MMO Roundup: Rogers throttling WoW, Jedi armor sets, and more
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 29th 2011 at 2:00PM
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Rogers throttles World of Warcraft across Canada If you play World of Warcraft in Canada and were wondering why your connection seems a bit slow, it turns out there may be a good explanation: Rogers Communications has been deliberately throttling the game across the country. |
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One month after launch, how is RIFT holding up? It's been a month since RIFT went retail. How is the game holding up? Has the launch day hype faded, or is it still going strong? What's still working? What isn't? |
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BioWare releases Jedi armor progression video Due to what could be considered a lack of hard info on everyone's favorite Star Wars archetype, BioWare has had many fans crying out in terror. Today, said fans were suddenly silenced, though not because something terrible has happened. On the contrary, the traditional Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday update brings us a breathless look at glowstick-powered combat footage courtesy of the new Jedi Knight armor progression trailer. |
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Banned WoW player offers $1,000 for reactivation If you lost an MMO account through hacking, banning, or any other method, what would you pay to get it back? One California World of Warcraft player didn't hesitate to put a hefty price tag on that possibility. The anonymous player posted via Craigslist last week, offering any form of payment the recipient might ask for -- including "an envelope under a tree." |
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Nexon's Dungeon Fighter Online coming to Xbox Live Arcade The MMO console lineup just got a bit bigger thanks to the folks at Nexon and Softmax. The latter is porting the former's Dungeon Fighter Online beat-'em-up to the Xbox Live Arcade delivery platform, where the title will boast a freemium business model (meaning you download the client for free and pay for items and upgrades). |
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Massively's Week in Review: Hobbits in space Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup. |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Oakbriar Mar 29th 2011 2:32PM
Rogers is the ISP for the building I live in and it has been terrible. I never had any connection problems until January when I started to be periodically disconnected, or will lag out every 5-10 minutes. All with absolutely nothing changing on my end.
How do I spend my $15 monthly subscription now? Check my mail, check the AH, do the fishing/cooking daily, fly to an archaology site, DC, play Dragon Age 2.
neogramps Mar 30th 2011 5:38AM
This happened in the UK with Virgin a few months back - their new packet inspecting software crippled WoW for a while (6000ms latency all the time).
Jeff Mar 29th 2011 2:39PM
I'm on Rogers, they are terrible.
Late last year I had an issue that would cause me to disconnect from WoW every 10-15 minutes or so. It doesn't happen anymore (Nothing changed on my end), but for the month or so that it did I was basically unable to raid. For the moment my connection is stable, but that shouldn't even be something I have to worry about.
razion Mar 29th 2011 2:41PM
Canada certainly doesn't strike me as anywhere near the vicinity of corruption as other places certainly would, so it really surprised me to see this sort of thing pop up in that area. It really makes me very worrisome as to how much of it is going on elsewhere around the world.
Oakbriar Mar 29th 2011 2:51PM
You obviously haven't heard about why we're going into ANOTHER federal election in May :P
Bill Mar 29th 2011 3:48PM
Federal elections mean corruption in the political system and corruption in the parties who demand them *cough cough* NDP. Nonetheless, corporate corruption is significantly easier to fight, switch from Rodgers internet services to Bell and hope that Rodgers loses so much money from boycott that they have to fire the idiotic CEOs who came up with the idea in the first place.
Basil Berntsen Mar 29th 2011 4:33PM
Canada's telecom industry is a throwback. We have virtually no competition among the giants, and they're all giants.
Robert Mar 29th 2011 5:52PM
Weren't the NDP the party that sponsored a bill banning usage-based billing, support net neutrality, and prevent the kind of crap Rogers/Bell/et al try to pull on us all the time? Watch your facts, buddy.
Zayd Mar 29th 2011 2:47PM
That guy should have offered to give the $1000 to the Japan relief fund if Blizz let him have his account back.
Guilt trip 'em in to doing it.
razion Mar 29th 2011 2:56PM
"Oh my gosh! All of these supplies! All of this help, where did you say you got it all from, again?!"
"Oh, you know..."
"No, tell us!"
"Some guy in America who botted in a video-game and lost his account figured he could underhandedly manipulate a developer for the video-game he got his character banned from into returning his account back so that you could get relief funds."
"... So... our charity money... was a bribe... so that some American kid could keep a handful of code and pixels...?"
"*Silence*"
"You know what? Keep your money."
Drakkenfyre Mar 29th 2011 3:02PM
That guy got banned for botting.
