How will net-neutrality affect WoW and subscription fees?

[rda]

With net neutrality repealed and it going to court and congress if it passes through them it will undoubtedly affect all forms of entertainment including WoW. Say the entertainment package is 14.99 a month. That's the same price of most subscriptions online specifically WoW. With peoples' bills going up there will be less subscriptions being paid, less money in Blizz's pocket and less money to build patches and expansions upon. This does not forebold well. I see subscriptions dropping to about 4.95 per 2weeks or 9.99 a month. You see it's not the price going down that you should be worried about it's the amount of people paying to play the game. Less money = less content = more of an unenjoyable experience [Most saw this in WoD just imagine it not being due to time constraints and working on #6 but due to significantly less people paying to play]. The only way I see this being fixed without harming the game severely is by adding a cosmetic cash shop and removing subscription fees entirely. Be honest if you're in the lower class you won't be paying more than 300 dollars a month to access everything that was free today. If you're in the middle class you may but there still may be complications and the higher classes have nothing to worry about.

What do you think?

You are ridiculously exaggerating it like many others because their knowledge of the subject is limited to what they read about it before "rallies".

WoW traffic is insignificant. As such, WoW is unlikely to ever enter the picture.

[Jaylock]

Oh no! What will we ever do now that we don't have "net neutrality!?!?!?!"

Guess what? Life will go on just like it did before *GASP* 2015 when those fucking retarded regulations were set in motion by the most inept president in US history.

[Aquinan]

Remember how it affected WoW prior to 2015? The exact same thing.

IE literally nothing will change. This is all just a bunch boogeyman fear mongering by Redditors scared to death that Comcast is going to take away their anime and Pornhub. I wish I was kidding

Found the FCC plant.

[Moshots]

No, but they were throttling your internet for stream services.

see the problem with this is its still a capitalist market in alot of places.. If Comcast throttles me I go to ATT if they do I go to verizon... eventually one of the 3 won't and everyone in the world will go to them making them 10 trillion dollars....

don't expect some major change the peoples dollar still decides whats happens.

[RobertoCarlos]

Oh no! What will we ever do now that we don't have "net neutrality!?!?!?!"

Guess what? Life will go on just like it did before *GASP* 2015 when those fucking retarded regulations were set in motion by the most inept president in US history.

Not really surprised you dont know how it works jay.

Please read up on the history of google fiber and netflix throttling if you are gonna make such off base comments. Your following on this forum is huge you shouldnt mislead people!!

[Estherna]

The thing is what the proponents of the net neutrality repeal says is based on a theory, which has been shown to be false time and time again in History. The idea that competion will force companies to offer better services at a lower price is a neat theory, but it is false as companies never play by the rules. There will always be shaddy deals between them to avoid the dire effects of the competion : "Don't go there, and I will not got there", "Don't reduce too much the price of this offer, so we don't hurt each others".

And this kind of agreements are hard to track and to put down. There isn't any paper, as it is illegal, and you have to proove that the people actually met to discuss of those agreements. Which is really hard to do of course.

So yeah, ISP in USA aren't going to change prices of their offers tomorrow. They don't even need that in fact. Let's says that one want to launch his own streaming service. And then, slowly, his services is going faster than its competitors. And thus, months after months, more and more people will use this service rather than the others available because you can't watch a movie without buffering minutes there or have a poor quality of videos. In the end, where these services fought before through qualities, offers and innovations, the competition will be to which services offer the fastest connection, effectively killing the services.

And what if you want to watch this movie or this anime which hadn't been released in your country yet? You go to a illegal streaming site, to watch a fansub, and boom, website blocked by the ISP because it hurts its own offer. Or what if you want to access this news website, but its contents aren't pleasing the ISP? Sure, blocking it wouldn't be something to do given the backlash, but you could just reduce their broadband so it takes ages to load and people who just ended there without looking specificaly for that would just move on. We all know how we act when we surf the internet and something is slow. We close the tabs and go look somewhere else.

In the end, Net Neutrality was there to avoid that some actors could exerce a control of the network without any governmental control, just based on economic interests. Before, the only one which had the right to regulate what you could access from your computer was the government, which is still elected by the people of its country. Now, its companies who can decide based on their own economic interests. And frankly, situations were interests of big companies and of the people were the same are rare.

[Deleted]

So much to think about with this FCC. I am happy for once that I don't live in the states.

This was your first problem? LOL. Lesson for life right here my friend, what ever happens in the states, will eventually happen elsewhere. Time delay usually 2-3 years for everything in eu.

[Hiricine]

Wow doesn't chug bandwidth like the video streaming services, it will likely be largely unaffected. At the most, it might throttle patches and anything requiring a large download.

IF it gets as bad as people say it does, you'll see a legislative response, instead of the executive fiat that Obama was so fond of, meaning that a future president can't enact/alter/overturn it by themselves.

NN has been in place 2 years, and most people didn't even notice it. Its absence is noted mostly because of the political leanings of those involved in repealing it, rather than the effects of the practice itself.

