Playing games on-line.

[homer]

I am only able to access the Internet through a dial up connection. There is no DSL In my area; I probably would not want to pay what they are asking anyway. My question is:

Is it worth trying to play games on-line with a dial up connection? My assumption is that the games will run very poorly for me.

Any advice is appreciated.

[Kakero]

you mean using modem? the answer is sadly no, even if you can connect and be able to play online, your game will be very laggy ( thus be a victim of PvP ). plus it's not fun to be playing when suddenly everything turns dark because the connection have disconnected.

[Paladin2000]

I agree with kakero. Online games are designed for fast cable/DSL connections. I have a slow DSL connection at home (about 300kbps) and I don't even dare to think about online games.

[NiceWorg]

Is that true Paladin? My 128k ISDN has worked quite well in most games. You can safely count the latest Unreal Tournaments out, but generally it works well.

As for the original post.. if you have 56k, you can play some games that don´t require much from the connection. You could try yourself and see if it works out, but 1st person shooters are out of the question.

[dragon_lord]

Having high ping certainly kills some of the fun factor but you can still play quite well. Back when i played UT(1) i used to stick it to cablers with ping of 350+. Your just disadvantaged thats all - ping is no substitute for skill. Some games are better than others for ping.

Slow.....DSL..... [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img] Im sorry but i have never heard those words in the same sentence! Some people just dont know how lucky they are...

[andrewas]

Originally posted by Paladin2000: I agree with kakero. Online games are designed for fast cable/DSL connections. I have a slow DSL connection at home (about 300kbps) and I don't even dare to think about online games.

And just what kind of games are you playing? 300K to slow? For what? Whats pings are you getting on it? If its much less than 100 you should be OK for any game, and if its more then your being ripped off.

[Vaskez]

Yeah 300k is fine for any game these days. And you can play many games on a dial-up connection as well. Try the heroes of might and magic games - they are turn based and so it's fine. Also Civilisation games. It's just first person shooters that really suffer on a modem but I play unreal tournament sometimes and see people on dial-up doing pretty well. Of course it's a disadvantage but you can play.

[Paladin2000]

Do you think 300k is good enough? Maybe...but the ISP has a slow server and if I wanted to play online games, I will have to wait until wee hours of the morning and unfortunately I have a family and a job. Therefore I only use my connection to download MP3s and other stuff.

FYI, I don't live in the US.

[/)eathKiller]

I play online games all the time and use Dial-up. The fact is to play games that dont have slow-down or possible loss in gameplay due to your having a slower connection.

Phantasy Star Online is one such game, though its a console game, a PC version was released, and its absolutley wonderfull because though you may be 5 seconds behind someone you may still both kill the same monster and receive the same ammount of XP. everything worked out quite nicely with that. Other games i've had alot of luck with are Myth The fallen lords, Warcraft III. The only games that dont work well are FPS games and some RPGs with a high-refresh rate like Seiken Densusetsu 3 and Ice Wind Dale. Though Ice wind dale does work out to a certain extent. And NWN doesnt seem to have any slow down when it really has tons [img]tongue.gif[/img] So the choice is yours, I say go for it, as long as your not trying to play Unreal Tourney 2003. I alway shave to use cable to play that online. I also had sucess with the mech warrior series but you usually have a 5 second window in which you can be killed 20 times before you even get to see your oponent, same for Rainbow six and the whole tom clancey game series, just ignore all that and go with the RTS and RPGs [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[homer]

I do not much care for fist person shooters, so that is not a concern for me. I did not consider the turn-based games. It makes sense that there would not a problem with those.
I guess I will give a few a try. I am currently playing Never Winter Nights, but I assume there will be the “lag” problem with that one.

And NWN doesnt seem to have any slow down when it really has tons

I do not understand what you are saying. Dose this refer to the “refresh rate” you mentioned? If you do not mind me asking, what is that exactly?

Incidentally, what dose the word “ping” stand for? Please excuse my ignorance I am sort of new to the Internet and it’s language.