World of Warcraft may begin using IPv6 on Tuesday

Derek J. Balling dredd at megacity.org
Mon Apr 25 12:47:38 UTC 2011


On Apr 23, 2011, at 2:09 PM, Kevin Day wrote:
> In the beta, it's automatically enabled if you have native IPv6 (non-6to4, non-Teredo). 
> [...]
> 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."

The PTR notes don't seem to indicate that it will be enabled by default in any way when it goes live (it may be behaving as you describe specifically for data-gathering purposes in PTR, but it doesn't look like they intend to do that in live):

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/patch-notes/ptr-patch-notes
> The Network category contains the options "Optimize network for speed" and "Enable IPv6 when available". "Optimize network for speed" will be enabled by default, and will send packets more frequently at the cost of higher bandwidth. The higher bandwidth may lead to disconnects for some players who have limited bandwidth. Players getting disconnected frequently should try unchecking this box.

That call-out to the "optimize network" being enabled by default, with no such reference to the IPv6, leads me to believe that it'll be "proactive only" in the short-term.  Probably until they see what the wider impact and problems are from non-PTR folks who test it out.

D





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