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World of Warcraft: ISPs Slowing It Down?
Drew
Member Posts: 434
Recently, Canadian telecommunications giant, Rogers had instituted a policy that slows down the connection while users are playing World of Warcraft in a bid to limit peer-to-peer file sharing.
The major ISP has confirmed that it’s slowing down WOW and admitted it’s in fact interfering with the connection. Ken Thompson also stated in the letter to the CRTC that the problem occurs when customers are “simultaneously using peer-to-peer file sharing applications” and offered a lame solution; turn off peer-to-peer within the Warcraft settings. Blizzard, the creator or Warcraft uses bit torrent technology to update the game.
Read the whole article here.
Comments
O2 in the UK have now started restricting WOW on there broadband packages giving a simular lame response when ya contact them
3 yrs of work as a rogers customer service rep and manager. glad I'm not working there anymore, those will be some hate filled calls coming in.
Was bad enough when we cancelled some guy's net for non-payment while his guild had Arthas at like 5% :P
This could have something to do with Blizzard's tightwad decision to defray their own costs by using Torrent peer-to-peer technology for their patch downloads. It was a cheapass move when they started it. It was only a matter of time before ISPs decided to do something about it.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
They do that here in the US a bunch of E-thugs and nerd kids with inhalers and fat guys on disability would march (or attempt to) on the ISP in question.
Oh and....Ouch 5%! dam haha!
On the Virginmedia forums in the UK there are reports of the same thing, and for Rift too.
Sad, sad, sad.
Originally posted by shukes33
Grind is not one of the downfalls of DF it is just a feature.
Exactly Blizzard as they like to boast 12 million paying subs yet to cheap to host there own patches.I hope it forces Blizzard to actually spend a lil of the billions they are making rather than take advantage,.
God, I love Cox. They don't fuck around. Yearly FREE speed increases, they fight like hell in court for privacy, and never send letters for P2P. They definitely wouldn't try to pull this shit.
I'd be outraged if my ISP did this to me,
I pay $50/mo for internet access, NOT for http or ftp or smtp or bittorrent protocols. How I use the bandwidth I pay for is no goddamn business of the ISP.
That would be like paying my monthly water bill to my home, but the water company telling me I can only take a bath with that water, and not a shower. Screw that and screw Rogers.
I swear people will take any excuse for bashing WoW and Blizzard.
Blizzard is now bad because they use Torrent technology to distribute their patches, really?
Telecoms are just P.O'ed here in canada we voted the UBB system for internet fees down, cutting into their profits in the future. Now they are retaliating however they see fit to stick it to customers. Its not just WoW players screwed over by Rogers, All major telecoms in Canada are being dicks.
A game is just that... a game, not an emotional crutch.
Yeah I was shocked when they started using bittorrent to download patches. It has probably caused a ton of problems for players who are not tech saavy and are behind firewalls and it drains our bandwidth via upload/seeding when our $15 a month should be paying for all of this like it does in every other MMORPG.
IMO the ISPs should continue throttling WoW players.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
I think Blizzard should disable the torrent downloads if that helps to fix the problem. But even if it's for Blizzard to fix, I think Blizzard is not the one to blame. ISPs are selling as "internet connections" connection which in fact are not usable for all the internet traffic. It's the ISPs who should be more clear and specify that they are selling "web browsing connections".
I'm pretty certain that every isp contract contains something to do with bandwidth, if you are using too much bandwidth they will cap your internet at peak times. Admittedly they don't make a big thing out of it, but i can guarantee if you read all the contract there will be something in there about it, just that most people skim the contract looking out for things like contract length, speed, data limit etc.
I do agree it sucks but at the same time, as some others have pointed out, Blizzard have made millions and millions with WoW and they are ploughing that money into there next mmo project and not into things like a download server for their patches etc.
In a word, YES! Blizzard's decision to capitalize on a free technology to use their customers as web hosting for their patches was bad when they started it and it's even worse now that ISPs are starting to monitor and throttle large peer-to-peer downloads. It's not the download that's the problem, it's the uploads you're hosting so that others can download. Ever heard the pleas from people saying, "Don't disconnect your downloader when it's finished so mine will be faster" ? Why do you suppose that is?
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Using bittorrent is the best tool to provide patches to every user.
Without bittorrent none of you would be able to get patches rapidly.
No server in the world is capable handling such huge data traffic just for 1 company/game that has millions of users.
Without bittorrent the patch servers would go down within a hour.
Nobody should blame Blizzard or Bittorrent, blame the internet service providers being rip off with their bandwith and costs.
In the netherlands there is even no FUP or datalimits anymore because of all the internet applications these days.
Grow with the times and provide bandwith, not limit and pull cash from their customers. Typical American and UK ISP behaviours.
If ISP's can't handle the traffic than they are a piece of shit ISP and should upgrade their hardware and or lines.
And if they complain p2p is interfering with other services other users use, it is bullshit. Like MSN, email etc, barely uses any bandwith at all.
lol well you're pretty much calling every isp in the UK and USA a piece of shit in that case, the reason why these companies now cap bandwidth at peak hours is due to the fact that at one time they didn't cap it, and people hughly abused that fact. Every person that pays for internet should get the same service as the next person that pays, if one person is using torrents all day then that's not fair on anyone else, hence why they cap it.
You mention about upgrading lines, i think you are mistaken, because for a isp company to actually add new lines into streets will cost billions which no one has nowadays, so they rent space on those lines through existing lines, in the UK it's basically only BT and VirginMedia which has lines under most streets (with the exception of very rural areas).
If ISP can not deliver the amount of upload they should not offer it? However people who whine most likely signed a fair use policy in there contract and should thus not complain.
That's all people use the internet for? MMOs, MSN and email? LOL.
A lot of people on this thread need to grow up and realize that someone has to pay for bandwidth. It's not magical, but the product of folks who invested billions of dollars in infrastructure. Blizzard charges you $50+ for their game, they can set aside $5 of that to pay to distribute the game and the subsequent "free" patches.
The reason Blizzard is heavily promoting direct downloads from their website (which are actually Peer to Peer downloading from other people's computers and ISPs) is that they get to keep more of the "box" money, as opposed to DVD sales or downloads provided by other services (wherein they get only a nominal amount of the box sale). They're trying to get all the money and incur none of the costs.
They too need to grow up and absorb the cost of the download, or charge their players for the added costs. Trying to make ISPs pay for distributing their game is BS. Same goes for all the other games that do it as well, like DDO, LotRO, etc.
WoW uses hardly any bandwidth at all, so they wouldn't even bother with it.
You seemed to have no problem defending 1 greedy company over another...you must realize that most ISPs didn't/don't build the infrastructure, they piggyback off and buy the rights to charge to use it. Liken it to a private company setting up toll booths on state highways built by government/contracted workers.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
They have always "throttled" peer to peer. This has nothing to do with WoW directly. any game that updates with torrents will be affected.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
are they trying to restrict ppl from wow or what.... if you are paying for internet service whats the deal with wow..... dump internet providers (if u slow my internet down and dont reduce my bills, im out)
thats how popular wow still is.... ISP dont want you to become wow addict...... WTHell
LOL, get them blizzy, get them
no, they always have been bad because of this.