[jacquej]

What does this mean for those who play online games, like World of Warcraft?

[mysterio]

It means once they do finally implement it, you could be over the (Time Warner) bandwidth cap. Comcast is toying around with a 250 gig per month cap that you probably wouldn't break, however. A quick internet search shows that moderate WoW users are pulling 3 to 4 gig a month or more, but not close to 250.

Now that assumes you are the only person using the connection. If you have several people in the house using it and someone with an XBOX playing against others online, then you might be using a lot more than 5 gig.

If all of the cable companies do something like this, I would support actions to limit their monopolies in each market.

[Realism]

Really, my kid plays all those games, a lot. Not to mention I have phone, TV and Internet coming thru the same pipe. Could be interesting.

[GATOR NAVY]

Does anyone have any idea how much bandwidth WoW takes per hour of play?

Kind of old but maybe it has some info you can use. There are bandwidth monitor programs you can download that would give you an idea of your usage.

[rarestia]

What does this mean for those who play online games, like World of Warcraft?

Nothing, really. If you run a bandwidth meter while you play, you transfer maybe a few thousand megabytes during the course of a day of play. It's not small potatoes by some standards, but I don't think you'd hit a 10 GB cap in a month.

That being said, this will completely destroy internet marketing and advertising. People will find non-graphical browsers or even go back to the old days of text-only. I run Firefox with AdBlock Plus and NoScript, and a lot of the graphical, flashy media is blocked anyway. How much advertising is lost by that though?

I have been trying diligently to cut back my internet usage. No social networking sites, instant messaging, etc. I do my FReep stuff, read emails, banking, etc. For the most part, however, my entertainment comes from books. I think a lot of folks should find other means to entertain themselves. Gardening, HAM radio, woodworking, or gunsmithing, all favorites of mine, would be adequate and fulfilling hobbies to enjoy.

We need to get back to basics. Online is no place to make things happen. There's nothing more satisfying than a beer after a day of hanging