Funny story. It's not like Blizzard can't afford bandwidth.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
the most funny part of the story is at the end.... Rogers blaming blizz for making changes to wow.... that really causes problems with Rogers services? then Rogers is the problem........ i donc mind the torrent way of patching wow as long as it does it correctly, and ive never had problems (maybe cos im not in canada?) ... anyways.... Rogers is still the problem
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.
While I agree Cox is pretty good, I had a friend who received a letter for pirating a movie from Cox.
Funny story. It's not like Blizzard can't afford bandwidth.
they could but 1st they would have to build their own ISP capable of delivering this amount of data in a reasonable time. thats why they use P2P, the only way of physically doing something like this atm.
This is ridiculous. You pay for an internet you can't fully use, it's like blaming YouTube for streaming videos, somehow they think it's valid for P2P technologies.
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.
Thats not how its done in NA... The telcoms have very powerful lobby groups, and make VERY generous "contributions" to the various politicians. Who then make the laws to benefit them, and to hell with their customers. Why should they spend all of that money on sufficient upgrades, when buying politicians is so much cheaper?
Companies like Comcast and other such, have in all too many areas a virtual monopoly on broad band. They keep potential competition out by the sweet deals they have with the politicians they own. Crony capitailsm at its "best".
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.
Thats not how its done in NA... The telcoms have very powerful lobby groups, and make VERY generous "contributions" to the various politicians. Who then make the laws to benefit them, and to hell with their customers. Why should they spend all of that money on sufficient upgrades, when buying politicians is so much cheaper?
Companies like Comcast and other such, have in all too many areas a virtual monopoly on broad band. They keep potential competition out by the sweet deals they have with the politicians they own. Crony capitailsm at its "best".
In the UK there is a certain amount of 'throttling' of bandwidth at peak times etc, BT in particular is aiming to provide more Video over Internet services (vision etc) which means they have to prioritise their own services, and video streams are definitely bandwidth hogs, especially if we're talking HD (even if its only 720) but.. Peer to Peer software has taken a lot of stick, even though most users only really use it overnight etc when theres less bandwidth contention, and yes i have used it myself, and while you can use Peer to Peer during hte day, the download rates etc, are so low it just isnt worth bothering with.. but ... it does look like they (the government) are trying to push through a 2 tier 'internet' where you can pay for a 'prioritised' internet connection.. along with a raft of other legislation aimed at curbing (illegal) file sharing which will no doubt have no effect on anyone other than legitimate users..
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.
Maybe it does save Blizz some cash to use P2P updating, but guess what, it also deals with update crunches. When a million or more want to get updates at the same time, it takes an insane amount of bandwidth to handle that without dropping to dead slug speeds. No company on the planet can afford to pay for that kind of capacity on a regular basis. Enter P2P in the form of bittorrent updates, and guess what, it spreads the load around the net so you the user don't have to wait 20 hours to download a 200mb update.
I guess you're too young to remember the old days before such methods. In short, download days were a nightmare for most people.
Also, the P2P is only for the updates, which aren't the same packets as the gameplay, so if Rogers claims that they are only throttling the P2P but it's affecting gameplay, then they are lying. To re-iterate, WoW does NOT use P2P for gameplay, it's only used for game updates. (aka patches)
You can hate WoW and Blizzard if you like, but is sounds like Rogers is playing dirty buggers with you. Also, the decision by Blizzard to use P2P to distribute updates was more about easing things for the users than it was to save money, but they liked that too. (If you bother to do a little research, you will find out what I'm talking about, there was a lot of discussion before it happened.)
Point one: Blizzard should support downloads from them and not p2p. It isn't going to be one server and it wouldn't be cheap but it would be good ethics to support there product directly from there site.
Point two: The ISPs are complaining and capping because they are in trouble. Truth is they sell ALOT more bandwidth then they could support at anyone moment, but there idiology is "not everyone will use it at once". Human kind is becoming to web centric and the idiology of Internet Service Provider's will have to change as a general rule of thumb.
