Player Unknown Battlegrounds, or PUBG, is a modern gaming phenomenon. With players counted in their hundreds of thousands, it is the second largest Battle Royal game out there after Fortnite and is still going strong. It’s a shooter where only the fastest, or sneakiest survive so ping can count. With that in mind, can you change location in Player Unknown Battlegrounds? Let’s find out.
What began as a mod for Arma 2 became Day Z Battle Royale and gradually evolved into Player Unknown Battlegrounds. It wasn’t the first Battle Royal game but it was certainly the first really successful Battle Royal game. Recruited by Bluehole, original Arma 2 modder Brendan Greene was recruited to oversee the development of PUBG and the game launched in 2016.
Player Unknown Battlegrounds
Player Unknown Battlegrounds is an online shooter that epitomizes Battle Royale. You are dropped onto a map with 99 other players and have to find weapons and items and make your way across the map trying to survive as you go. It’s a free-for-all where only the strongest survive and where you have to be fast and know the maps to win.
If surviving against other players wasn’t demanding enough, the map is surrounded by a circle that gradually shrinks as each match progresses. You have to stay within the circle otherwise you are removed from the match. As the circle shrinks, the battles become more intense as surviving players are herded into an ever-shrinking play area. The last player standing wins the game.
Along with Fortnite, Player Unknown Battlegrounds is the undisputed king of Battle Royale. Until now. New upstart Apex Legends has just been released and I predict it will outperform both Fortnite and PUBG. It is better on every level than those two games. It is polished, the map is superb, character choice has something for everyone and it is team based rather than solo. Teams of three players group up to support each other across the map. It’s the same Battle Royal gameplay with scavenging and survival at its core. It is less cartoony and juvenile than Fortnite and more fun than PUBG. You heard it here first!
Player Unknown Battlegrounds and Fortnite have quite the head start, with the latter being a cash cow for Epic, the publisher. However, I think the quality and mass appeal of Apex Legends, plus the polished game and gameplay will allow it to overtake the two incumbents within the year.
Changing location in Player Unknown Battlegrounds
Back to the matter at hand. Can you change location in Player Unknown Battlegrounds? In a game where speed is key, having a low ping is essential. If you’re a sociable player, having a server of players who speak your own language is also useful. As PUBG has regionalized servers, you would think you would automatically be assigned your closest server. That isn’t always the case.
Neither can you change your location in Player Unknown Battlegrounds. You currently have no choice whatsoever in what server you play on, or in what region. This can be incredibly frustrating if you’re in the US and are assigned an Asian or Oceanic server. Not only does your ping suffer as a result but if you’re assigned an Asian server and don’t speak the language, you’re completely isolated.
There was a bug for a while last year that defaulted many US players to Asian servers. That bug was (mostly) fixed and began allocating us to NA servers but you will occasionally find yourself not understanding a word people are saying, which can be a good thing, but also suffering high ping. It is this latter that can make or break a game.
Currently, your only option is to pull out of the current game. While the original bug has been fixed, the PUBG global server allocation system is still not perfect. There have been calls for a region lock system for a long time and the people behind Player Unknown Battlegrounds have still yet to introduce one.
If you have a high ping in PUBG that isn’t your fault, you can battle on and hope others are suffering the same or you need to abandon the game and go back to the lobby. There is currently no way to manually select a region in PUBG as yet. That may change of course, but not for a while.
You cannot even use a VPN to force a different region as the VPN also comes with its own ping overhead. For now at least, you have to manually manage high ping or Asian server allocation and all the challenges that come with it.
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