Latency [Tested]

On March 05 2010 16:17 Gibybo wrote:
HoN is not a P2P, every game is hosted on a dedicated server...

On March 05 2010 16:41 TossFloss wrote:


Doesn't matter.

On March 05 2010 16:47 Gibybo wrote:

Eh? I was responding to the poster above me, I suppose I should have quoted him. It matters because if it was a local game, the latency test isn't nearly as meaningful.

On March 05 2010 16:54 T.O.P. wrote:
That's really high latency considering the tester played against a computer.

On March 05 2010 16:12 ruXxar wrote:
Wow wtf. Why would blizzard not implement lan latency. That's pretty sloppy by blizzard. I can see no reason why you'd not want lan latency.

On March 05 2010 17:36 0neder wrote:
So, I'll ask the question I ask everyone who posts here:

Have you posted this on the beta forums/feedback and linked it?

On March 05 2010 17:39 Poly325 wrote:
maybe latency changer thing has security issues, so blizzard doesn't want to compromise security between computers. it'll create huge hacking problems.

but then again, they can probably program SC2 to have good security, and make it so there is an option on whether to play with LAN latency or not.

On March 05 2010 17:52 ELESSAR wrote:
I posted a link on bnet forums

On March 05 2010 17:52 ELESSAR wrote:
I posted a link on bnet forums

On March 05 2010 19:22 cyllu2 wrote:
HoN has lower latency and is impossible to map hack. Blizzard should hire some of S2 Games's programmers.

On March 05 2010 19:22 cyllu2 wrote:
HoN has lower latency and is impossible to map hack. Blizzard should hire some of S2 Games's programmers.

On March 05 2010 19:36 Gibybo wrote:


Agreed.

On March 05 2010 19:46 Zironic wrote:
So all three B.net games have the exact same latency? That's peculiar.

On March 05 2010 19:41 G.s)NarutO wrote:


Nothing is impossible to hack.

On March 05 2010 18:37 Gibybo wrote:

Thanks I can't find it though, link?

Also just thought I'd point out that the frames I used in my test were frames from the video, not the game itself. The games ran at much higher than 30 FPS but I had no consistent way of recording them higher so for the purposes of testing I couldn't tell.

My tests are only accurate to around ~50ms, so after rounding they look closer than they probably are in reality, however it does seem to suggest they are all using the same net code.

On March 05 2010 21:09 goszar wrote:
Also, If you have shitty internet connection (like I have currently during daytime), Starcraft 2 is unplayable. Anything over 5% of lost packets means HUGE lags, and if there is 5-seconds loss, you are disconnected. At the same time I can play HoN with some minor lag.

On March 06 2010 00:53 member1987 wrote:
You can't measure latency like this and its not a realistic representation.

The only way to measure latency would be to use a specifically made program for SC2 that is going to measure your in-game latency and record lowest, highest and average latency.

Of course you would need to test it on a new installation, with no additional programs installed. This would show the best latency you can get. Real world measurements would have to be made with old OS installation and various programs installed that may automatically connect to the internet for updates, reports and sending/receiving information.

Also, since SC2 uses dedicated servers and WC3 uses user host you can't actually measure them, because your latency would be dependent on the host internet speed and location, in accordance with your location.

On March 06 2010 00:53 member1987 wrote:
You can't measure latency like this and its not a realistic representation.

The only way to measure latency would be to use a specifically made program for SC2 that is going to measure your in-game latency and record lowest, highest and average latency.

Of course you would need to test it on a new installation, with no additional programs installed. This would show the best latency you can get. Real world measurements would have to be made with old OS installation and various programs installed that may automatically connect to the internet for updates, reports and sending/receiving information.

Also, since SC2 uses dedicated servers and WC3 uses user host you can't actually measure them, because your latency would be dependent on the host internet speed and location, in accordance with your location.

On March 06 2010 03:10 Paperkat wrote:
i dont really know, but i dont usually feel any lag (i play on eu) and i gave a beta key to a friend who lives in New zealand to play with me on EU servers and he lags in every other game (other titles) he plays when he wants to play with me, but doesnt lag on starcraft 2 eu servers and i can play against him fine

On March 06 2010 01:18 Jarvs wrote:
War3 uses dedicated servers.

Does Warcraft III have a Client/Server Model?
No. Due to the amount of units and the number of players in a game of Warcraft III, it is not possible to implement a straight Client/Server architecture as in Diablo II. We are using a variation of the peer-to-peer model that allows us to eliminate some of the abuses found in StarCraft games.

On March 06 2010 00:53 member1987 wrote:
You can't measure latency like this and its not a realistic representation.

The only way to measure latency would be to use a specifically made program for SC2 that is going to measure your in-game latency and record lowest, highest and average latency.

Of course you would need to test it on a new installation, with no additional programs installed. This would show the best latency you can get. Real world measurements would have to be made with old OS installation and various programs installed that may automatically connect to the internet for updates, reports and sending/receiving information.

Also, since SC2 uses dedicated servers and WC3 uses user host you can't actually measure them, because your latency would be dependent on the host internet speed and location, in accordance with your location.

