MMORPGs

[Darric]

Hello everyone,

I'm studying at UCT, currently planning on moving into a flat next year. I am keen to obtain an internet connection of sorts, and my prime interest would be to play a MMORPG (most probably World of Warcraft) on possibly their international servers. I understand that doing this from SA isn't ideal (I played Ultima Online on international servers for 4 years with my 56K....) but I am interested in finding out what everyone reckons the best option is?

I would be accepting of ADSL hands down if it wasn't for that 3GB cap. There's no way that will be enough for me. I could download more than that in a weekend.

Does anyone here play an MMORPG of any sort? How has your experience been with your conenction?

Please help out!
Thanks,
Darric

 

[Saul]

I have recently tried to get online with the new UO server in SA. It basically sucked, no point in being stuck every few seconds.

I wouldnt recommend it for any games, MMORPG's are unplayable in SA so you can imagine overseas.

 

[nonroker]

I've played Starwars Galaxies on my Sentech connection without any problems.

 

[Cloud]

Saul, u kinda forgot to mention what package u are on and if its mywirless or adsl. As this thread is under the mywireless heading i assume thats what u have. yet many others with mywireless have played SWG as well as City of Heroes so i don't quite understand what ur talking about.

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death - life is only a dream - and we're the imagination of ourselves.” – Bill Hicks

 

[Saul]

Well let me explain the situation.

I am on mywireless, its the mywireless forum so obviously I would have the product. ADSL is perfect for online gaming, the latency is upsettingly low but prepare for plenty extra accounts if you play online. My friend with ADSL used 3 gigs in about 8 days playing UT on the local servers.

I tried to play on the Ultima Online server in South Africa and it was a shocking experience. I dont know how people can play Galaxies when I find it impossible to run from point A to point B in a game like Ultima.

I've played Vietcong online, SA server and its not cool having a 300 ping that spikes up to 600 on occasion.

Cloud, I dont actually see how its possible to play MMORPG's overseas. Have you ever actually tried to play them yourself? Have you tried to play an online game with Mywireless? I would be interested to speak to someone who has played games overseas and maybe they can explain to me what I am doing wrong with Ultima because it is sloooooooooow.

 

[Kai]

I've been playing SWG and City of Heroes for quite some time now, and it's been great... until last week Wednesday. Since then the latency has gotten REALLY bad and I'm warping all over the place... so much so that I can't play (dying too much)

Apparently they changed something on tower 12, which I (very politely I might add) asked them to change back, or I will cancel and sue.

They're moving backwards... not fixing... end of August should be interesting...

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><i><div align="right"><font color="red">i haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on disk somewhere...</font id="red">
tower12.randparkridge.jhb|13-21% signal|256k package, running at 0.3 - 3k/s </div id="right"></i></font id="size1">

 

[Bishop]

I've ordered City of Heroes a little while back... I hope they sort the issues out before it arrives!

Cowtenna | 12% Signal | Tower 12 ( Mintek )

 

[Kai]

it's an AWESOME game. one of the best MMORPGs I've played. Okay! It's only the second one, but it's REALLY good!

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><i><div align="right"><font color="red">i haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on disk somewhere...</font id="red">
tower12.randparkridge.jhb|13-21% signal|256k package, running at 0.3 - 3k/s </div id="right"></i></font id="size1">

 

[groenie]

I've been playing Project Entropia on a 128kbps package without too many problems.

 

[koosbeer]

I played the Lineage II beta with no problems.
&lt;offtopic&gt;
groenie: I applied for a account for project entropia about 2 months back. No answer!
Any help you can offer?
&lt;/offtopic&gt;



========================
All souls of the living
dead shall be banished
into eternal damnation

Sucktech, be warned!!
========================

 

[Darric]

And everyone who has replied in the positive, you are using Sentech?

Hmm... does the good outweigh the bad I wonder...

Darric

 

[Saul]

Sentech is great for downloads. I'm hitting 15K on most downloads and surfing is fairly fast.

