Bandwidth Use In MMOs

Massively is running a story about bandwidth costs for MMOs and other virtual worlds. It's based on a post at the BBC on the same subject which references a traffic analysis (PDF) done for World of Warcraft. Quoting: "If you're an average user on capped access, the odds are you have roughly 20Gbytes per month to allocate among all of your Internet usage (it varies depending on just where you are). For you, sucking back (for example) a 2GB World of Warcraft patch isn't something you can just do. It's something you have to plan for — and quite often you have to plan for in the following month. Even a 500MB download has to be handled with caution. MMOGs as a rule don't use a whole lot of bandwidth in actual operation. However, the quantity definitely rises in busy areas with lots of players, where there are large numbers of mobs, or on raids, and takes quite a much larger jump if you're using voice as well."

Comments

Transfer Caps

[Broken scope]

This doesn't seem to be an issue of bandwidth, but of transfer caps. Unless bandwidth refers to both caps and connection speeds.

Re:Offline patches?

[Bert64]

And so we return to metered access, where people have to watch the download meter instead of the clock to ensure they don't face a ridiculously hefty bill.
And an angry kid with a ddos botnet can not only kill your connection, but also cost you a lot of money, get you disconnected for non payment and give you a bad credit rating.

Also in the UK it's not the network that needs upgrading, it's the ridiculous prices BT charge for bandwidth on wholesale ADSL.