Hi guys, I downloaded SC2 in the UK and have since moved over to Shenzhen, China, is there a way I can connect and play some ranked games online? After dredging through a few posts here and elsewhere, the closest I’ve found was a guide showing how to subscribe to a Chinese server, but I don’t know how useful this is now as it’s from 2012. Thanks in advance!
This is still working like it was in 2012(This might actual change soon with china stance on video game)Now I suspect you probably are using a VPN now right since you are able to access Reddit from china so for sc2 you have 2 options either you can still use a VPN(Usually you will have to pay to have a good enough Vpn to allow for decent online gaming).Otherwise you are stuck using the Official Chinese server.Nothing bad in that unless you are a GM player since the skill level in china is very low compared to every other region even NA. By the way for blizzard games you need to Install a VPN to your computer the usual Browser addon wont work so you might want to search for a guide for this since this is a bit complicated if you are not too familiar with this kind of thing.
I’m in shenzhen atm, there are a few options. With vpn you can play on Asia or America server and have relatively decent ping via Japan or Hong Kong gateways, express is pretty good at avoiding packet loss and in my short experience here it has been consistent enough.
Another option is playing without vpn, just log into the bnet app as you normally would, and again Asia or America works (America is practical due to the Singapore gateway, i have had slightly better ping using Asia for KR/TW however). I found I preferred Asia with no vpn for the kr player pool and lowest ping/ packet issues.
The real issue I have faced has been initialization bugs… Something about the firewall messes with starcraft and its ability to download maps and data. My advice is to choose a game server, stick to it (as different servers seems to confuse the client as to what local data it has, like whether it has the map pool), and use your vpn as needed to get through the initialization issues. You can actually turn it on and off while in the game menus and bnet service will reconnect, and when it does it will often fix initialization and download maps properly.
Good news is that as long as you don’t change game servers and vpn on/off setting often, once the map pool and everything works once, it tends to stay that way.
There isn’t much info out there (atleast in English) about this so it’s been a lot of trial and error for me,generally speaking.
Good luck!
Edit: I have no experience with china’s proprietary sc2 server but chinese bnet requires a chinese ID number and imo it seems like wayyy too much work for practically no benefit.
I personly use UU加速器 connect to the KR service. The KR service is very unstably in these days. Sometimes you can direct link to the KR service. Sometimes you can’t log in even with VPN. I suggest you ask your chinese colleague which jiasuqi"加速器“ is the best in that area use that to connect to the KR Service. But i personly suggest you just play chinese serviece, only when your MMR is higher than 5000(KR point) you need to play on KR service. AS for the EU OR NA sevice forget about it, the 400+ms is a nightmare.
If you have more problem you can just ask me. IF YOU PLAY ON CHINESE SERVICE I THINK WE CAN ADD FRIDEND.
Thanks mate, I have ExpressVPN installed at the moment, seems to work ok for general use but not sure how it would cope in-game. So I’m using a VPN (I usually connect to Tokyo), do I just log in, select Asia region and then I can play on the Asian servers?
Thanks Hobo! I’ll have a play around with/without the VPN then. For some reason I can’t play ranked like I could in UK, the ranked option is greyed out, when I click unranked, nothing really happens it just hangs there, I’ll try change between America/Asia regions.
Cheers
By the way the ExpressVPN are sucked. Now I think rent a VPS OR CLOUD service and set up the Shadowsocks is the best solution and it’s cheaper.
Depending on the VPN it should be that easy yeah unless theres something blocking somewhere.At least in my experience using an installed VPN it was that easy.The thing you should look at before though is where exactly is the Asia server located so you can find a network much closer to it to have better ping.I doubt blizzard has servers in japan. There is also the possibility of having to download the non Chinese client for sc2 too to be able to connect but I dont know about that thats why you should find a guide if it does not work.
Thanks for your help mate. I played a bit today through VPN, it wasn’t bad! Not totally smooth but not too bad.
When I use UU加速器 the ping is only 60-70ms just like play on chinese service but recently china telecom seems have some problem so all service linked to outside china are unstable.