The harsh truth – South Africa’s multiplayer pings can’t get better

It’s no secret that the biggest obstacle facing multiplayer gaming in South Africa right now is high latency.

No matter how much our infrastructure develops or how fast our internet speeds get, as 99% of multiplayer servers are hosted on other continents, South African gamers will always have high pings in general.

We asked Mweb’s Derrick Kaylor if there is anything we can do remedy the situation:

The Harsh Truth

“Since most games are hosted internationally, the biggest factor affecting latency is simply the geography, specifically the distance from servers,” said Kaylor.

“Ping rate can increase well over 200ms on international servers. This makes locally hosted games extremely attractive to the avid gamer.”

“Given that we have very limited control of latency on international servers and that we want our gamers to have the best experience, MWEB prioritises all our gaming traffic across the network, which means that our gamers have the best possible experience locally from our network.”

The Effect

“If South African’s are disadvantaged by high latency, then it ruins the overall gaming experience,” said Kaylor. “A number of members have expressed their unwillingness to buy a game if it is not hosted locally.”

“Our professional eSports players are currently not able to play on the same international level as North African countries and European players.”

“One option is it to convince international competitors to play half the games on our local servers. This can become a reality if we have local sponsors that are able to host competitions with the same prize pool as other international competitions.”

The Fix

“South African gamers need to become more vocal in convincing publishers to bring local servers to South Africa,” said Kaylor. “As in the case with Battlefield 1, EA listened to these complaints and have now promised to host local servers in early 2017.”

“We should not be complacent when paying full price for an online game and then not getting the full online experience. Without local servers we are constrained by our geographic location.”

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