Recently everyone knows that Blizzard has opened the middle eastern server, and that raised so many issues to middle eastern and European players where they sometimes auto-connect to either European or Middle Eastern servers and cause them lots of lags. I’m here to share my solution on how to have a choice on which servers you want to connect or avoid without using a paid service or VPN. Also, it can help Middle Eastern players that wish to return back to the European servers. Let’s get started.
In order for us to blacklist servers from auto-connect, we need to first block them in our PC firewall, I will show the full steps you need to do in order to do that
Before we start you need first to enable your firewall (Public Network)
The easiest way to load the firewall controls is the following:
- Use Windows-R to bring up the run box of the operating system.
- Type WF.msc and hit the enter key.
Once you have opened the firewall controls
- Click on Inbound Rules on the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security window.
- Select New Rule under Inbound Rules on the right.
- Select Custom rule on the next screen and click on next.
- Leave everything as is on the screen that comes up and click next (all programs selected).
- Leave everything as is on the ports and protocols screen and click next.
- Select “These IP addresses” under “Which remote IP addresses does this rule apply to”,click add, and enter the scope using these values
Add these ranges:
From: 157.175.0.0
To: 157.175.255.255
Then click OK
Then add again
From: 15.185.0.0
To: 15.185.255.255 - Click ok, the IP range should now be listed under these IP addresses. Click next.
- Select block the connection on the next screen. This blocks those IP addresses so that connections cannot be established anymore.
- Leave everything as is on the next screen and click next.
- Name the new rule and add a description to it if you want.
- The new rule appears in the inbound rules list now.
- Now do the same to the outbound rules list.
Doing all this will help European players avoid connecting to the middle eastern servers, and will also let middle eastern players play in the European server with MUCH fewer queue times if they wish to play there.
If you wish to connect back to middle eastern servers then you disable the rules. Hope everyone finds this helpful and happy gaming overwatchers!
glad it helped, better than other solution where you need to pay for VPN service and you’ll have to deal with gaming lags because of that. This permanently helps European players to avoid auto-connecting to middle eastern servers, and at the same time help middle eastern players return back to EU servers if they wish to.
