4 ms·

One place where latency has been felt very obviously for me is the MMO World of Warcraft. I’ve played it for many years from several different geographical loca

One place where latency has been felt very obviously for me is the MMO World of Warcraft. I’ve played it for many years from several different geographical locations, with reported latency between my computer and their servers ranging from as low as 20ms to as high as 240. I can pretty reliably tell if I’m playing on a PST or EST (North America) server, with the latter having 50-60ms latency compared to a PST server with 20-30ms due to differences in distance. It’s not massive, but on EST servers everything is ever so slightly less responsive, and it’s particularly visible in combat where many abilities are being used rapidly and outcome is dependent on order of operations. The differences starts becoming obvious when crossing the 80-90ms latency and unmistakable at 120ms+. I would agree that it would be difficult to tell the difference in a one-off test but when it’s something you’re actively doing for long stretches of time it’s easy to pick up on.

Arrath 4y ago
I played WoW on dialup will into the lifespan of WotLK. Average ping in the 320ms range. I learned to play around it to a degree, 'queueing' my spell casts by triggering it when my current one was close to completion, such that the command would hit the server about the time it would complete my previous spell. I could reliably chain cast spells this way once I got used to it, using the order of operations to my advantage as best as possible, as you say. Once I moved and got onto broadband, and found myself with a miraculous 100ms ping, I basically had to learn the game all over again as my instincts would cause me to try to do actions I couldn't yet do, since I wasn't quite done casting a spell, harvesting a node, etc. Later on I changed servers and was below 80ms ping, and the difference was again palpable but not game changing.

Arrath 4y ago

I played WoW on dialup will into the lifespan of WotLK. Average ping in the 320ms range. I learned to play around it to a degree, 'queueing' my spell casts by triggering it when my current one was close to completion, such that the command would hit the server about the time it would complete my previous spell. I could reliably chain cast spells this way once I got used to it, using the order of operations to my advantage as best as possible, as you say. Once I moved and got onto broadband, and found myself with a miraculous 100ms ping, I basically had to learn the game all over again as my instincts would cause me to try to do actions I couldn't yet do, since I wasn't quite done casting a spell, harvesting a node, etc. Later on I changed servers and was below 80ms ping, and the difference was again palpable but not game changing.