John C. A. Bambenek wrote:
Well, as far as I'm concerned WoW can burn and get blocked with the rest of the bad traffic because they are externalizing their maintenance costs on others. They should pay for the bandwidth to update their own software.
Actually, one could say they offload some of the maintenance cost to their subscribers in order to keep subscription prices down. Many subscribers to WoW don't seem to mind this at all and find updates much easier to handle than other MMOs. If the ISP is losing money for selling bandwidth they don't have or below the cost they pay, is it really the fault of the gaming company or the customer? The real issue always seems to end up with the ISP wanting to say they give X bandwidth, yet they really don't. Should all the high band video sites also be shut down? There really is no problem in filtering traffic or shaping it to manageable volumes. Just make sure the customer is aware of it. If the service doesn't meet their needs, they can go elsewhere. Jack Bates