I just wish I could work out why my pings are so shocking compared to everyone elses.

Grumble grumble []

 

[Syzygy78]

Hello Darric...

I have conducted many many tests on all sorts of connections and have involved quite a few people in it as well. Firstly, I would think that if you do not have a very good signal to a MyWireless network, your gaming experience will not be favourable as you will have quite a bit of packet loss and your pings will spike quite often... and depending on what game you play, those ping spikes might just get you booted out of the game you are playing, so I dont suggest a MyWireless connection for gaming.

The best option for onling gaming overseas by far is Unshaped ADSL, you will have some amazing pings to the USA and Europe. In some instances your pings could get as low as around 240ms - 260ms. Unfortunately this is a very very expensive option. The standard ADSL is not a good option as all your traffic is shaped and only Telkom knows what happens to the routing of your requests. I have pinged USA and Europe servers with shaped ADSL at different time of the night and your pings are anything but consistent with the shaped ADSL.

Since then, I have had an ISDN line installed at home. My pings are quite good as I go through UUNET and they have 3 direct fibre links to the USA and if I am not mistaken, one to the UK. My pings vary to the USA from an avg of about 270ms (East Coast) to 350ms (West Coast) and to Europe (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, etc) it averages around 280ms - 330ms.

If you are disciplined with your usage, your ISDN line can actually be quite cheap in comparison to ADSL. Here is a cost summary for ISDN:

1) Line Rental: R210 per month
2) Infinit Call: R55 per month (Your calls are capped in callmore time to R8.55, this includes being connected for an entire week-end from Fri 7PM to Mon 7AM)
3) ISP Cost: R85 per month for 64K (I use Silvertubes... I have never had a problem with them)

So for all of this, it is R350. The remaining cost depends on how often you connect. Just as an example... if you stay connected for every week-end during the month and connect once a night during callmore, your call charges should not be more then R185 on average [Should you only connect at 64K]. SO, this is a total of R535 for alot of gaming during the month!!! Which really isnt bad at all... Just the rental of an ADSL line is R680.00!!! Your ISDN line will also give you the opportunity at connecting at speeds of upto 128K [you have to make two calls at once to achieve these speeds]... this means you have the potential of downloading over 3GB of whatever you want just over the week-end [and to think you get capped after 3GB of ADSL use].

Anyway, I think ISDN is the best choice for online gaming from its usability and affordibility. Just note that if you want 128K you have to pay more for your ISP charges and each time you connect to the Internet, you pay for two calls instead of one.

I play a game called Empire Earth... would you believe that I can even host games without any lag!!!

Hope this helped,
Syzygy78

 

[Kai]

I have MyWireless and I haven't had any problems with playing City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies - until, like I said, last week Wednesday.

Up to you.

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><i><div align="right"><font color="red">i haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on disk somewhere...</font id="red">
tower12.randparkridge.jhb|13-21% signal|256k package, running at 0.3 - 3k/s </div id="right"></i></font id="size1">

 

[Darric]

Hmm... I'm just skeptical as I've heard some sketchy things about Sentech, and vastly varying reports from its users. I mean, there's a chance I could be one of those "statistical anomolies" that gets a terrible signal strength and hence high latencies. Knowing my luck at least... =P

Syzygy: I hadn't really considered ISDN to be honest... I guess I was focused too much on the whole 24 hour connectivity thing. Maybe that is an option... thank you, I will look into it.

In the meantime, I am very eager to hear other people's opinions on gaming with Sentech or any other (Cape Town based) connections.

Darric

 

[Kai]

oh! if you haven't got MyWireless, DON'T get it! Anything else is better than MyBandwidthless at the moment. Wait until at least end of September to check whether the "fixes" actually fixed anything, or whether it broke even further... if that's at all possible...

All I'm saying is that, contrary to what most believe, it can be used for gaming - not FPS, but MMORPGs are fine. I've played two and it usually works well.

