Line speeds, heavy bandwidth caps and latency issues have plagued South African gamers since the dawn of online gaming. Over the years we have seen minor improvements to our online experience, with much more promised for the near future…but how does this affect South African World of Warcraft players?
Line speeds
South African line speeds compared to that of the rest of the world leave much to be desired. Thankfully, World of Warcraft does not require a significantly large download or upload rate, meaning that the standard 384Kbps ADSL line is more than sufficient in the majority of cases. In fact, the minimum requirement is only a 56Kbps dial-up line. Lines only start to get pushed to their limits in events such as large raids. Of course, room to work with is always welcome and as a result a higher line speed will ensure less lag as a result of download and upload bottlenecks.
Bandwidth caps
World of Warcraft does not use much data at all – around 10Mb per hour. Your cap size will obviously need to adjust with the amount of time you spend in-game. You’ll get a good 100 hours or so per month out of a 1 gig cap. The casual to semi-hardcore player should experience no problems with lack of bandwidth to spare come the end of the month.
Latency
This is where we as South Africans really suffer. The standard policy among ISP’s is to shape their customers’ bandwidth and request that they pay additional fees for unshaped lines.
In a nutshell, this means that certain protocols, such as HTTP traffic, are favoured over other protocols, including those involved in online gaming, and as a result gamers playing on shaped lines experience higher latency.
On a shaped line, pings can range anything from 300 to 1000ms+ depending on the server, the server’s load, the South African network load and a number of other factors. Ideally, on an unshaped line it is possible to obtain a healthy ping, which will give you the green light in World of Warcraft, but many experience pings in the range of 300-400ms on such lines.
The question is – how important is latency? It really depends on the class you’re playing. If you’re playing a Rogue or a Feral Druid, for example, where timing is everything, you’re going to want to minimize your latency as much as possible. Higher pings when playing a Mage or a Warlock, on the other hand, won’t affect you too badly. Over time, you’ll get used to the short delay between giving a command and seeing a response, and as a result you’ll learn the difference between when a spell is really finished casting and when the game tells you it is.
If you can afford it, an unshaped line is definitely the way to go. Regardless of class, a lower ping simply makes your play experience more enjoyable on the whole. However, should you not be able to afford it, the game will in no way be unplayable on a shaped line.
Shop around ISP’s in order to get the best deal and you may even be able to get an unshaped account from one ISP for the same price as a shaped account from another ISP. Even shaped accounts will give you a range of average latencies. Remember – the lower a realm’s population, the lower its load will be, and the lower your latency will be as a result.
Ed’s note
This is going to sound like a corporate sell-out/advertorial, but it really is not. We simply believe in giving credit where credit is due.
With that out the way, Axxess has recently launched a new 626 package, which supplies fully unshaped bandwidth between 6pm and 6am, and 24/7 during weekends for a very competitive R45 per GB. Furthermore, the bandwidth is not of the sub-par high-ping satellite variety, and makes use of the undersea Sat 3 cable.
For most WoW players, 6pm until 6am and 24/7 weekends will comprise 95% of their play time, making the package perfectly suited for the game. We are currently testing an account and will have a full report up soon.
Of course, Unshapped broadband will only be required until we get our own official locally hosted WoW server…
Discuss the local WoW landscape on the forums
Loading ...
