Clouded in mist

When it comes to file transfers across the internet, I often feel that I’m geographically disadvantaged. I’ve been attempting to download Pirates of the Burning Sea beta since it was opened to the public, but Fileplanet and I hardly get along at all. I’ve managed only an average of 20kb/s, and anytime it got somewhere nearly to 50% completion, the connection timeouts. Furthermore, Fileplanet doesn’t support resuming unless you’re a subscriber. So after two days of downloading, I’ve essentially made zero progress.

It irritates me a lot that these days, most companies can’t be bothered to host their own game clients and patches, but outsource it another company such as Fileplanet and 3Dgamers. The problem with these 3rd party distribution service is that you’re often encouraged to register and pay a subscription fee, or else you join street long queues that rival those queuing for bread during the Great Depression. If you’re the parent developing company, at least have the decency to host and distribute your own product.

I understand the reasons behind this move is to cut bandwidth costs, but the cuts can be achieved without outsourcing file distribution. We already have a viable solution to this problem for years: the BitTorrent protocol. Open source operating systems and softwares uses it as a distribution method, Blizzard uses it for World of Warcraft updates, why can’t more company adopt the same method of distribution?

Anyway, things are getting rather boring as of late in EQ2. All raids are on hold until the 29th because of insufficient sign ups due to the holiday season. I always find this aspect in EQ2 rather amusing, since in L2 the reverse always happens - raids and PvP pick up in intensity tremendously as holiday seasons approaches. I guess this could be due to the different demographics of players in each game, but I’ve no clue really.