[139930] in North American Network Operators' Group
World of Warcraft may begin using IPv6 on Tuesday
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin Day)
Sat Apr 23 14:09:46 2011
From: Kevin Day <toasty@dragondata.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:09:33 -0500
To: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
For those that don't know, World of Warcraft is currently the largest =
online role playing game, with somewhere over 12 million subscribers.
Version 4.1 of the game is expected to be released this Tuesday, which =
will be automatically pushed to all clients. The current Beta version of =
4.1 has full IPv6 support. In the beta, it's automatically enabled if =
you have native IPv6 (non-6to4, non-Teredo). While Blizzard has been =
pretty silent about this, barring a last minute revert or delay of this =
patch, there are suddenly going to be a bunch more users that can =
potentially use IPv6. And these users are the type who are going to be =
especially sensitive to latency, jitter and packet loss, since this is a =
real-time game platform.
For those of you with Help Desks who have to support users like this, =
the associated setting in the game's Options menu is apparently called =
"Enable IPv6 when available". It's apparently grayed out if you do not =
have IPv6 at all, unchecked by default if you are on 6to4 or Teredo, and =
checked by default if you are on native v6. The tooltip says: "Enables =
the use of IPv6, the technology behind the next-generation Internet. =
Requires IPv6 connectivity to the internet. Checking this box without =
IPv6 connectivity may prevent you from playing WoW."
Anyone from Activision/Blizzard who would like to chime in with more =
details? :)
-- Kevin
