How good does my internet connection need to be to play this game?

[jerricrocko]

So I have a mid term in band, yes band tomorrow. It will take me about 5 minutes to complete but I have school for 3 and 1/2 hours to do whatever I want. I play swtor on my laptop at home and the game runs fine with occasional lag. If I bring my laptop to school would the school WI FI be able to handle the game?

[itsmymillertime]

Maybe. People do play and stream on Wi-Fi, so it would be how great of a signal you can get.

[Kalarie]

The PVE content should be just find if you get a good signal, the pvp maybe not so much. ideally in pvp you should be aiming for at least 16mbps down and one up. It's doable with less, but not as clean.

[Orizuru]

The PVE content should be just find if you get a good signal, the pvp maybe not so much. ideally in pvp you should be aiming for at least 16mbps down and one up. It's doable with less, but not as clean.

 

Did you get that information from a Comcast Saleperson by any chance?

[Kalarie]

Did you get that information from a Comcast Saleperson by any chance?

 

ok i'll bite, what's the hilarious story behind that comment?

 

But no, in our area it's TWC, and they don't even know what mmo means.

[Orizuru]

ok i'll bite, what's the hilarious story behind that comment?

 

But no, in our area it's TWC, and they don't even know what mmo means.

 

TWC is in my area as well. I said Comcast because its more widely known.

 

Its been my experience though that people who think they need that much bandwidth to game online are typically getting their information from salespeople trying to get a higher commission on your installation by selling you a 25mbps connection when a lower speed would be just as good. High bandwidth is meant to help with multiple simultaneous downloads. A 25mbps connection would allow you to have 3-4 computers all playing an MMO online while someone else sits in your living room streaming movies on Netflix and then still have plenty of bandwidth left to allow a few more devices on your home network to browse the internet without anyone slowing down. Try all of that on a 10mbps connection and you will run into some problems.

 

High bandwidth does little to improve download speeds unless you are the only client connected to the server you are downloading from. As more clients connect, the servers slow everyone down more and more until most clients average less than 3mbps, which should be more than enough for online gaming.

 

Now all of that said, please don't take this as a reason to downgrade your broadband service to save money because cable broadband has a caveat. You can pay for 25mbps service and rarely ever get more than 5mbps because you are sharing that 25mbps pipeline with every other TWC customer in your area. If you want a true 25mbps connection, you need a good fiber optic connection.

[Kalarie]

TWC is in my area as well. I said Comcast because its more widely known.

 

Its been my experience though that people who think they need that much bandwidth to game online are typically getting their information from salespeople trying to get a higher commission on your installation by selling you a 25mbps connection when a lower speed would be just as good. High bandwidth is meant to help with multiple simultaneous downloads. A 25mbps connection would allow you to have 3-4 computers all playing an MMO online while someone else sits in your living room streaming movies on Netflix and then still have plenty of bandwidth left to allow a few more devices on your home network to browse the internet without anyone slowing down. Try all of that on a 10mbps connection and you will run into some problems.

 

High bandwidth does little to improve download speeds unless you are the only client connected to the server you are downloading from. As more clients connect, the servers slow everyone down more and more until most clients average less than 3mbps, which should be more than enough for online gaming.

 

Now all of that said, please don't take this as a reason to downgrade your broadband service to save money because cable broadband has a caveat. You can pay for 25mbps service and rarely ever get more than 5mbps because you are sharing that 25mbps pipeline with every other TWC customer in your area. If you want a true 25mbps connection, you need a good fiber optic connection.

 

hence my guessing that a wi-fi at school needs to get you 16mbps. I don't know what the SWTOR servers actually upload at, but in a full blown pvp match you can bet that 16mbps will far outperform 8mpbs, or 4. Just saying that trying to pvp on wi-fi at a school is very unlikely to work out well. PVE content for the most part should run much better.

[Volcan]

By 'good' internet you need low latency(delay) and reliable connection uptimes. The bandwidth (100 Mbps or 10 Mbps or 5 Gbps) does not really make a difference. This game does not require large bandwidth to perform at optimal performance.

 

Your latency can be determined by your ingame 'ping' or 'server lag' on your minimap. WiFI or hardwire connection are both just fine as long as you don't experience connection drops. Satellite connections are generally very high latency because the distance traveled is extremely far until you reach the destination host. This will cause your games 'reaction speed' to diminish. People who say, "***, I got out of that circle in time!" usually have high latency. they were out on their screen but because of their ping, the server had not registered yet.

 

Edit: anything under 100ms server lag is optimal. You could probably still play at 200ms, but you will notice people seem to always be one step ahead of you. Server lag is not determined by your bandwidth (unless it's really low), but rather your latency (how many hops/distance does it take to get to the game servers and then back to your computer).

Edited December 15, 2014 by Volcan