Point three: This problem is not going to change the ISP's minds or Blizzard's, but is going to be a continual issue with more and more subjects of bandwidth "abuse". The change will come from a general stand point after things get alot worse then they are.
Honestly, I've always found this reatarded. In my country, that is nowhere as "advanced" as western Europe, US or Canada, companies can give internet for 10 euro a month with 5-10 mb/s dl on torrents and 1-3mb/s on external links, yet in the areas I mentioned before, people still have trouble with such things. Doubt those companies can't afford the technology, seems like they simply don't want to upgrade and decide that the customer is to blame.
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.
While I agree Cox is pretty good, I had a friend who received a letter for pirating a movie from Cox.
Wait...
Are you saying it's a mark against Cox that they don't want people using their service/bandwidth for illegal activities like, say, piracy?
If so...
/facepalm
Sign of the times, folks.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
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)
Again, it is all Peer to Peer, torrents etc. not WoW specifically.
THe "changes" that blizzard made is likely the "streaming" download option for the game rather than a full download and patch. . these people will be "throttled". They didn't target WoW. They don't care if you play WoW etc.
Edit: There are ways around it anyway and I am not a fan for sure.
In Canada your choice is high speed and incredibly low cap, or high cap and throttling of all kinds; all more expensive than you'd pay in the U.S. Cooperative monopolies are commonplace in industry here, so it is possible that the major players are keeping things similar in an agreement.
well the whole thing stinks, blizzard ought to put some of that money they make to use in stopping these companies from hurting the consumers or providing a better way and these companies ought to be heavily fined for lying to their customers and charging them for a service that they are intentionally taking away from them or at the least slowing it down for them.
Nothing to do with Blizzard or any other game developer, the problem lies with ISP throttling YOUR internet connection. BTW it has NOTHING to do with how much bandwidth you are using because none of these games use much even when using bittorrent.
So instead of yelling at any of these game companies, you should be contacting your representative. Otherwise the next thing you will see is ISP's determining your content you can view.
Fortunately this is not happening in the states as our political reps are a bit more savvy atm.
I do business with Time Warner Cable and they pride themselves for fast gaming connections. As far as I can tell, they don't throttle a damn thing and I get my 10Mbit throughput no matter what it is I'm doing. If they changed that policy, I'd not hesitate to go back to DSL, while it may be slower, in the decade that I've used them, they have never considered throttling anything.
well the whole thing stinks, blizzard ought to put some of that money they make to use in stopping these companies from hurting the consumers or providing a better way and these companies ought to be heavily fined for lying to their customers and charging them for a service that they are intentionally taking away from them or at the least slowing it down for them.
Not much that Blizzard can really do about it. While they do have billions, they are still not in the league of some of these major telco companies. Not to mention, if they diverted the major amounts of money require to "lobby"(bribe) enough politicians to matter, then their share holders would have a kicking,screaming tantrum.
As for fines... You forget who OWNS the politicians in question... And its not the consumers or voters. Its the corporations and banks. They also control the mass media, who create, shape and manipulate "public" opinion. Factor in who controls the public "education" system, and you have the nasty feed back loop we've seen for generations.
Blizzards share holders would have even more of a screaming fit, if they invested in enough hardware and capacity to serve up all of those massive patches to millions upon millions of players in a timely fashion. No CEO in (or out...) of their right mind, is going to risk that. If the board of directors didn't fire them, the share holders would come after the board. Its happened many, many times before.
Nothing to do with Blizzard or any other game developer, the problem lies with ISP throttling YOUR internet connection. BTW it has NOTHING to do with how much bandwidth you are using because none of these games use much even when using bittorrent.
So instead of yelling at any of these game companies, you should be contacting your representative. Otherwise the next thing you will see is ISP's determining your content you can view.
Fortunately this is not happening in the states as our political reps are a bit more savvy atm.
You aren't a victim...Errr... "customer" of Comcast I see... ^^ The only reason that the FCC came down on Comcast, was because they got caught, and then had the arrogance to basically tell the FCC to stick it. Even after that, Comcast sued the FCC and won... Corps like Comcast and their lobby groups own so many politicians that they can pretty much do what they want, when they want. Its only when they show such arrogance in *public*, that they get their wrists slapped(if even that).
