Online playing experience - will it ever work?

[eru]

I'm not holding my breath............

I used to play MTW v1.1 happily for a while despite a few problems but it has now degraded into a non-playable online game. I either cant connect, it takes an age to connect, it crashes when hosting/joining with all firewall coldbooted to off & it freezes at some point - most meaning that only a system restart will get me out of it.

I have never liked Gamespy due to advertising/spyware and have always used third party apps like 'All Seeing Eye' and 'HLSW' for other games.
I was even thinking of starting a clan (called PFJ) as it was the only game; me and a few friends, used to play. It was great fun over ventrillo voice comms:gossip: .
I have now given up totally:wall:, stopped playing single player, never did buy MTW:VI :( & play Halflife instead. It actually annoys me that MTW:VI isnt backwards compatable (cant play people who have it so it divides the community) and is only a money making idea, despite only offering a small new campaign map and bug fixes which should be in a free patch.
In fact i will probably not even buy RTW for this same reasons listed.

And guess what RTW is using for multiplay too - u guessed it 'Gayspy' again

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

[Puzz3D]

Those are all symptoms of high latency (250+ ms average, 500+ ms peak) to GameSpy. There was a two week period around xmas where GameSpy performance was quite bad, and then another period lasting about four days a week ago. Right now I'm not getting those problems, and my latency to GameSpy is a solid 80 ms.

[Fragony]

Hmmmm I played excelllent games with someone from new zealand that was on a 56k, exactly the opposite of the globe. If I play raven shield I want no more then 80 ms, but I have found high latency MTW games to be very playable. It is kinda sad that they force you to use gamespy though, I passionately hate that add ridden piece of *insert something disgusting*

[Puzz3D]

Fragony,

I wasn't clear. I'm not talking about latency to another player which is what you see in the foryer. I'm talking about latency to GameSpy. During the last two periods of poor multiplayer performance my latency to other players was fine, but the last few hops to GameSpy showed a big increase. I'm on cable and normally have 80 ms latency to GameSpy. When the last few hops near GameSpy go up to 250 ms, I know multiplayer isn't going to work. A modem user normally gets 350 to 500 ms to other players and probably to GameSpy since the modem can't do any better than that, and the game works. However, that high latency is on his end. It's when GameSpy's end ges high that the trouble seems to happen.

[Crimson Castle]

Is that a lite version of Gamespy ? One that comes without the ads and spyware?