You’re on the US forums. We no longer have net neutrality in the US. So sorry for not assuming people would be on forums where they’re not meant to be.
Sorry. I’m not keen on accepting something that is potentially (and in all likelihood guaranteed) to negatively affect me just because it’s the “in” thing to do.
I’d rather be left behind as a dinosaur than blindly accept negative change just because it’s change. I’ll only accept positive change and this type of DRM does not count. Not for the paying customer, at least.
We have only ever had net neutrality laws for 2 years (2015-2017).
Well, we still had something equivalent to that beforehand. Regardless, it’s entirely gone now so it’s only a matter of time before the ISPs start acting scummy and taking advantage of its absence.
Not really, we had the FCC ruling however they felt that day and then ISPs counter suing with both sides winning at different times. We have never had any actual (even the 2015-2017 reclassification period, both of which were done by the FCC) laws that dictate or protect the internet.
We have never even answered the question of should the FCC have any guidance over the internet as, it is not a telecommunication anymore and the laws they use to argue power are questionable if they even apply anymore.
Still, it’s only a matter of time before the ISPs start acting scummy. You can’t refute that.
10 years ago I would have agreed, but market changes have forced them to upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate faster speeds. They wanted to throttle Netflix, harder to argue throttling 30Mb/s when you serving 1Gbs speeds. Comcast in my area went from 50mbs -> 500mbs over the last 8 years without increasing cost. They are also losing tons of money from people cutting cable (tv) so they need those customers to buy their internet. Then there are city/local governments getting into the business of laying fiber and selling their own plans.
All of that while we rollout a nationwide 5G wireless network that will also compete with the traditional ISPs more heavily than in the past.
The biggest place you see the lack of neutrality laws is on cellphones. “Buy Verizon can stream Disney+ unlimited”, that type of crap would have been made illegal.
(Though any customer service dealing with Comcast still sucks, though their techs are usually nice people…who also hate Comcast)
Problem is, they really HAVEN’T upgraded the infrastructure to accomodate faster speeds. Not everywhere, anyway. And they won’t because it’s too expensive. They’d rather just price-gouge everyone so they don’t have to spend a penny.
What you describe DOES sound idyllic, but it’s that idyllicness that makes me think it’s probably all BS.
As far as I am aware Canada still operates with net neutrality. Canada is served by these forums as they do speak English (US) there and are part of the continent of North America.
Not with respect to gaming. Like all wireless internet, 5G is just not reliable enough to have a perfect gaming experience.
Depends on the interpretation of net neutrality. For example such practices are allowed within the EU, with companies like BT in the UK offering unlimited streaming of specific services via mobile network. On the other hand in Canada such practices are illegal and covered by their net neutrality laws.
In the EU net neutrality mostly covers how data packets are routed. As an ISP or internet backbone company one cannot provide QoS with different price structures and instead all packets must be treated equally when being routed. This is the main reason for net neutrality since without regulations preventing QoS services, ISPs or backbone companies will purposely throttle your packets unless you pay higher rates (a better QoS) and it becomes a race to increase the price rather than add more bandwidth. This does not save consumers money or provide better service and just makes ISPs and backbone companies rich as they can charge more for each packet.
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Given that 20 years ago 35% of the USA was still on dialup and now 80% of the country has access to Gigibit speed, I would say they have upgraded.
But /shrug
For the complete off the grid people the only realistic solution is wireless, which even at 4G is much faster (non existent 20 years ago), and even satellite service can handle the speeds of Netflix (latency still sucks).
That’s the thing though. I don’t trust these companies to never price-gouge me; once they do, I’m cutting my internet cord. I also don’t trust Blizzard to patch their games to not require any form of re-authentication in the event they end up going out of business.
I don’t pay for products just to have my ability to use them arbitrarily compromised due to the actions of the people who made them. In the end, no matter what happens, if I find myself unable to play a Blizzard game I paid for it’s actually Blizzard’s fault for tying their games so intrinsically to a tenuous service.
Let’s be honest most people have their consoles hooked up to WiFi. It’s the “pros” and PC master race people that don’t. Your not going to be winning twitchy FPS competitions but your certainly able to play games and have fun.
then unbuy it. its about time for those who havent already refunded the game to finally refund that thing into oblivion. blizz deliberately killed wc3, and its time for those attached wc3 fans still poking at the corpse of wc3 to finally move on.
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I already refunded my copy over this BS. Doesn’t stop me from being allowed to lambast them for it.
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It does require internet to lambast them though.
Yes, and as long as I still have internet thanks to being able to afford it for the time being, I’ll continue to lambast Blizzard for their chronic shortsightedness until they make the appropriate course correction.
Internet isn’t essential for normal life; tying our lives to it is inherently dangerous.
I’m sure people made the same argument about electricity.
And they’d be right. You don’t need electricity to survive, either. But that’s irrelevant to the subject.
Sure, but the people who will survive when it goes away are not the one arguing on a web forum for a video game.
It really isn’t relevant anyway though. Internet isn’t even a basic utility; it’s a leisure thing just like cable. Electricity IS a utility. Utilities can’t be price-gouged because they’re regulated; the internet is not.