So I’m reaching a point where I’m very likely going to have to move right after the release of the raid, but the issue is that we likely won’t have internet for a bit.
I’m looking for opinions on mobile hotspots to see what’s legitimately viable for this.
We’re moving to an area that has decent service for Verizon, T-mobile, and AT&T.
I’ve heard a lot of decent things about the Nighthawk M1 for AT&T, but the price for something temporary is a little much. Don’t really care as much about the super massive speeds as I do reliability and not lagging out.
Back in 2010/2011, there were times when I’d have to use mobile hotspots to raid. This was when even on a good connection, the latency from NZ was roughly in the 500-600ms range typically, so raiding with that latency was something I was already used to, and the biggest barrier was occasional packet loss.
You could try it now inside an LFR raid or something to see how it affects you to raid on your mobile hotspot, and whether that’s something you can work with. But do note that the new place you’re moving to, while it might have decent service for those carriers, it might not be decent enough for mobile hotspot quality all the time, so what you “test” now is no guarantee.
Do note that regardless of quality, you’ll probably have a small performance dip. I had a performance dip when I travelled to the US back then, and was suddenly playing with <100ms. All my instincts and natural timings were off.
I drive truck for a living. I exclusively use my phones Hotspot for internet. My provider is att and I have between 54 and 89ms most places. Wow uses very little data as far as limits are concerned. I’ve mythic raided (4/8M in 8.2) I choose not to raid now for other reasons. I am currently pushing in 22-23 bracket in m+ as tank.
Considering that I hit all 48 in my profession. I could probably offer an opinion on your area as well. I will say that central Wyoming is a horrid spot for it unless you’re in Wamsutter. Almost everywhere else, I have playable ms and the only drops I have are my phone dying because I forgot to plug it in.
That’s reassuring to hear. Awesome. Depending on where we go temporarily, I’m not even sure they offer decent standard cable internet, so this might have to be a longer solution.
Thank you!
Where we’re currently at, our devices have been damaged and our fiber lines have been cut, and we’ve had spotty connectivity ever since, so I feel like it can’t be worse lol. Plus it’s stupid expensive and there aren’t other options here.
If you end up being a higher end user for your area, you may experience 130-150 during rush hour if you’re in a populated area. Just fair warning. I generally try to park away from cities for this reason. Some smaller towns I get 150 mbps upload and 18 down.
Latency (ms) isn’t the issue for a mobile/wireless connection, and is a deceptive way to measure how good connections are. Every raid mechanic is doable even with 300ms with a bit of practice, and Aus/NZ players have/had periods of raiding with much more than that and still performing fine.
It’ll be things like packet loss, bandwidth throttling, quality of cell towers - resulting in stuttering, rubber banding, random DC’s because the game activated too many assets (think Arena type encounters with lots of “spectators”) that can be problematic at times.
That’s essentially what I was worried about. I’m trying to do my research on throttling, but seems a lot of 5g plans don’t on fancy plans, but some do after 50GB. The area we’re moving to is pretty low population though. But there’s also very limited internet service
Crossing my fingers.
Most places I think have some form of online resource if they’re providing truly terrible service. After all, it’s not like back in the day where gaming was this ultra-exclusive thing, plenty of people in random neighbourhoods or out-of-the-way locations will play games like CoD or Fortnite or whatever. If trying to do a big search doesn’t reveal any major issues, chances are you will be mostly fine when you get there. If a search reveals the area has had infrastructure upgrades within the last 10 or so years, you may be able to feel more secure.
I’ve sort of been doing that, without much of an idea of what to look for, but searching key words is helping. Data throttling is a big one.
I lived in the UK for a bit and we were only getting about 1.5mbps. (Alaska too though) It was awful lol. I think I could make do with most that are better than that overall, with how much it dropped and lagged out.
The last time I tried to raid on a cellular connection was in Vanilla so this may be just a little out of date but my latency was completely unplayable, like 2000+ ms.
Att, the basis for my experience, has none of these things. Ymmv based on the area, but I just haven’t had issues over the last 7 years of doing this. Throttling used to be a thing, but it was rallied against in 2010 as part of a class action. They do reserve the right to slow your connection slightly during peak hours, but throttling often refers to dropping your speed to kbps metrics. If I exceed my limit, I go down to 128kbps. Unplayable by all standards, but I also have a 40gb limit that I never hit.
I agree with the above statement. One of my current jobs IRL is to edit reports that assess the claims of cellular and internet providers. T-Mobile has the most 5G coverage, but it’s centered around major cities, and unlikely to be found in rural areas. Verizon has the fastest 5G, but it is also only in major cities and gets interference from buildings… and trees! Verizon has the most 4G coverage.
But something to keep in mind is that cellular companies OFTEN throttle gaming traffic. They look at their service as being used for web surfing, email, streaming a movie, not a 30+ tick rate game.
It just depends on how many people in the area depend on cellular internet, what the company does with gaming traffic, and which speed you can pick up from their towers. And sadly, you won’t know most of that til you’re using it.
Yeah for sure. The other factor of course, especially in a densely populated area, is that which cell tower you’re going to use is managed by the company. Two people could be within the same room, but have established connections to different towers based on order/workload etc. And that sort of thing can give 2 users of the same network in the same room different quality of service, especially if a particular cell tower is having infrastructure issues.