As for the ISP's, of course they are going to go well out of their way to minimize the use of their systems, and also how much they have to invest in upgrading their infrastructure. They have for a long, LONG time over sold that infrastructure, and laughed all the way to the bank. Given what it would cost to keep ahead of the rising tide of capacity, its actually cheaper to "contribute" to the various politicians, than it is to invest in sufficient hardware and capacity.
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.
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.
I think some people on this thread need to grow up and realize that we, WE, are already paying for that bandwidth and we're paying through the nose for it. And I'd guess that we are also paying on average a hell of a lot more than it costs to maintain the big ISP's lines and hardware. How much of my $90/month goes toward simply keeping the lights on? Would you say it's closer to $80 to $85 or $8.00 to $8.50? Knowing these modern robber barons, I would expect it's much closer to the latter than the former.
I think some people on this thread need to grow up and realize that we, WE, are already paying for that bandwidth and we're paying through the nose for it. And I'd guess that we are also paying on average a hell of a lot more than it costs to maintain the big ISP's lines and hardware. How much of my $90/month goes toward simply keeping the lights on? Would you say it's closer to $80 to $85 or $8.00 to $8.50? Knowing these modern robber barons, I would expect it's much closer to the latter than the former.
90 bucks a month? That is indeed highway robbery, I thought my $35 was expensive...
this is a redonculous thread... ppl blaming WoW, geez are u really that dumb ? Nothing's wrong with peer-to-peer, u'r living in the past... way in the past because u never had to patch a game before p2p existed it seems...
Only one to blame is the ISP, get a decent one instead or live with it (or sue them?)... wow only uses the p2p during patches, not for playing the game...
wow only uses the p2p during patches, not for playing the game...
That is actually incorrect. World of Warcraft now streams patches while you play the game, hence why Rogers is telling their affected customers to disable that option from within the patcher itself.
FYI, I don't condone what Rogers is doing. As a matter of fact I pay €40 for a Tripleplay package (TV+Phone+20Mbps) without any bandwidth caps.
while i understand why some companies use p2p , its happening more n more for games i deplore that its becmong more frequent.
the reason being is becuase isp are and will start to use traffic shaping more and more (unless the laws of the particular country they are in dont allow it ).
why so you ask? well is very simple with the speeds we can DL now whether it be games, movies etc etc bandwitdth is chewed up really fast. is it a wonder when you dont have to rent movies buy dvd or music cd etc etc as you can get it all "free" via the net
or so we thought, what is happening is that notthing in life is free and now we will have to start paying via our internet bills bandwidth charges traffic shaping etc etc
sometimes i think people are just stupid the net is like the goldrush way back in far west times and looksy what happened there, it didnt last did it ?
laws were made n rules established yada yada
so perhaps some companies ARE greedy but lets face it the average internet user is aswell
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Comments
Funny story. It's not like Blizzard can't afford bandwidth.
the most funny part of the story is at the end.... Rogers blaming blizz for making changes to wow.... that really causes problems with Rogers services? then Rogers is the problem........ i donc mind the torrent way of patching wow as long as it does it correctly, and ive never had problems (maybe cos im not in canada?) ... anyways.... Rogers is still the problem
While I agree Cox is pretty good, I had a friend who received a letter for pirating a movie from Cox.
they could but 1st they would have to build their own ISP capable of delivering this amount of data in a reasonable time. thats why they use P2P, the only way of physically doing something like this atm.
This is ridiculous. You pay for an internet you can't fully use, it's like blaming YouTube for streaming videos, somehow they think it's valid for P2P technologies.
Thats not how its done in NA... The telcoms have very powerful lobby groups, and make VERY generous "contributions" to the various politicians. Who then make the laws to benefit them, and to hell with their customers. Why should they spend all of that money on sufficient upgrades, when buying politicians is so much cheaper?
Companies like Comcast and other such, have in all too many areas a virtual monopoly on broad band. They keep potential competition out by the sweet deals they have with the politicians they own. Crony capitailsm at its "best".
