Ex-Blizzard Devs Sign With Namco, Blizzard Using BitTorrent

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting a press release revealing the ex-Diablo creators now at Flagship Studios have signed a publishing deal with Namco, in a move that "marks Namco's official entry into the PC games publishing business" - we've previously covered Flagship Studios' formation on Slashdot Games. Elsewhere, several readers point out Blizzard's official World of Warcraft site, which has announced with regard to the upcoming WoW Beta test: "While we plan on having several ways available to distribute the files to everyone, our primary method will be through the Blizzard Downloader program, which uses BitTorrent technology." Update: 03/18 21:01 GMT by S : There's more discussion on Blizzard and other companies using BitTorrent in a recent mainpage post.

Comments

Problem with Bit Torrent

[wickedj]

Though I love bit torrent and how it provides a fast way to access different types of media on the net, it does have its problems. One of the biggest I've seen on college campuses and several ISPs is that it is being throttled down or even totally blocked off because of its use as a form of P2P sharing software. I hope this doesn't present a problem for Blizzard but I'm thinking that a lot of college student testers aren't going to be able to download the WoW beta very fast, if at all.

Re:Problem with Bit Torrent

[Gecedion]

Its not just that its P2P, BitTorrent seems to like to take all available bandwidth for itself. That's great when you're on a T3, but not so great for everyone else on the same line.

Re:Problem with Bit Torrent

[Vaevictis666]

They do mention that this will just be the primary download method, and that they will have some form of direct download for those unable (or unwilling) to use the torrent file.

Re:Problem with Bit Torrent

[Kethinov]

Only because ISPs choose to make it expensive. When you've got a monopoly or an oligopoly on a market, you can charge whatever you want. Bandwidth "cost" is entirely arbitrary. ISPs will continue to reduce custerom bandwidth while the demand continues to go up until one day, finally, there will be legislation similar to minimal wage which will regulate how the "cost" of bandwidth fairly.

Legislation demand fueled by the rise in popularity of such revolutionary P2P platforms such as bit torrent, which is gaining great inroads in legal P2P everywhere; not just games.

Re:Problem with Bit Torrent

[YomikoReadman]

While BT can monopolize all of your available bandwidth, most newer clients such as Azureus, Shadows, and TorrentStorm allow you to throttle both your upload and download speeds by setting a limit on the maximum amount used on active torrents.

Re:Problem with Bit Torrent

[realdpk]

It's not exactly a *choice*. ISPs get reduced pricing from their providers by saying they'll maintain a certain upstream/downstream ratio. If they go over that, it's very expensive - as in all contracts if you exceed usage.

ISPs get that reduced pricing to offer more services, provide better download bandwidth, and of course get more profits. They decide on the ratio based on average use. They have to charge more for upstream because if they didn't, and one month everyone decides to start uploading lots of stuff, they're stuck with a HUGE bill.

Re:Problem with Bit Torrent

[Goldberg's Pants]

I did a test of Blizzard's use of a BT, and it caps the upload to 10kbps roughly. The download does seem to use most of the bandwidth.

The thing that bugs me is this. In days of yore, you wanted a demo, you went to the companies website and downloaded it. Fair enough. Using BT though, using BT means less bandwidth usage by the company, which means saved money. It's a bit cheeky pimping THEIR product using YOUR bandwidth. Some ISP's are crappy (like mine) and have a ridiculously low upload cap. If you go over, they charge you.

Sure, it stops the "slashdot" effect on sites, but it still seems a bit off using your bandwidth to spread their advertising essentially.

Legit Bit (torrent)

[Kethinov]

I never got a chance to contribute in yesterday's (or was it the day before's?) article about bit torrent suddenly becoming sanctioned in games.

But I predicted this would happen in the early days of Bit Torrent (god I wish I could find my +5 on the subject from last year or so.)

Anyway, this saves companies TONS of bandwidth and if has already been proven with Linux distros. The Fedora torrent is massively successful.

It may also urge crappy ISPs to up the amount of bandwidth they give to customers when they realize that high bandwidth != piracy always.

Re:Legit Bit (torrent)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun May 18, '03
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/05/18/1428203 .shtm l?tid=126&tid=95

No, it isn't a P2P application in the typical file sharing sense. Bit torrent is perfect for short term kinds of downloads.

