Realm Switching Questions

[serendipity]

Lately, reading all of the expert posts by your Euro people (+ Hegemon-West), I am becoming more and more inclined to switch to Euro. Can anyone living anywhere (say in the East) play on Euro, West, etc? Do I need to get another CD to test this out? I'm just really reluctant to lose all of my items :(. Okay, so in the process of typing this message, I've resolved to not switch until my characters expire from neglect (which is unlikely to occur soon) but I am still curious about these realms. Hey! I just though of an idea. Why don't all of you amazingly pro people (Lorg, fredsta, Hegemon, Warlock to name a few) come on over to East; the weather's nice!

[Valsimot]

You can make accounts on all realms without fear with your one CD key. You still can't mule between them as they exist on different realm, but you can use SAME account name on different realms. Some players have characters on both USA and Europe, depending on where their friends are.

[Lorg]

come on over to East; the weather's nice!

Just make the switch to euro. Weather is bad, but our realm got more players :thumbup:!

[Fists of War]

I've had a bit of a search around on all the different realms, what it really comes down to in the end is three things:

1. Realm Population.
2. Ping/Time Zone.
3. Friends.

Since I've played west, I have a few friends there. Also, there is not a huge grouping in any one of realm of classic forummers. East seams to be fairly popular, but west has enough people. The time zone sucks on east and west for me.

So it's basically up to ping:
170-300 on west.
200-400 on east.
400+ on Europe and Asia.

Oh for an Australasian server! < 100 Ping would be beautiful, here's to hoping for D3 and possible Aussie realms.

[serendipity]

Really? I can be on two different realms with the same account? My characters won't transfer back and forth though right? My friend gave me his CD cuz he doesn't play anymore though so I could try it on their just in case. I'll just try it out, see what happens. Chances are, I'll still pursue my career on East, but we'll see. If it's 12:00pm here on the east cost, what time is it in Europe (say France for example)? The only reason I'd switch if because many people say the community there is "better" and apparently there are smarter people too ^_^. I hope to play with the pros one day, but I am reluctant to lose all my items.

Since I now have two CDs (and two CD keys) can I play on east with my old accounts and start new accounts on Europe on another computer with a different CD-key at the same time? That would be great! Thanks for all your help guys!

[fledgeling]

You seem to be very confused about the game.
Blizzard will no ban you for switching realms. You can do it on at any time you want.

But note that "switching realms" means that you will simply create a new account on another blizzard server (e.g. Europe). Your old accounts wont be deleted (unless you do not log in for 3 months.. but it's just standard) and you will simply have another, new account at a different realm. This means that you wont be able to move your items between chars from different realms - thus you will have to start from scratch. That's why most people ask few times before switching. In addition, all your friends (if any), will be still playing on west and characters from other realms (like europe) cant enter west games.
Europe realm characters enter europe games. Basically it's about the lag. The servers are located in Europe thus there is less lag for Europeans. US West servers are supposedly for US West. This is not obligatory however.

[serendipity]

Thanks fledgeling. Sorry if I appear really stupid, I am really just curious. Now i'm pretty certain that I know almost everything there is to "know" about the mechanics of Diablo II. I'm not a noob, I have played for a total (though split up into chunks, not continuous) of probably about 3 years. However, I never switched realms, so I want to be sure I don't mess anything up. Anyway, thanks!

Two more not quite related questions: Does Blizzard prohibit the use of 2 CD-keys solely for the purpose of xfering? If I get temp banned on one CD-key, can I still use the other while the first is temp banned so as not to lose items when xfering?

[TraderScope]

I dont think Blizzard has anything against Xferring, as long as you won't use any 3rd party programs to load up two different Diablos. You see, normally you can only have 1 Diablo running at a time so this will make it hard to Xfer safely as the game might get closed before you can join it with your other character. A solution is to have 2 sets of cd-keys and use either 2 different PC's or just 2 different windows accounts from the same computer.

If you want to install 2 Diablos on the same computer you first need to rename the other Diablo directory installed to something else than Diablo II. eg.
C:\program files\Diablo II -> C:\program files\Diablo 2

Now you can install your other Diablo 2 (using the other set of cd-keys) and when you're done you can play with 2 Diablos using 2 different accounts in Windows. The hotkey for changing between Windows accounts is windows key + L.

HF!

[Valsimot]

Really? I can be on two different realms with the same account?
I didn't say that ^^. I said that you can have same account name on differen't realms at the same time. ;).

The thing is that those accounts are different, due to different realms, Battle.net for example looks at them as:

serendipity@West
serendipity@Europe

[fledgeling]

Thanks fledgeling. Sorry if I appear really stupid, I am really just curious. Now i'm pretty certain that I know almost everything there is to "know" about the mechanics of Diablo II. I'm not a noob, I have played for a total (though split up into chunks, not continuous) of probably about 3 years. However, I never switched realms, so I want to be sure I don't mess anything up. Anyway, thanks!

Two more not quite related questions: Does Blizzard prohibit the use of 2 CD-keys solely for the purpose of xfering? If I get temp banned on one CD-key, can I still use the other while the first is temp banned so as not to lose items when xfering?

if you get temp banned you get ip banned, thus noone from the ip can join -> consequently all chars are banned

blizzard doesnt provide easy solutions to run two copies of diablo at the same computer, however I think there is a legit way to do it

they cant ban you unless you use some third party program (like I did)

[Fists of War]

Although all bands seem to be on a particular realm (not sure about actual perm bans), so you can go back to your old characters for a while if this happens.