How will net-neutrality affect WoW and subscription fees?

[Bryntrollian]

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

My ISP in particular was guilty of seriously throttling connections to Blizzard services

[HuxNeva]

Just don't have a shitter of an ISP that wanted net neutrality repealed :P ours has always supported it.

let's see what will happen to their peering agreements if they refuse to play along. Good luck. You'll need it.

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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

On topic. Given WoW demographics, the chances are pretty high it is the parents, not the kids playing this game.

[Cheze]

See, that is a horrible stance to have. Because the average American is Not responsible. The ones in office are. The fallacy that most people seem to be working upon is that we have any control, in anyway shape or form, over anything the politicians do. The truth is, we don't. We have zero control. Voting is rigged to a two party system with little to no choice thanks to the very ones we are voting on drawing district lines to swing a state to their side. Once they are in office, we have no way to effectively communicate with any of them and we are not even given the chance to vote on Many of the laws they work with.

In short, blaming the citizens is asinine. Im sure you personally have chats with your leader to discuss how they behave though, so its a new thing.

The FCC is even more out of anyones control. They are not controlled by voters or representatives. They are a separate entity that can do what ever they want and the people with the biggest wallets can pay them off.

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The writing is on the wall. Time to smell the roses and open your eyes. Its not clueless to Know change will happen. Id rather be realistic and understand exactly what they can do now, and how they will probably begin to do it, then to stick my head in the sand and pretend they will play nice.

this is spectacularly dumb; the exact net neutrality rules now being repealed were put in place by a democratic administration, with the (tacit) consent of democratic majorities in congress. The problem is that the people in their wisdom voted for a republican president and republican congressional majorities, which gave the FCC commission a corresponding republican majority (enter: Ajit Pal.)

Pal is a useful minion at best; if you don't want regulators to openly encourage profiteering by adopting loose standards like this, don't vote republican

ed: the FCC are controlled by congress; the agency has statutory authority.

[Nathanyel]

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 was quite neutral before, yes, but on a voluntary basis. Once ISPs started to mess with people's connections, Net Neutrality was brought into law.

[DesoPL]

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.

No it's no over yet of drama, because people don't use thier brains...

[Nathanyel]

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.

That it has even come so far is painting quite a bad image of the democratic process and the rule of law. Just look at the FCC willfully ignoring reports that several thousand identity thefts happened to post pro-repeal comments. While these comments aren't binding in any way, they use them to portray the repeal as something "the people" want.

[shadowmatrix]

short; NOBODY KNOWS.. and people need to stop assuming that they perfectly know the future..

We want to the ISPs but we have seen how greedy some can be.

[Deleted]

This is portugal...

That is for cellphones, not internet, and mostly apps. You can still acess youtube or any other website without having to pay more for a better connection.

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This is portugal...

That is for cellphones, not internet, and mostly apps. You can still acess youtube or any other website without having to pay more for a better connection.

[Lochton]

Apart from updates and patches, WoW is not really very much of a bandwidth hog. The question about how much bandwidth does WoW use comes up now and then and it's not very much. Maybe 4-6MB/hour. That's not to say that it can't be throttled but ISP's are much more likely to go after stuff like Twitch and commercial streaming services.

WoW's usage of bandwidth is really minimal, until expansions and patches, else, it can run on a low budget mobile connection.

[Accendor]

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

Prior to Obama was a totally different era and mindset. Look at the difference in mobile apps and micro transactions before and after Obama. Don't worry, the ISPs WILL do it. Not today, not tomorrow, but the day will come.

[Nathanyel]

WoW's usage of bandwidth is really minimal, until expansions and patches, else, it can run on a low budget mobile connection.

This isn't really about bandwidth, but about charging for individual services. You could have >100ms on online games by default, and <30ms by paying for the premium package.

[rda]

This isn't really about bandwidth, but about charging for individual services. You could have >100ms on online games by default, and <30ms by paying for the premium package.

This is about bandwidth, that's why it all began and that's why it went where it went. If bandwidth wasn't being dominated by several big content providers, we wouldn't have the debate / decision.

[CarlingBlackLabel]

I highly doubt it will have much if any effect at all. The whole net neutrality thing has been blown way out of proportion imo.

[rda]

I highly doubt it will have much if any effect at all. The whole net neutrality thing has been blown way out of proportion imo.

Exactly, but don't say it on reddit.

[Jalatiphra]

Wow Is free to play now

Your default subscriptions includes ping > 250 ms , maximum of 20 players visible at any time
you can now upgrade to the low ping package for 5$ for every 50 ms taken of your ping.
As a free bonus you you also get to see 5 more players.

If you sign up for Verizon WoW bonus package additionally you can also play on servers not restricted to verizon players.


something like that

[Evangeliste]

From being an offline era to an online era, I can really see this being the beginning to the return of offline empires.

For gaming it will work, it was offline before the inclusive of internet.
For films, it will be back to buying them or renting them.
For streaming, it will probably be affected. Unless they go to downloading them onto the computer a bit like Amazon.
For providing internet services, that will be affected. Probably prices hikes and allocation of bandwidth.
So on and so on.

I'd start getting use to doing stuff offline. Not immediately but in the next 10 years for sure :P.

[micwini]

Nothing will change. At least not for EU. We've had subscriptions before NN was even a thing.

[SupBrah]

While I don't think it will have any affect on WoW, if you truly believe that the repeal of Net Neutrality won't negatively affect the consumer then you are a fool.

May I ask what exactly are you worried about? Are you afraid that there's now nothing stopping ISPs from throttling speeds, blocking content, or creating content? What if I told you...

There was nothing in the existing net neutrality rules that stopped ISPs from throttling speeds, blocking content, or creating fast lanes?

https://techliberation.com/2017/07/1...et-neutrality/

The 2016 court decision upholding the rules was a Pyrrhic victory for the net neutrality movement. In short, the decision revealed that the 2015 Open Internet Order provides no meaningful net neutrality protections–it allows ISPs to block and throttle content. As the judges who upheld the Order said, “The Order…specifies that an ISP remains ‘free to offer ‘edited’ services’ without becoming subject to the rule’s requirements.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/washing...et-neutrality/

But the DC Circuit suggests that a walled garden is fine as long as the provider “mak[es it] sufficiently clear to potential customers that if provides a filtered services involving the ISP’s exercise of ‘editorial intervention.’”

Court document here:
https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/06F8BFD079A89E13852581130053C3F8/$file/15-1063-1673357.pdf

TL;DR: Nothing in previous rules prevented ISPs from throttling or blocking content. Just like before 2015.

Found the FCC plant.

Yep, you caught me. Someone who isn't following the Reddit circlejerk and blindly freaking out over nothing must be an FCC plant

[Occam-OC]

wow will be fine they had subscription before net neutrality they will have um after

Yeah you're not getting the point. WoW has a subscription but when the ISP decides to charge for a "gamer package" that gives the same level of performance as you were getting under net neutrality but for a premium there may be people who either can't afford it or decide it's not worth the EXTRA premium to continue playing.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

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

If it doesn't matter than why did the FCC remove it than? They just did it for.. lul's? They want it to make less money? Same money? Or more money? I have to wonder..