By letting him back in, even if someone did it on the sly (which would NOT work, especially now since he made that offer, someone is going to be watching his account) if his account were reactivated, it would get out, and set a bad example. Both because it would give the message that botting isn't as bad as it is, and that someone in Blizzard is susceptible to corruption, and everything after that would be questioned. ("Did guild really get world first?")
Kadamon Mar 29th 2011 2:50PM
And that is why I tell everyone I know to switch to Shaw if they tell me they use Rogers for anything. Their phone and internet service is the absolute worst throughout all of Canada.
Jeanluc Mar 30th 2011 1:14PM
You can't switch from Shaw to Rogers 99.9% of the time. Canada is split geographically between Shaw and Rogers such that they'll almost never compete with each other. Your only other options are usually Bell or Telus. Unless you live in Saskatchewan then you've got Sasktel.
Or you could be like me, I went 3rd party. TekSavvy is awesome, their DSL was great (and cheap!) but now I've got 15/1 cable (not throttled) and an unlimited data cap (ACTUAL unlimited) for $55/month.
ROGERS SUCKS (so does Bell and so does Telus, Shaw likely isn't too great either)
Aaron Mar 29th 2011 2:57PM
The guy that got banned would have to offer me my salary times the number of years until retirement before I would consider lifting his ban. No job that pays your bills and supports your family is only worth $1,000. ;-)
Dreyja Mar 29th 2011 3:00PM
OOOhhh.. That Rogers story has me seing RED! Happily I dont' do my internet buisness with them but I do have a cell phone with that company. I'm tempted to cancel and let them know that it's EXACTLY that reason I'm doing so.
Not cool Rogers, NOT COOL!
On the up-side I'm on Telus Ultra-high-speed and couldn't be happier.
JC_Icefox Mar 29th 2011 3:51PM
I was so surprised when I read that as well. I use shaw for Internet and home phone services, but my IPhone has been through them for the last two years. I am up for a renewal, but I'm thinking I might let it lapse...
However, 'Being Canadian' is probably the best excuse for anything, including a lag-induced raid wipe.
MisterMichaud Mar 29th 2011 3:10PM
Rogers' actions are deplorable. From the looks of things, they won't be able to fix a problem of their own creation by summer at the soonest. It almost sounds like they can't keep up with Blizzard patching the game.
http://openmedia.ca/blog/gamers-vs-rogers-world-warcraft-being-throttled
The telecommunications giants in Canada have been trying to tighten their stranglehold on customers more than ever during the past six months. Low data caps and gouging usage based billing plans are just the tip of the iceberg for what Canadians can expect unless something is done to reign in the abusive business practices of the big telcos. Even today, Netflix has just decided that they will provide options to stream content at lower quality levels for Canadians in order to keep customers from exceeding their caps too quickly (while the rest of the world points and laughs). This is unsurprising considering the telcos also own the largest cable companies in the country, and squashing competition is in their best interest, and not that of the customer.
If things keep going this way, I can almost foresee a time when Canadians will have an option to pay an extra $5 per month to their ISP in order to guarantee their games aren't throttled.
Concerned gamers and users of the internet can stay informed and look for calls to action at http://openmedia.ca/ .
With a Canadian federal election on the horizon, lets aim to make these problems into election issues.
flawless Mar 29th 2011 3:35PM
It's somewhat amusing how "We throttle user's connections when they're using P2P" became "Rogers deliberately throttles WoW". A lot of issues arose when Blizzard started using P2P.
I'm not defending Rogers' service, but the idiots that wrote those articles need to learn when to take creativity into their own hands and when to stick to the plain truth.
Aceman67 Mar 29th 2011 4:02PM
You know what Flawless, Do you live in Canada?
Right now this is a Big issue for us, enough for millions of Canadians emailed their members of Parliament to stop the CRTC from bringing in Usage Based Billing that would have made Internet in general very expensive. I was one of those millions
We in Canada pay double what others in the world pay for a quarter of the speed. Right now I'm paying $56/mo for a 15mb down/1mb up connection while people in the states can get a 15mb down/5mb up connection for around $26/mo.
So unless you know the situation, Buzz off.
Drakkenfyre Mar 29th 2011 4:48PM
"while people in the states can get a 15mb down/5mb up connection for around $26/mo."
i would like to know where you are getting your pricing info, because no one I know you can get that speed for that price.
I understand Canada is having a hard time, and pay more, but that isn't that cheap here.