lead to everyone playing on the American Servers everywhere though. Seems pretty dumb.

@hestilllives19: What about vice versa? EU players seeing US players? Friends lists and/or clans? If you can chat, inspect and do whatever you can do to friends in your region except joining then it might almost be tolerable, just a quick restart to join someone after seeing them playing. Still, that doesn't match that support article? I guess we will all find out in less than 24h.

If this is how it works then it feels like a patch away from an automatic restart when trying to join a different region and maybe even normal joining some day.

Tried some of the beta and you can't see your EU friends playing at all if you pick US when you launch. I guess the workaround is to chat from the battle.net app but then you have to tab out of the game.

It's crazy in HotS too, all hero progression, hero pool and MMR is completely separate. High ranking players can smurf without even using a different account, but it's pretty much like having a different account because you have to buy everything again. People have been complaining for years, nothing has changed.