Let me give you an example.

Let's say I make games and I release a patch for it once a month. If every one of my hundreds of thousands of users tried to download that patch at the same time, my bandwidth would be slashdotted so to speak. Even if I could handle the load, I'd be consuming gigs and gigs of bandwidth in just a few days.

But if I torrent that file to all my users then the bandwidth consumption spreads across the internet like a virus (for lack of a better word) and I save money. It's also better for the user because they're not relying on a central server to supply the file. If my server goes down 12 hours after the patch is released, the file is still being distributed across the net.

Obviously in 6 months the torrent won't be as reliable a downloading source because the patch is too old and not as many people are patching. After a week, the rush of people grabbing the file at the same time is over and then I release the real thing instead of the torrent on my website so the people who were too late in the patching can get it.

The beauty of torrent is timing. If you have a popular file to share at a specific time, torrent's your application.

Re:Legit Bit (torrent)

[TwistedSquare]

It may also urge crappy ISPs to up the amount of bandwidth they give to customers when they realize that high bandwidth != piracy always.

Here in the UK the majority of the reason that people have poor upload bandwidth is that ADSL is of course Asymmetric hence the mismatched speeds. Do cable (or whatever there is) providers elsewhere deliberately (i.e. artificially) limit the amount of upload bandwidth people get?

Re:Legit Bit (torrent)

[macrom]

Most cable providers do provide asynchronous access here in the US, with upload speeds being a small percentage of the upload bandwidth. I am using Comcast's service and I believe the download is 3Mbit and the upload is 384Kbit (maybe 512Kbit since they just upgraded the service in my area). I know that companies try to give you enough uplink speed to play games, etc. but still discourage users from running a small-time ISP-like service. In fact, some providers even block outbound HTTP, FTP, mail, etc. requests altogether.

I am not sure about BitTorrent -- it may be too new to be noticed on the radar.

Slight Blip on the Irony Detector

[spudgun]

Bitware OSI License , Open software

bnetd, Open source , Sued by Blizzard under DMCA

are they having their cake and eating it too ?

Re:Slight Blip on the Irony Detector

[eht]

Very simple, the BNet protocol is not and likely never will be an open protocol, Bittorrent always has been and always will be an open protocol.

It's not the software license that is the issue, it's the protocol use.

Smells like an MMO

[Sylver Dragon]

Maybe its just me, but after having read through the FAQ on Flagship's site, I would swear I smell another MMORPG comming. They mention that they intend to have hundreds of hours of play, and they want to leverage the community aspect of MMOG's. I have a feeling that, what we are going to see is a game that is similar, but legally distinct from, Diablo done as an MMORPG. So, instead of just hacking your way through a dungeon, hoping the next treasure drop gives you a cooler weapon, now you will get to spend countless hours working with a practice dummy, so that you don't get hosed in the first room of the first dungeon. Then, get a slightly better weapon, and spend the next hundred hours camping a spawn point, so that you can move into the next area.
Maybe its just me, but I seem to believe that 300 hours of skill tredmilling and 5 hours of killing monsters does not equate to hundreds of hours of game play. More correctly, its hunreds of hours of setup do that you can play the game for 5 hours.

Re:Smells like an MMO

[Sylver Dragon]

Agreed, the current setup of most MMORPGS leaves a lot to be desired. The problem is, how else can it be done? That's not a very easy question to answer. One of the thoughts I had, when I started considering the Diablo as an MMORPG idea was to have some randomization in the world. For example, have the main world map be roughly static, with monster spawns changing occasionally (though not drastically; heck, might go so far as to setup an actual ecology, and have the system track it; though that might be over the top), and then have players be able to find random dungeons, and tie those dungeons to the level of the character finding them. Further, only the player who found them, and anyone in thier party (assuming some sort of party system) woud be able to enter the dungeon. Along with that, the dungeon layout should be randomized, ala Diablo 2, with maybe a few puzzles and some sort of minor plot inside. The plots would have to be thin, and almost invariably combat oriented (rescue damsel in distress, eradicate monster menace, recover artifact for religious orgaization, etc.). Lastly, have the dungeon disapper after some amount of time if the character ignores it.
It would still be a level treadmill to some extent, but at least you wouldn't have to spend forever camping the exact same spawn point as every other character of about the same level.