[Sastank]

It won't. Multibillion dollar companies can afford and will pay any slight % increase to give their consumers what they have. If it stays it will kill off a lot of the smaller guys who simply can't.

[MyndZero]

Pretty sure Netflix/Hulu/HBO will be getting involved if this hits their bottom dollar.
And one doesn’t want the entertainment companies getting too upset.

Pretty much this. If it got so bad because of the decisions the US are making, they will literally just move their company base out of US and no longer be a US based company, and then block the US.

It may take drastic measures like this to get shit turned around if it goes down that path.

[HuxNeva]

Interactive services that depend on low latency, things like gaming and VoiP, are the most vulnerable out there. They're basically sitting ducks at the mercy of the ISPs. And why would the ISP go after you with a visible 'pay more' package, when they can just let Blizzard include the price they will have to pay to the ISP for low latency termination (outside the congested store and forward routed basic pipe) in your game fee? ISPs and telcos have been lamenting for years about how the content companies are getting a 'free ride' on their network. Now they will put up the toll gates they have been lobbying for for decades.

[Kaleredar]

Considering WoW on a daily basis doesnt eat up a lot of bandwith im going to say things wont change on that end. Who knows what will happen to netflix,hbo go...ect.

it's not about whether it's actually an impact to their service, it's about whether they think they can get money out of it.

[Nazrark]

It'll be interesting to see how it affects the future. I know my city is getting a mega data centre in order to attract tech companies to expand here.

I think we might see some companies start to relocate their servers.

[HuxNeva]

You say that like it's a choice. 70% of the country only has access to one ISP in their area. If they want Internet, they have to go with that company.

You say this like 2 or 3 ISPs would make a difference. The telco industry has been lobbying for years for this. None of them is going to poop in the new profit pool, so even with 'choice' in most places that 'choice' will be more cosmetic than substantial with packages just mirroring each other.

[Xkiller9000]

Prior to Obama passing Net Neutrality, were your ISP's charging you for an 'Entertainment/Gamer' package, to be able to play online games?

that was a completely different time, the "ethics" dont apply these days compared to back hten

[Nazrark]

Wow doesn't chug bandwidth like the video streaming services, it will likely be largely unaffected. At the most, it might throttle patches and anything requiring a large download.

IF it gets as bad as people say it does, you'll see a legislative response, instead of the executive fiat that Obama was so fond of, meaning that a future president can't enact/alter/overturn it by themselves.

NN has been in place 2 years, and most people didn't even notice it. Its absence is noted mostly because of the political leanings of those involved in repealing it, rather than the effects of the practice itself.

I am pretty sure it had a noticeable effect on Riot. Server latency got pretty bad a couple years back because they were being throttled and weren't backing down to the big guy. They built their own network to get around them and reloacted their servers to Chicago. To avoid dealing with the ISP.

Imagine of you went from 30ms to 175ms because the ISP decided they wanted more money from Blizzard. Blizzard says no and they make it so your latency is 350ms.

[Kithelle]

It's not over yet? So many people act like the sky is falling...it's going to go to the courts and the last few times it did it went in NN's favor.

[HuxNeva]

WoW traffic is insignificant. As such, WoW is unlikely to ever enter the picture.

Gamers are a goldmine. Look at the ridiculous things they pay big bucks for. Gaming network cards ffs? In game cosmetics? Leveling boosts? Lootboxes?
Just refrain from updating 1 choke point in your network, and watch PL and latency skyrocket. Ofc, there will be the 'alternative route' offered to companies that doesn't pass through the choke-point, on which mainly independent VoiP and Gaming companies will have to depend, but it is not free. None interactive services such as the often mentioned Netflix already edge cache their content beyond the ISP's choke point, for a fee of course. But don't think they'll come to your rescue. If you own 80% of the longplay VoD, cutting a deal and enjoying the benefits of raising the cost of starting up by a few orders of magnitude for any potential 'new entrant' that would potentially encroach on your near monopoly is just common business sense.

[tankbug]

Prior to Obama passing Net Neutrality, were your ISP's charging you for an 'Entertainment/Gamer' package, to be able to play online games?

The internet is changing everything we do. We need it for everything, and with it comes legislation to make sure our ISPs don't exploit us. They only have the responsibility to give us the connection we have paid for. Not analyse our data, favoring some services over the other, offering us their own shit, controlling our online usage. I don't think it's unlikely that ISPs will try to push some sort of "hardcore gamer pack", where they promise low latency and whatever. And I'm sure that many parents would love to get a subscription that block games, you know, because kids should be doing something useful with their time instead or rotting their minds :P

[HuxNeva]

Pretty sure Netflix/Hulu/HBO will be getting involved if this hits their bottom dollar.
And one doesn’t want the entertainment companies getting too upset.

Netflix would stand to significantly benefit from a universal toll by ISPs as it would cement their near monopoly by incredibly raising the cost of entrance for a potential disrupting competitor. You are confused by their fight against 'selective' toll charges placed just on them. Bet they'd be opening up the champagne if all potential future competition to them instead of putting up a 50$ server at OVH would need to spend a billion in edge cache colo and termination agreements and fees before being able to distribute their first VoD.