On March 06 2010 03:16 Mohdoo wrote:


Very interesting. I would venture to guess that it is possible Blizzard accidentally set the latency on the Americas region server too high on accident, perhaps by force of habit when setting up other Battle.net servers. For the latency to be identical to Bnet1.0 is a bit suspicious. I would be more inclined to believe it is them failing to do it well enough if it was say...Higher...Or even a bit lower than Bnet1.0. But the fact that it is the same makes me think it just an accident. Especially considering people from Europe are saying they have almost no lag. I live roughly 900 miles (1 448.4096 kilometers) from the Americas Battle.net server (In Anaheim, California if it is in the same place USWest is), and my delay, although lower than Bnet1.0, is certainly more than HoN. I would imagine that most people playing in Europe aren't this close to their Bnet server, so I think that supports my theory that this is an accident.

Can anyone run similar tests on the Euro or even the Asia server? Artosis? You have access to both Asia and Americas server, right?

On March 06 2010 03:09 Mohdoo wrote:
Out of curiosity, does anyone playing on the West coast of the USA feel that the delay in SC2 and WC3/SC1 are equal? I certainly do not. It is noticeably higher delay then HoN, but it seems WAY better than WC3/SC1.

Though I do not doubt the results of Gibybo, it just seems like there is more to it than that.

Frankly i don't like how this test was done it should have been done relative ms with a high speed camera pointing at the screen and the mouse and when the mouse is fully engaged then you get your latency till movement, As the animations are different from game to game and although sc b.net compared to sc lan would be valid in that test that is only because it's the same game.

On March 06 2010 03:18 TheYango wrote:

From the Warcraft III Battle.net FAQ:

On March 06 2010 06:31 Pyrthas wrote:
It would be really great if we could get lots of people running similar tests (edit: on American and European (and Asian) servers) to see if the results are consistent.

On March 06 2010 07:37 shalafi wrote:
I just tested it with the launcher bypass (for science!) and got 0-delay on 30FPS and 80ms-delay on 60FPS. I used US beta client.

Here's a link to the videos themselves:
[url blocked]

On March 06 2010 07:41 tec27 wrote:

Thats not really a valid test. The launcher bypass does not operate through bnet and therefore would be analagous to single player in BW.

On March 06 2010 07:47 ggfobster wrote:
For the new battle.net that's supposed to be so awesome, they sure are dropping the ball on this. Hope they fix it soon.

On March 06 2010 07:59 Klockan3 wrote:

This thread is kinda bogus, the reports on latency vary greatly between people. I think that those who have latency have it due to other reasons than B-net. As reported by the other guy b-net 2.0 have it set to 100 ms latency just like iccup and lans. I do guess that when it detects people having bad ping etc it increases the latency to make sure no unwanted lag occurs.

On March 06 2010 07:59 Klockan3 wrote:

This thread is kinda bogus, the reports on latency vary greatly between people. I think that those who have latency have it due to other reasons than B-net. As reported by the other guy b-net 2.0 have it set to 100 ms latency just like iccup and lans. I do guess that when it detects people having bad ping etc it increases the latency to make sure no unwanted lag occurs.

On March 06 2010 07:59 Klockan3 wrote:

This thread is kinda bogus, the reports on latency vary greatly between people. I think that those who have latency have it due to other reasons than B-net. As reported by the other guy b-net 2.0 have it set to 100 ms latency just like iccup and lans. I do guess that when it detects people having bad ping etc it increases the latency to make sure no unwanted lag occurs.

On March 06 2010 06:22 member1987 wrote:
@ tec27
I don't think lower latency would be the perfect or even best choice. In fact it really depends on your internet connection relative to the location of the server and relative to the other person.

Essentially lower latency should work better when all parties are close and have pretty much same internet connection or should i say similar packet loss(in the lower ranks)

While higher latency would be better when more people with different internet connections at different and maybe not so close locations are playing.

So I think that setting the latency as high as possible in the beta start is the best way to determine the lowest latency settings by the end of beta.

So if Blizzard get statistical data of what latency works best for most of the people, that will be the set latency at game release. Of course they could change that after the game is released and having stats from millions of players.

So my point is that the high latency should not worry anyone, especially in this stage of development. Blizzard is testing the servers and will do so for the whole time this beta lasts.

In fact as I've explained above, having high latency in this beta stage is the best possible scenario for Blizzard to actually determine what the lowest latency can be and just drop it little by little.

On March 06 2010 15:59 Qiin wrote:
p.s. everyone who does not live in the US should be raging right now on blizz forums, ur gonna HATE the delay

On March 06 2010 16:36 TheYango wrote:

As has been said before, many people on EU actually have ICCup-like latency.

On March 06 2010 02:38 CowGoMoo wrote:
pretty high latency.

I would be curious what the delay on EU servers is, since I have heard from my friends the lag isn't nearly as noticeable there.

On March 06 2010 20:03 Senx wrote:
It's really bad that i have almost a 1 sec delay on my actions when i play against the gdamn AI on battle.net.. They really need to reduce the latency :I

Eu server btw, playing from excellent broadband connection in sweden.

