I am a die-hard wow fan. I have played wow for about 4 years now. I have played on high speed all that time. I'm not one of those "I'm so leet I got all the best stuff" kind of players. I enjoy taking new players through beginner dungeons a lot. People laugh at me and tell me wow is going to ban me from Stormwind Stockades if I keep it up. I may have run that particular instance more than anyone in the entire game.
So this month I am on dial up. I am stayin at a friend's housesitting for most of a month, and it's out in the boonies. We're talking miles from the nearest cable or dsl connection. This place is in cell phone hell - about 5 miles away all cell service drops off and you don't get it back, so a cellular connection won't work either. I haven't heard of any trial offers for satellite internet, so I could just have high speed satellite while I'm stuck in limbo. My only choice is dial up, if I want to connect to my world digitally.
This isn't just dial up - it's 28k dial up (it gets no slower than this if you want to actually surf the internet), so you can see why the thought of playing wow while I was out here seemed questionable.
First things first - can I log in. Ok, the news screen doesn't want to load... hmmmmm. I was parked in Dalaran - the main city in the wrath of the lich king expansion. This city has the rep of being VERY laggy on a good day. After several tries at that, I had my husband move me to an area in the boonies somewhere outside Ironforge. OK, now I can log in.
I find I can move around ok, not much lag or skipping. So, I go into Ironforge and find I can move around there too. I expected to be running in place a lot, even in a low population city. I manage to find my way back to Northrend. No problem on the public transportation. I was worried that the "zoning" between continents on the boat would be a problem, but no... when I appear on the other side, it's just fine, I didn't miss the docking. I anticipated loading just in time to see myself headed back to the other side, if I wasn't in constant "zone".
A sympathetic friend wanders out to meet me and we kill a few things. The first battle was a little laggy, but after that, I felt like I was playing normally. We were gathering groups of 5 to 10 mobs and aoe-ing and making flashy graphics happen. I was impressed. No lag, no death, no problems.
Following someone around while mounted was a litle different story. I frequently fall off follow when moving between zones on my high speed connection, so I expected some amount of difficulty following on dial up. Sure enough, the best solution was for me to "drive" myself. My freind did find that if he mounted a slow mount and I mounted an epic mount, that also worked pretty well, although that makes travel pretty slow.
Then we put some thought to my chances in instances. On the one hand, it's instanced so I should have less to load from people or mobs or npcs moving around me. On the other hand, 5 people casting spells against a group of mobs casting and moving could build up a lot of graphic intensity. So, I take a quick run thru stocks, which has always been a measuring stick for me. I noticed a little bit of lag between pushing the button and the spell casting, but not much. It felt a little litle walking around with those 5 pound weights on yer arms and ankles, but not bad.
So, now to get brave and put digital lives at risk. My friends in the guild helped me pick an instance to try. We chose Black Rock Depths because the mob count in any one area is low, and it wasn't a challenge to stay alive - even if the holy priest (me) lagged (not to mention we had two new miners who needed to learn to smelt dark iron). I was really worried that I'd come back from a lag to find all my noobs dead.
As we walked around this immense and maze-like instance, I found no lag. The tank kept grabbing larger groups, and yeah... when he got really greedy, I'd experience a moment or two of lag, but could basically follow the progression of the fights, and participate in the battles. Tanks will be tanks, and soon enough he was feeling comfortable enough to gather entire rooms as usual.
As the day went on, we found ourselves in a variety of higher level instances. We ended up in mechanar. I didn't try any northrend instances, but all of the instances we tried in the old world and outlands went very well. I was worried that some of the extra glows and floating mobs would add extra lag to the load, but even the mana wyrms didn't do much to lag me.
I don't know of another video game with the variety of features that wow has that would play this well on dial up. I am completely amazed at how well I was able to play even on 28k dial up.
Bottom line - Blizzard's programmers are the best in the industry, and wow is an amazingly well programmed game.
