Tracking internet usage for Multiplayer/MMO games

oromis

i pwn joo!!
Hi

I just moved out of home to study and my college uses a firewall to block games (including Battle.net) which means i can't play games like World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 from the hostel internet.

I am planning to use my phone 3G plan (via tether) to play online, but Im looking for some sort of tracker tool which will allow me to accurately gauge how much internet is used at average per hour of playing WoW or Diablo or Dota 2, etc.

I tried using only the default connection settings tracker which was there in Windows 8 - but i'm not sure how accurate it is.

Any help?
 

gameranand

Living to Play
FYI the bandwidth is very low for games AFAIK. I guess an hour will merely cost you some MBs of data.
 
Install the software named 'networx', go to settings and check the box that says 'ignore local network data' or something like that. Then you can check the data consumed by individual application.
 
OP
oromis

oromis

i pwn joo!!
FYI the bandwidth is very low for games AFAIK. I guess an hour will merely cost you some MBs of data.

Install the software named 'networx', go to settings and check the box that says 'ignore local network data' or something like that. Then you can check the data consumed by individual application.


thanks. will try networx out.

when i tracked world of warcraft using the default connection settings meter, it showed : 1 hour of WoW requiring about 20-24mb per hour. at which rate, i wont be able t afford a good 3G plan.
lets hope it was wrong and networx gives a more accurate figure.
 

anaklusmos

Youngling
thanks. will try networx out.

when i tracked world of warcraft using the default connection settings meter, it showed : 1 hour of WoW requiring about 20-24mb per hour. at which rate, i wont be able t afford a good 3G plan.
lets hope it was wrong and networx gives a more accurate figure.

Well it seems you are lucky then .... When i play WoW on 3G it uses around 100 mb per hour.
BTW what server u play on and what your ping ?
 

sandeep410

Journeyman
It Depends upon whats your ping how many players are at the screen at a time. How many spells are going on. More players on the screen more data consumption.
 

tubelight

Broken In
Well it seems you are lucky then .... When i play WoW on 3G it uses around 100 mb per hour.
BTW what server u play on and what your ping ?

That seems highly unlikely. Most MMO's don't consume any significant amount of data when playing. I've played WoW for years, including playing it on 3G. One session of 3-4 hours clocked in at 27 MB when I was checking it.
 

anaklusmos

Youngling
I dont know how it is unlikely when I do spend money on 3G when I really need it and therefore I am very cautious of how much data is being used. I do keep tabs whether other apps are running which might consume data,etc.
Plus, of course when you are just standing about in Stormwind doing nothing, the data usage will be significantly lower. What I meant was 1 hour of continuous play, be it dungeons, raids or BGs so there will ALWAYS will be many players nearby, all of whom are casting spells continuously.

This fact has been confirmed by many of my friends as our college net used to block games,etc for the past 3 years and we had to play on 2g/3g.
We always play together and all of us see similar amount of data usage.

PS: Ask anyone on the Dota 2 thread, one game can easily consume 100 mb, which lasts for 50 mins approx
 

tubelight

Broken In
I dont know how it is unlikely when I do spend money on 3G when I really need it and therefore I am very cautious of how much data is being used. I do keep tabs whether other apps are running which might consume data,etc.
Plus, of course when you are just standing about in Stormwind doing nothing, the data usage will be significantly lower. What I meant was 1 hour of continuous play, be it dungeons, raids or BGs so there will ALWAYS will be many players nearby, all of whom are casting spells continuously.

This fact has been confirmed by many of my friends as our college net used to block games,etc for the past 3 years and we had to play on 2g/3g.
We always play together and all of us see similar amount of data usage.

PS: Ask anyone on the Dota 2 thread, one game can easily consume 100 mb, which lasts for 50 mins approx

I'm aware of the Dota2 usage of crazy amounts of data but WoW and other MMO's in general use much less. Here's a green post from someone on the WoW forums - WoW Data Usage Question - Forums - World of Warcraft

At the worst if you were raiding for 12 hours non stop with a boatload of addons(meters, dbm, atlas, qh) even then you shouldnt cross 50mb per 12 hour session. We're talking hardcore non-stop activity. When I started playing WoW all those years ago, I had a 256kbps connection with a 2GB limit and I monitored usage like a madman. It wasnt even 5 mb per day back then.
 

anaklusmos

Youngling
Well i dont know what you are talking about..... I have been playing wow for past 6 years, but I didnt really bother with the net usage untill I got into college.
I remember once during LK, i had a full ICC 25 man run, which lasted for over 5 hours and I was on teamspeak too. At that time i was using Idea 3G dongle with a 6 GB plan, and I burned through nearly 1~1.3 gb on that raid alone.
And that was when the only addons I ever used were DBM, recount and power auras.

Also my friend plays WoW still on a Idea 3G plan, and all he does is one RDF on each of his 10 chars daily, and just ONE BG, that alone finishes 100mb, which I recharge for him DAILY.
 

tubelight

Broken In
Well i dont know what you are talking about..... I have been playing wow for past 6 years, but I didnt really bother with the net usage untill I got into college.
I remember once during LK, i had a full ICC 25 man run, which lasted for over 5 hours and I was on teamspeak too. At that time i was using Idea 3G dongle with a 6 GB plan, and I burned through nearly 1~1.3 gb on that raid alone.
And that was when the only addons I ever used were DBM, recount and power auras.

Also my friend plays WoW still on a Idea 3G plan, and all he does is one RDF on each of his 10 chars daily, and just ONE BG, that alone finishes 100mb, which I recharge for him DAILY.

Anything above a GB and you should start worrying about malware causing data usage. Maybe a patch downloaded in the background?

Also, we are only counting WoW here. If you use Vent or TS, then you have to consider the data usage from that as well which is generally much higher than the game itself, even with 2-3 people talking rarely. VoIP uses a fair chunk of data. Why don't you install a monitor that can tell you how much data each application uses?
 

anaklusmos

Youngling
The ICC raid was well over 3 years ago, so no way to know now.
But as I said, the latest thing I know of is my friends usage....
 

doomgiver

Warframe
It Depends upon whats your ping how many players are at the screen at a time. How many spells are going on. More players on the screen more data consumption.

wat?

you are partially correct, but the basics are wrong. the game client wont be "downloading" the data of the other players, it'll only be sending small packets updating the status of the players.

it might be something like "playername positionx positiony positionz spell1 spell2 spell3..... etc status1 status2...etc" repeated for as many players are there

also, the game renders locally, it only updates its own database set when it recieves updates from the server.

if there are 100 people close to you, and they do nothing, it'll consume the same amount of bandwidth even if they were all casting spells.

this would be the easiest scheme to implement. if you try async updates, it might create even worse lag.
 

anaklusmos

Youngling
Playing MMO's on VPN's is a bad idea, firstly because of the latency which most VPN's introduce, secondly because Blizzard doesn't like VPN's and you might keep disconnecting, also any loss of in-game items or even your username/password is not helped with if you were connecting via a VPn. Blizzard's policy is very strict regarding the second part.
 
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