On March 06 2010 08:26 Gandalf wrote:


I can play BW on iccup just fine. I also play HoN on EU servers where i get about 250ms, and HoN seems to be coded really well cuz the delay is negligible at that ping. On SC2, I get a full 1.5-2 second latency, which is ridiculous and unplayable. I'd be fine even with SC1 level latency, and would be more than happy with what HoN gives me, but SC2 right now is basically unplayable for me. Why is my latency on EU servers for SC2 in the range of 2 seconds when my ping is around 200-250ms? Doesnt make sense to me.

On March 10 2010 06:34 Integra wrote:
Blizzard are already aware of this, stop posting about it already.

On March 10 2010 06:45 theqat wrote:


has there been some statement from them about it? or in simpler terms, how do you know?

On March 10 2010 06:53 Integra wrote:Davey aka David Kim has discussed this issue with several people while playing them in the beta (including me!)

On March 10 2010 06:53 Integra wrote:

Davey aka David Kim has discussed this issue with several people while playing them in the beta (including me!)

CowGoMoo has already responded to this where he stated that he too experinces high lag (he is one of the Q&A's of Blizzard).

On March 06 2010 06:23 violett wrote:
i did a test on europe sc2 server with capture video method.

sc2(europe server) 110ms
bw(iccup) with lan latency 110ms
bw(europe server) without lan latency 420ms

i captured at 20 fps with camtasia on bnet/iccup vs computer, the single frames i watched with megui, i took the average of 5 actions.

On March 12 2010 03:38 CowGoMoo wrote:

I assumed this post was accurate.

Are people having lots of delay on the EU servers? Sounds like a lot of people on EU are not, which is good.

On March 12 2010 15:19 PANSSY wrote:
Well, I am currently in Sri Lanka, and the internet here is pretty shit. I am running on a 512 Kbps connection and I can play the game fairly well. I feel a bit of lag with some micro, but nothing absurd considering I am on the other side of the world with a bad connection. When talked with my friend in california (where I am originally from) him and I get about the same amount of lag.... strange....

On March 12 2010 17:00 Jarvs wrote:


Unfortunately that is incredibly subjective when we're talking about fractions of a second. What is your actual ping to the sc2 server in ms? What is your friends?

Many members in the War3 Australian community have pointed out the delay to the US server being similar to that of the War3 Battle.net. Garena (similar program to Hamachi which implements LAN latency) has become completely essential for the Aus/NZ War3 community to even play competitively and SC2 seems far from the LAN latency experienced there.

On March 13 2010 00:10 TyrantGuardian wrote:
Huh, I play from Sweden and I can confirm that there is definitely a noticable delay in the game. There is NO comparison to iCCup, which pretty much felt like playing Single Player in it's responsiveness. B.net 2.0 feels exactly like WC3 and BW did on b.net. I've ran network tests and there appears to be no issue with my connection at all, so either there's no server near Sweden yet or there's built-in latency like in b.net to improve stability.

If it's the latter, Blizzard REALLY needs to fix this if they are hoping for b.net 2 becoming a de facto competitive platform with proper tournaments and such. As many people have already stated - look at HoN and iCCup for awesome netcode.

On March 17 2010 23:22 Tray wrote:
I don't get how this thread is still around. Does no one who plays video games have ANY concept of how lag works? Blizzard isn't lagging your computer. It simply has to do with the distance between your computer and the "Hub." They may, and I believe Blizzard has stated that they do put a minimum lag into the game to help balance this out so that people who live near the servers don't have a significant advantage over those who are further away, but this number is not going to be anywhere remotely close to 200-300ms. It's likely 110ms, which is still retardedly high for today's internet connections.

When playing Dota, as a listchecker host, most people I would play with would be around the southwest United States would ping to me at 15ms or lower. League of Legends put it a floor lag at I believe 60ms or maybe 100ms for this same reason. However, this level of lag is hardly noticable unless you're very used to playing on a LAN.

Anyway, likely what is happening is that lots of people have crappy connections or are very far from the region hub and simply don't understand how the internet works.

On March 17 2010 23:22 Tray wrote:
I don't get how this thread is still around. Does no one who plays video games have ANY concept of how lag works? Blizzard isn't lagging your computer. It simply has to do with the distance between your computer and the "Hub." They may, and I believe Blizzard has stated that they do put a minimum lag into the game to help balance this out so that people who live near the servers don't have a significant advantage over those who are further away, but this number is not going to be anywhere remotely close to 200-300ms. It's likely 110ms, which is still retardedly high for today's internet connections.

When playing Dota, as a listchecker host, most people I would play with would be around the southwest United States would ping to me at 15ms or lower. League of Legends put it a floor lag at I believe 60ms or maybe 100ms for this same reason. However, this level of lag is hardly noticable unless you're very used to playing on a LAN.

Anyway, likely what is happening is that lots of people have crappy connections or are very far from the region hub and simply don't understand how the internet works.

On March 05 2010 18:54 Kiante wrote:
i feels like this for me as well. I had assumed it was just because i was australian...but i guess not.

Sooo, who's gonna write a LL plugin for sc2 ^_^