Diablo 3 allows for cross-region multiplayer

Upcoming mouse-killing, loot-driven RPG Diablo III will launch with the ability to hoover up piles of gold and baddies alongside and against international players, Blizzard has announced.

Dubbed the Global Play feature, Diablo III will let users log into another server after initially joining their ‘regular’ server. This will be done from the main menu.

There will be three location-based servers, as detailed by a Battle.net FAQ on the subject: Americas (for those in the US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia), Europe (that’ll be us at VideoGamer.com, the rest of the EU, Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa and the Middle East) and finally Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau).

Like with everything in life, there are caveats. Characters, items and friends lists do not transfer across servers. The gold-based auction house is also locked to territory, and the money-based auction house is only available in your ‘home’ territory.

Blizzard causes many upside-down smiles when it announced that its last retail game, StarCraft II, would region-lock its servers.

Diablo III launches for PC on May 15, and there will be loads and loads of midnight launches for eager beavers.