In the UK there is a certain amount of 'throttling' of bandwidth at peak times etc, BT in particular is aiming to provide more Video over Internet services (vision etc) which means they have to prioritise their own services, and video streams are definitely bandwidth hogs, especially if we're talking HD (even if its only 720) but.. Peer to Peer software has taken a lot of stick, even though most users only really use it overnight etc when theres less bandwidth contention, and yes i have used it myself, and while you can use Peer to Peer during hte day, the download rates etc, are so low it just isnt worth bothering with.. but ... it does look like they (the government) are trying to push through a 2 tier 'internet' where you can pay for a 'prioritised' internet connection.. along with a raft of other legislation aimed at curbing (illegal) file sharing which will no doubt have no effect on anyone other than legitimate users..
Maybe it does save Blizz some cash to use P2P updating, but guess what, it also deals with update crunches. When a million or more want to get updates at the same time, it takes an insane amount of bandwidth to handle that without dropping to dead slug speeds. No company on the planet can afford to pay for that kind of capacity on a regular basis. Enter P2P in the form of bittorrent updates, and guess what, it spreads the load around the net so you the user don't have to wait 20 hours to download a 200mb update.
I guess you're too young to remember the old days before such methods. In short, download days were a nightmare for most people.
Also, the P2P is only for the updates, which aren't the same packets as the gameplay, so if Rogers claims that they are only throttling the P2P but it's affecting gameplay, then they are lying. To re-iterate, WoW does NOT use P2P for gameplay, it's only used for game updates. (aka patches)
You can hate WoW and Blizzard if you like, but is sounds like Rogers is playing dirty buggers with you. Also, the decision by Blizzard to use P2P to distribute updates was more about easing things for the users than it was to save money, but they liked that too. (If you bother to do a little research, you will find out what I'm talking about, there was a lot of discussion before it happened.)
Lost my mind, now trying to lose yours...
Point one: Blizzard should support downloads from them and not p2p. It isn't going to be one server and it wouldn't be cheap but it would be good ethics to support there product directly from there site.
Point two: The ISPs are complaining and capping because they are in trouble. Truth is they sell ALOT more bandwidth then they could support at anyone moment, but there idiology is "not everyone will use it at once". Human kind is becoming to web centric and the idiology of Internet Service Provider's will have to change as a general rule of thumb.
Point three: This problem is not going to change the ISP's minds or Blizzard's, but is going to be a continual issue with more and more subjects of bandwidth "abuse". The change will come from a general stand point after things get alot worse then they are.
Honestly, I've always found this reatarded. In my country, that is nowhere as "advanced" as western Europe, US or Canada, companies can give internet for 10 euro a month with 5-10 mb/s dl on torrents and 1-3mb/s on external links, yet in the areas I mentioned before, people still have trouble with such things. Doubt those companies can't afford the technology, seems like they simply don't want to upgrade and decide that the customer is to blame.
Wait...
Are you saying it's a mark against Cox that they don't want people using their service/bandwidth for illegal activities like, say, piracy?
If so...
/facepalm
Sign of the times, folks.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Again, it is all Peer to Peer, torrents etc. not WoW specifically.
THe "changes" that blizzard made is likely the "streaming" download option for the game rather than a full download and patch. . these people will be "throttled". They didn't target WoW. They don't care if you play WoW etc.
Edit: There are ways around it anyway and I am not a fan for sure.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
In Canada your choice is high speed and incredibly low cap, or high cap and throttling of all kinds; all more expensive than you'd pay in the U.S. Cooperative monopolies are commonplace in industry here, so it is possible that the major players are keeping things similar in an agreement.
well the whole thing stinks, blizzard ought to put some of that money they make to use in stopping these companies from hurting the consumers or providing a better way and these companies ought to be heavily fined for lying to their customers and charging them for a service that they are intentionally taking away from them or at the least slowing it down for them.
Nothing to do with Blizzard or any other game developer, the problem lies with ISP throttling YOUR internet connection. BTW it has NOTHING to do with how much bandwidth you are using because none of these games use much even when using bittorrent.
