So does anyone have any good stats on a standard MMO's internet usage?

I had a 22mb package with a 225gb cap, but because of some medical bills I lowered that down to 12mb package with a 85gb cap. And I'm wondering if this will be enough to still play a few games. I'm cutting out video service like netflix and hulu.. so I'm thinking I won't go near the cap.. but not really sure. 

Thanks!

I've played for years with a 5gb cap. It takes work, but you can run multiple MMOs with that. Just pray they don't do major patches at the same time.

Originally posted by Dewm

 

 

 So does anyone have any good stats on a standard MMO's internet usage?

 

I had a 22mb package with a 225gb cap, but because of some medical bills I lowered that down to 12mb package with a 85gb cap. And I'm wondering if this will be enough to still play a few games. I'm cutting out video service like netflix and hulu.. so I'm thinking I won't go near the cap.. but not really sure. 

 

Thanks!

If you are not doing large file downloads or video streaming 85GB should be fine for a cople MMO's plus casual browsing.  MMO's don't take that much bandwidth day to day (If you use 5GB a month for MMO game play I would be surprised).  Even the install files are at most 25GB or so and you only do that once.  

Gotcha, makes sence. Thanks!

I think we can say it's around 10kb/s, let's take 15 to be sure.

It probably depends from game to game, what you're doing in game, loading screens etc.

But taking 15kb/s as an example:

1 minute: 900kb

60 minutes: 54000kb

Around 53mb for one hour

MMORPGs tend to not use very much bandwidth.  Many seem to have given up on supporting dialup connections, but I'd be surprised if there are any where 100 KB/s isn't enough.  A cap of 85 GB per month is enough that the time you spend actually playing MMORPGs (as opposed to downloading new ones) will barely make a dent in that, even if you spend unreasonably long hours playing them.

MMOs while playing the game and not downloading anything in the background use less than 100 KB/ second bandwidth. So no you won't notice a thing whiile playing. I doubt you'll even notice anything while downloading something else either.

Just a little confused myself. I've grown up and lived through the entire internet boom, and I have never had a "cap" or heard of a plan with a "cap" as to how much you can use per month... That just sounds stupid, get a new ISP in my opinion.

Originally posted by Zeno89

Just a little confused myself. I've grown up and lived through the entire internet boom, and I have never had a "cap" or heard of a plan with a "cap" as to how much you can use per month... That just sounds stupid, get a new ISP in my opinion.

Even the almighty Comcast has a cap. Its a 250Gb cap, as I recall, but a cap nonetheless.

Originally posted by Zeno89

Just a little confused myself. I've grown up and lived through the entire internet boom, and I have never had a "cap" or heard of a plan with a "cap" as to how much you can use per month... That just sounds stupid, get a new ISP in my opinion.

The basic principle that ISPs operate on is that you have a lot of shared bandwidth, and at any given time, only a handful of your customers are using very much bandwidth.  If you're only doing some huge download 1% of the time, then your ISP can try to give you tons of bandwidth for that 1% of the time, with the understanding that you won't need very much the other 99% of the time.  They'll try to give you all you need the other 99%, too, but if you're only using 10 KB/s while playing a game, giving you all you need is nearly free for the ISP.

The issue is that a tiny percentage of customers use a large fraction of the bandwidth.  If you're an ISP and notice that 2% of your customers are using half of your total bandwidth, then you realize that you're losing money on that 2%.  So they'll impose caps with the intention that the cap should be high enough that 95%+ of their customers will never find out that there is a cap unless they ask (or read the fine print), and if the 2% who go over the cap want to quit, fine, you were losing money on them anyway.

Just to put 85 GB/month into perspective, cell phone data plans typically have a cap in the neighborhood of 2 GB/month.  85 GB/month is nearly 3 GB/day, and that's an awful lot of downloading.

Originally posted by Dewm

 

 

 So does anyone have any good stats on a standard MMO's internet usage?

 

I had a 22mb package with a 225gb cap, but because of some medical bills I lowered that down to 12mb package with a 85gb cap. And I'm wondering if this will be enough to still play a few games. I'm cutting out video service like netflix and hulu.. so I'm thinking I won't go near the cap.. but not really sure. 

 

Thanks!

Thats fine you wont come close to maxing that out..

I mean maybe some of the newer MMOS have an initial downlaod of say 15gb to 20gb but after that the data usage is next to nothing..

Hell i believe you would be fine using netflix and stuff like that as well..

Use somthing like trhis to keep an eye on it your first month, just carry on using it like you would.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tbbmeter.html

Then you can figure out how much you need per month.

Originally posted by Dewm

 

 

 So does anyone have any good stats on a standard MMO's internet usage?

 

I had a 22mb package with a 225gb cap, but because of some medical bills I lowered that down to 12mb package with a 85gb cap. And I'm wondering if this will be enough to still play a few games. I'm cutting out video service like netflix and hulu.. so I'm thinking I won't go near the cap.. but not really sure. 

 

Thanks!

Sad for you, but we here in the States have no limit(on most every plan available) Guess that is what makes America so great :) (No pun intended)

Originally posted by Razperil

Originally posted by Dewm

 

 

 So does anyone have any good stats on a standard MMO's internet usage?

 

I had a 22mb package with a 225gb cap, but because of some medical bills I lowered that down to 12mb package with a 85gb cap. And I'm wondering if this will be enough to still play a few games. I'm cutting out video service like netflix and hulu.. so I'm thinking I won't go near the cap.. but not really sure. 

 

Thanks!

Sad for you, but we here in the States have no limit(on most every plan available) Guess that is what makes America so great :) (No pun intended)

Most ISPs in the U.S. do have usage caps.

Avoid netflix and hulu like the plague and you should be fine with playing an MMO.  If you are really scared you can get a router (which you should have anyway for security purposes -- hardware firewalls and such) and set it to meter your data usage.  This way you will know if you are getting close to your limit or at least about what you are using per day.

If you have a low download limit, just be carful of MMO's that download patches in the background.

Originally posted by Zeno89

Just a little confused myself. I've grown up and lived through the entire internet boom, and I have never had a "cap" or heard of a plan with a "cap" as to how much you can use per month... That just sounds stupid, get a new ISP in my opinion.

I live up here in Alaska, and we have 2 ISP.

GCI (General Communications Inc) 

and 

ACS (Alaska Communication Services)

GCI has quite a few "plans" 1mb/s to 22/mb/s but they all have caps.

ACS does not have caps, but the fastest they offer is 3mb/s

...So lower speeds or a cap? :S ... which is the lesser of the two evils?

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by Razperil

Originally posted by Dewm

 

 

 So does anyone have any good stats on a standard MMO's internet usage?

 

I had a 22mb package with a 225gb cap, but because of some medical bills I lowered that down to 12mb package with a 85gb cap. And I'm wondering if this will be enough to still play a few games. I'm cutting out video service like netflix and hulu.. so I'm thinking I won't go near the cap.. but not really sure. 

 

Thanks!

Sad for you, but we here in the States have no limit(on most every plan available) Guess that is what makes America so great :) (No pun intended)

Most ISPs in the U.S. do have usage caps.

Yeah from what I've heard most companies do have caps.... Unless you pay insane amounts of money.

But my last internet bill (for the month of april & may) came to $587.00usd.... And that is why I'm trying to cut some of my cost.