World of Warcraft may begin using IPv6 on Tuesday

Sat Apr 23 18:09:33 UTC 2011

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