Announcing improved Realms regional support

Greetings, players! Today, we’re happy to share some exciting news on Realms and connectivity. Just as our fancy title here above might suggest, the Realms team has been working hard behind the scenes to improve the connection to your Realms, no matter where you are in the world! The feature is included in the upcoming R21U8 release for Bedrock Edition and is currently also available for testing in Java Snapshots today, set to release in the next full release on Java Edition.

Some players may not care too much about the nitty gritty inner workings of server hosting technology (they make excellent bedtime stories though!) so to summarize this change, the improved connection to Realms, means less lag and a smoother overall game experience. However, if you are one of those players who would love to know all the details about this improvement, well, buckle up because that is what the rest of this article is about. Let’s dive into the realm of Realms server hosting!  

Adding new regions

When you connect to your Realm, you are connecting to a Bedrock Edition dedicated server hosted by the Realms service running within a data center. Those data centers are located throughout the world, and the closer you are to the server, the lower your network latency will be between you and the server (AKA the better your connection will be). We’ve now added support for several new data centers, meaning players are on-average closer to their servers than they were before and because of that, they now have better network connections (measured in latency).  

Here is our updated list of data center regions:  

 

• Washington, USA  
• California, USA  
• Utah, USA  
• Iowa, USA  
• Illinois, USA  
• Virginia, USA  
• North Carolina, USA 
• Ireland  
• Sweden  
• Netherlands  
• Southern England  
• France  
• United Arab Emirates (UAE)  
• Brazil   
• South Korea  
• Eastern Japan  
• Western Japan  
• Hong Kong  
• Singapore  
• New South Wales, Australia  
• Victoria, Australia 

Selecting where we host a Realms server 

When you buy a Realm and start playing on it, the Realms service automatically decides which data center should host your Realm based on which is best for you, the Realm owner. That decision used to be made once, when you first purchased your Realm, and then every time you joined your Realm after that, we would just send you back to that same data center. Well, we decided that wasn't a great way of handling it! What if you moved? What if one of these new data centers we added is better for you than the one you were previously assigned to? What if a dog ate your broadband? Before you were out of luck – you were assigned to the wrong data center with no easy way to change that. 

Well, it looks like your luck has returned, because we have a fix for you! Our new region selection logic now selects the best data center for the player joining the Realm for each new session (sessions end when no player is actively playing on the Realm for a few minutes). That means that if you, for example, live in Seattle, USA, and you are the first person to play on the Realm in a given session, it will likely be hosted in a Washington, USA data center, but if your friend who lives in Stockholm, Sweden, is the first to join the session it will likely be hosted in the newly added Sweden data center. Each time the Realm is started up, it can now start up in a different data center region -- whichever is the best connection for the player who started the session. 

We have silently been testing this new data center region selection logic for a small percentage of Realms over the last few months, and the impact has been substantial. Network latency has dropped on average by over 20%. We are very excited to roll this out to all Bedrock Realms with the 1.21.80 update. But don't fret Java Realms owners – this is available in Snapshots already and will be included in the next full release!

Note that these changes may not improve your specific experience – for many of our players the data center regions they had been assigned before are still the best option for them today. But for the players that will be moving to a different data center the improvements can be significant in. Some players were previously assigned Virginia, USA, but our new logic is finding that maybe Singapore or some other region is much better for them resulting in 50%+ latency decreases. In game this will make your Realm feel smoother and less laggy, but it will not have an impact on the time it takes to join your Realm.  

"But what if I want to control exactly where my Realm is hosted?" 

We thought you might ask that… Which is why we are adding a new settings tab in game* for your Realms that will allow you to select your preference of how your Realm's hosting region will be determined. The options are:  

• Automatic, first to join (default) 
• Automatic, Realm owner 
• Specific Region 

Let's dive into each!

*Note: The new settings tab is being added to Minecraft Bedrock Edition 1.21.80 release. Java Edition will have the new “region preference” setting added in the next full release.  

Automatic (first to join Session) 

This is the new default behavior and what was described above. We will select the best data center for whoever is the first player to join the Realm for a session. Sometimes that may not be the best for the Realm owner, and they are the one paying so maybe the next option is better for those Realm owners that want a real competitive edge over their Realm members.  

Automatic (Realm owner connection)  

This is kind of like a blend of our old approach and our new approach. We choose which data center the Realm is hosted in based off of which is best for the Realm owner, but instead of checking that only once, we check which is best every time the Realm owner joins. That means that if we add a new data center that is better for the Realm owner, they will get it the next time they join the Realm. Or if a Realm owner moves across the world, the next time they play on the Realm, they will get assigned a data center that is best for their new location.  

Specific Region 

You might be the stubborn confident type of Realm owner that knows exactly which region you want your Realm hosted in at all times. Maybe you have some players on your Realm that live on the east coast of the US and others that live on the west coast. The "automatic first to join" option would have the Realm hosted in either west US or east US rather than picking something in the middle. That is why we also added the option to pick a specific region, so that you could pick a central US region to offer the most balanced option for all the players on your Realm.  

It is a preference, not a promise 

Note that for all of these selections, we are only allowing you to select your "preferred" data center region. It is possible that due to server capacity constraints, random weather events, networking issues, or piglin invasions that your Realm may be hosted in a different data center region than what you selected. In that case, we will always attempt to put you in the next best data center region. For example, if you specifically chose Washington, USA as your preferred region, but it was viciously under attack by an illager raid, we will choose to host your Realm in the region closest to your specific choice, aka California, USA in this example. If you have automatic selected, we will choose the next best region for the Realm owner or the player joining depending on which automatic setting you chose.   

How do I know where my Realm is being hosted for a given session?  

To help you troubleshoot your connection a bit more, you will now be able to see during the Realm loading screen what region your Realm is hosted on for that session. See the example below!  

Let us know what you think! 

We are always looking for player feedback on Realms. Please visit the Minecraft feedback site or swing by the Minecraft feedback discord server to share your feedback on these changes with us.