How does the StarCraft 2 region lock work?

Question

Does someone who wants to play the North America and Latin America versions of StarCraft 2 need to buy two keys, or is just one key enough to install both game clients?

I'm not sure about this on SC2, as when i go to download the game client installer[1], there is two different options, one for L.A. (in Spanish and Portuguese) and other for N.A. (just English).

Also, when i click "Change Region" on the link [1], i got the following warning:

Select your region carefully.

You will only be able to play with people in the same region, and not all languages available to each region. Select the region closest in proximity to help ensure the best game performance.

North America and Latin America are 2 different regions in this list.

(But this is my question... just the game client is region locked or my account (cd-key) is region locked too?)

[1] https://us.battle.net/account/management/sc2/pre-download-page.html

PS: I want to play the single-player campaign in English (cause i don't like the translation that blizzard did to Portuguese), but i want to play with my friends and a lot of them are going to buy the "Portuguese version" on stores here in Brazil.

Answer 1

According to a post by a Blizzard employee, you might be able to play with your friends no matter where they are:

Getting people online, playing and interacting is obviously the overall goal for the Battle.net platform, and that includes allowing people to play across regional boundaries as they have in the past.

Unfortunately, there are a multitude of challenges we have to overcome due to the unique regional account and billing options that didn't exist in the past. But those hurdles aren't insurmountable, and we are looking into solutions that will allow interested players to obtain access to other regional versions without having to buy another full copy of the game. Those solutions are something we're currently planning to have available through Battle.net Account Management within the first few months of StarCraft II's release.

Before that solution is implemented though, you're correct in that you'd need to purchase a US copy of the game on launch day to play in the US region.

However notice that he is talking about a potential future feature which may end up not getting implemented (or not implemented in a satisfying way), so in the meanwhile I would be careful about which version to buy.