So instead of yelling at any of these game companies, you should be contacting your representative. Otherwise the next thing you will see is ISP's determining your content you can view.
Fortunately this is not happening in the states as our political reps are a bit more savvy atm.
I do business with Time Warner Cable and they pride themselves for fast gaming connections. As far as I can tell, they don't throttle a damn thing and I get my 10Mbit throughput no matter what it is I'm doing. If they changed that policy, I'd not hesitate to go back to DSL, while it may be slower, in the decade that I've used them, they have never considered throttling anything.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Dont work with that company, problem solved.
Not much that Blizzard can really do about it. While they do have billions, they are still not in the league of some of these major telco companies. Not to mention, if they diverted the major amounts of money require to "lobby"(bribe) enough politicians to matter, then their share holders would have a kicking,screaming tantrum.
As for fines... You forget who OWNS the politicians in question... And its not the consumers or voters. Its the corporations and banks. They also control the mass media, who create, shape and manipulate "public" opinion. Factor in who controls the public "education" system, and you have the nasty feed back loop we've seen for generations.
Blizzards share holders would have even more of a screaming fit, if they invested in enough hardware and capacity to serve up all of those massive patches to millions upon millions of players in a timely fashion. No CEO in (or out...) of their right mind, is going to risk that. If the board of directors didn't fire them, the share holders would come after the board. Its happened many, many times before.
You aren't a victim...Errr... "customer" of Comcast I see... ^^ The only reason that the FCC came down on Comcast, was because they got caught, and then had the arrogance to basically tell the FCC to stick it. Even after that, Comcast sued the FCC and won... Corps like Comcast and their lobby groups own so many politicians that they can pretty much do what they want, when they want. Its only when they show such arrogance in *public*, that they get their wrists slapped(if even that).
As for the ISP's, of course they are going to go well out of their way to minimize the use of their systems, and also how much they have to invest in upgrading their infrastructure. They have for a long, LONG time over sold that infrastructure, and laughed all the way to the bank. Given what it would cost to keep ahead of the rising tide of capacity, its actually cheaper to "contribute" to the various politicians, than it is to invest in sufficient hardware and capacity.
I think some people on this thread need to grow up and realize that we, WE, are already paying for that bandwidth and we're paying through the nose for it. And I'd guess that we are also paying on average a hell of a lot more than it costs to maintain the big ISP's lines and hardware. How much of my $90/month goes toward simply keeping the lights on? Would you say it's closer to $80 to $85 or $8.00 to $8.50? Knowing these modern robber barons, I would expect it's much closer to the latter than the former.
90 bucks a month? That is indeed highway robbery, I thought my $35 was expensive...
this is a redonculous thread... ppl blaming WoW, geez are u really that dumb ? Nothing's wrong with peer-to-peer, u'r living in the past... way in the past because u never had to patch a game before p2p existed it seems...
Only one to blame is the ISP, get a decent one instead or live with it (or sue them?)... wow only uses the p2p during patches, not for playing the game...
That is actually incorrect. World of Warcraft now streams patches while you play the game, hence why Rogers is telling their affected customers to disable that option from within the patcher itself.
FYI, I don't condone what Rogers is doing. As a matter of fact I pay €40 for a Tripleplay package (TV+Phone+20Mbps) without any bandwidth caps.
while i understand why some companies use p2p , its happening more n more for games i deplore that its becmong more frequent.
the reason being is becuase isp are and will start to use traffic shaping more and more (unless the laws of the particular country they are in dont allow it ).
why so you ask? well is very simple with the speeds we can DL now whether it be games, movies etc etc bandwitdth is chewed up really fast. is it a wonder when you dont have to rent movies buy dvd or music cd etc etc as you can get it all "free" via the net
or so we thought, what is happening is that notthing in life is free and now we will have to start paying via our internet bills bandwidth charges traffic shaping etc etc
sometimes i think people are just stupid the net is like the goldrush way back in far west times and looksy what happened there, it didnt last did it ?
laws were made n rules established yada yada
so perhaps some companies ARE greedy but lets face it the average internet user is aswell
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.