Something for WoW Actually Worth Spending Your Money On

If it isn't the constant gold spamming and powerleveling services via private messages, it's advertisements for leveling and farming guides; if it isn't advertisements for leveling and farming guides, it's ads for level 70/80 characters or or random WoW paraphernalia. One way or another, there are a ton of nonsense ads for crap that no one usually has any desire for, save for the lazy leveler or someone that lacks free time to the point where leveling without assistance isn't exactly optimal. These types of ads have been around for so long now that any average WoW player doesn't even think twice when some flashy animation or picture attempts at grabbing their attention, and if it somehow does, I'd be surprised if it is any more effective than your average late night male enlargement ad. However, for probably the first time since I began playing WoW at release, I have found something that is actually worth spending my money on.

If you happen to be a WoW player and aren't residing within the United States, you unfortunately almost always have to deal with some ridiculous latency levels. It's really not uncommon for the average Kiwi or Australian player to deal with ping levels of 4-500 or above. This makes it virtually impossible to compete against any players with ping levels of even 300 or below. Occasionally, even those that do live in the USA have to deal with higher than ideal latency levels as well. For example, I play on a west coast server while living in Chicago, and often deal with latency levels as high as 260, and rarely if ever do I drop below around 170. It's not nearly as significant or detrimental to my gaming as a ping of 300+ but there's still a difference when playing against those with latency in the 40's or 50's, and it sucks dealing with ping this high when in other games I'll drop as low as 40-50. Most of these people would do anything to get their ping to an equal level with California based players.

A little bit earlier this year there was an option. In case you don't remember, there was a link on MMO-Champion that Ming wrote on with some registry changes one could implement on their computer in order to lower the in-game ping of WoW. This had mixed results for most people - some it would help, others would barely notice a difference. Even then, the downside of having your network transfer and download speeds cut in half wasn't even worth it to some people. Soon after, similar changes were implemented into the 2.3.2 patch anyway, and this previous option was no longer viable. However, now it seems there is a new option.

If you were watching the arena during season 4, you might have seen a couple of top 20 teams with "Lowerping" as a part of their team name. When I originally saw this, I didn't think much about it and thought it was just another sponsor throwing their name around. However, after talking to Slappywag recently, he told me how outstanding the company was, and how effective this proposed "lower latency" program actually was. I was incredibly dubious at first. I decided to contact Reilly (aka Rangrang if you happen to remember the team Shut up Rangrang from season 2 5v5) to see if he'd be willing to let me test out their services to see if it was actually as good as people said it was. I was definitely surprised by what I experienced.

Again, I usually deal with ping in the 2-270 range on normal to bad days, and 150-190 on good days. I had heard this service was incredibly effective for Australian players (average drop from 450 to 170) as well as NZ players as well (500 to 160) so I was questioning whether or not it would be nearly as effective for a player within the states. Here were my results.

Note: Before and after





















I honestly couldn't believe the results. Previous to running the application, the highest ping I saw was 267. After running it, the lowest I saw was 78. After experiencing this, I was curious as to results other players were getting and found this on their website. All of these players are well known Oceanic players that have broken top 20 consistently; and there's duckers for good measure.

The way the Lowerping server works is like this: from my understanding, Blizzard sets their system up in a way that it gives priority to those that live at a closer location to the server. Even if you have a 20mb/s connection, it won't do anything to make your latency better. In many other games, this priority system doesn't exist, so even if you're across the country, you still have a chance at getting a very good ping.

Basically, Lowerping provides a shorter path to the Blizzard servers by different routing and a few various network tweaks. The company has servers located within 10 minutes of, for example, the California location. In addition, the applications also set a Nodelay setting so that the data that you are sending to the server are sent straight away, instead of having to wait to be grouped up before been sent.

It might seem intimidating at first, but setting it up really couldn't be easier - a couple small program and setting adjustments here and there, and you're set. Set it up once, and you're set forever. There's handy tutorials on the website that bring it to a level that anyone could understand. It's also available for both Mac and PC.

So what is the best thing about the service aside from the results? It costs a whopping 4 dollars a month. That's less than one trip to Mcfatdonalds.

If you live on the east or west coast and play on a server residing on the opposite side of the country, I'd definitely recommend giving this a shot. Especially if you're tired of less than ideal ping. You can't argue with the results. For more information head to www.lowerping.com