This paper is a description of a study done by 5 Worcester Polytechnic Institute students regarding latency (lag) in Warcraft III. These students split WC3 into three basic categories (building, exploration, combat) and tested the effects of lag on each of these using simple maps they custom-built for the experiment. They concluded that even at extremely high latencies (500ms-1000ms) combat and building were almost unaffected, and only exploration became much harder. The system by which they judged how much lag affected the game was rather vague: it compared different users playing together and took averages of game scores with different levels of lag. As far as I could tell, there was not a standard setup for who was the “host” player (no latency) and who was the “lagger,” and there was no compensation for player skill (or lack thereof).
I saw a number of problems with this study, which, perhaps, were more apparent to me as a player than would be to someone looking at the study through a strictly scientific approach. First and foremost, the researchers assumed that a “divide and conquer” approach was applicable to this study. They took what they perceived to be the three important aspects of the game and studied each one separately. I strongly disagree with this approach. The maps they used (page 6) for the study were ridiculously simplistic, and not at all like real WC3 multiplayer maps. Real maps combine all three aspects and more, and speed matters quite a bit. Even if a player with 500ms latency could compete against the 0 lag player on such a simple map, this is not an indicator that they could compete on a full WC3 map that includes so much more. Furthermore, they made no indication as to the skill level of the participants of their study, or how many different players took part in the study. For example, they even admit that their results for the exploration map are skewed because the player learned the map after a few tests (page 9). Overall, this study does not represent an actual online experience in the least. In fact, pings as high as those tested in this study never even occur in real gameplay because the game would be completely unplayable. I host games on Battle.net (WC3’s gaming server) almost daily and check pings before I start the game. Pings in the 200-275ms range are the high end of the spectrum; most fall far short of that, between 25-100ms. In fact, if a player pings higher than 200ms, other players usually clamor to have that player kicked from the game to prevent lag, even though it mostly affects only the actual player himself. Generally, players with pings over ~120ms will complain about lag being a problem and blame lag for any poor performance. I can personally attest that playing with ~150ms is not very much fun, and anything above 300ms is completely unplayable. Someone playing with a ping like 500ms is unheard of, and I’ve never even seen a ping above ~600ms. As a result, I have a hard time attributing any relevance to this study. Though the authors argue that lag is not a big deal in Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games like WC3, as opposed to FPS games, I strongly disagree with their conclusions. Due to the high level of micromanagement involved in a typical game of WC3 or DotA, the lag restrictions are virtually identical to that of an FPS game like CS.
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