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><i><div align="right"><font color="red">i haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on disk somewhere...</font id="red">
tower12.randparkridge.jhb|13-21% signal|256k package, running at 0.3 - 3k/s </div id="right"></i></font id="size1">

 

[Darric]

Oh dear. I hope the bst option becomes more apparant before the end of the year. Cos I'm really at a loss now. =\

Darric

 

[Kai]

sorry to do this to you mate, but i cannot stress enough how you have to stay away from MyWireless... then again, you might be one of the 98... er... 95... er... 94% of users that are happy... or not...

I wouldn't take that chance... wait for two months (or longer, if you can) and see what people are saying then, at the moment, it's all bad... very bad - read the rest of the MyWireless forum and you'll see.

Come on Dr. Potgieter... phone me... or am I not causing enough trouble yet?

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><i><div align="right"><font color="red">i haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on disk somewhere...</font id="red">
tower12.randparkridge.jhb|13-21% signal|256k package, running at 0.3 - 3k/s </div id="right"></i></font id="size1">

 

[KemoSabi]

Hi my name is KemoSabi and I am a MMORPG addict...

I have played EQ(EverQuest) since the Start-Played it for 2.5 years- I played DAOC(Dark Ages of Camelot)from the start - been playing for almost 3 years-, I ran a Guild in EQ with 5 South Africans in it, and I run a Guild in DAOC now, those same SA folks, as well as 7 additional SA folks, some of wich have become Great RL friends . I was also in the SWG Beta's...

Simple Answer = Sentech is not good For MMORPG's. The PL is too much, and the Latency is to high. You cannot effectively play MMORPG's with Mywireless.

ADSL was the best service in the first 3 months after Telkom released ADSL. I had ADSL till about 5 months ago, and I couldnt play with it, sometimes it was playable , but most often its not. Its sad but true.

Your best bet is to stick with ISDN. ISDN is by Far the best option for International Gaming, Especially MMORPG's. Take it from someone that has invested thousands of rands in search of a service "thats fast" - as little as possible lag...and that is "always on", unfortunatly this service does not exist for the normal man on the street in South Africa. Bite the bullet, get ISDN, and only play at night. If your lucky , your classes can start late'ish and you can play from 7pm-2am .... what I used to do...then again I used to play 7pm-7am

ISDN will however hit you hard with the initial installation / buying of modem, but nothing more than Sentech or ADSL wouldve.

Avg montlhy phone bill of ISDN , without Making phone calls, and as little disconnects as possible = +- R550

/its a sad country for an MMORPG fan :/
/sigh

I might even See ya in WoW

35% Signal
[36]Scummyside

 

[Rath]

Hi all,

I've played the following MMORPG's in the last 7 years:

Ultima Online (local shard)
Asheron's Call
Everquest
Anarchy Online
Lineage
Star Wars Galaxies
City of Heroes

The connections I have played with are 56k, ISDN 128k, MyWireless.

Here's my review of each:

56k:
Playable, but only just and only at certain times. Highly affected by the time of day and the ISP and their user load. Not good. Bandwidth is not an issue with these games, it's latency. Pings with this were usually in the 800+ region, but this can fluctuate wildly depending on details.

ISDN 128k:
I had this for 2-2.5 years, and was rarely unhappy with it's latency. Your pings are still going to be in the 500 ballpark (depending in time and ISP), but these games are buld to be latency tolerant to a point, so it isn't a showstopper.

MyWireless 256:
I had high hopes. What a mistake. Playing CoH currently and I've just ended a 2 week period of being totally unable to play. And I'm not even talking about refusing to play because the situation isn't optimal. I mean lag so bad that my character warps back to the spot it was standing at a minute ago. Utterly catastrophic lag. When it works it's ok, but the service (when available) ranges from iffy to kinda stable.

If I were in your shoes I'd go for 64k ISDN, test it out. Move to 128k if you need more. It won't be a perfect playing experience, but in my time with ISDN it was pretty decent.