What's the worst internet connection you've had?

(Icon credit: Yuichiro Chino via Getty)

Have you ever had internet that stops working all time it rains? That slows depressed if you put your hoof too or so the router? That takes four hours to finish loading an Evangelion AMV? Maybe you've never had IT quite that bad, but just about of us have put up with a rubbish internet connection at some repoint, whether thanks thereto one table service provider World Health Organization turned out to be unavailing, or that nonpareil house in a weird data-transfer murdered geographical zone.

Eventually you get used to instalmen games the night before you want to wreak them, and either last the put away for the interest of your dearie online games, OR devote up on them altogether.

What's the bottom internet connection you've had? And how did it affect your gaming?

Here are our answers, plus both from our meeting place.

Nat Clayton, Intelligence Writer: Before university, I spent a hardly a months boot approximately northern Europe doing Volunteer jobs—unmatched of which knotty fetching attention of 60 sleigh dogs at an isolated kennel in the fjords of Norway. At the prison term, I was traveling with an North American nation I knew from the (atomic number 102, really) Super Monday Night Combat scene which, while already in its expiry throes, hush had a pretty cockeyed-knit residential district. We'd previously managed to nonplus a couple of games in piece on the job at a bamboo/Christmas Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree farm in Kingdom of The Netherlands, but over here in the ice-cold north we were war-ridden against knock rates that normalised at a healthy 1000ms. Trying to bring on a few SMNC custom with pals frequently saw USA some teleporting crosswise maps and falling to our deaths. An ill-judged attempt to take part in Guild Wars 2's Lost Shores event left-wing us ready and waiting transactions at a time for a single put to update. Suffice to say, we pretty cursorily abandoned any whim of filling the endless nights with online games.

Sarah James, Guides Author: I idolised the primary Ring of Duty: Black Ops and spent an repulsive sum of time in the multiplayer, despite dealing with a laughably slow connection at the clock time. For the majority of the day, I could boast a whopping 3Mb download speed, simply that was often throttled to around 500kb in the evenings. What's surprising is that IT didn't actually make a huge amount of difference to my gambling. I intend, at that place were many evenings when Black Ops was unplayable, but nearly of the time my slow connexion wasn't particularly noticeable—either that OR I vindicatory got victimized thereto. Installing games was a pain though. I think it took over a twenty-four hour period to download Sidesplitter's Cataclysm expansion.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: My cyberspace connection at university was utterly dreadful, which only served to worsen my already nocturnal sleep docket, American Samoa it was way easier to download and recreate games when everyone else was asleep. I commend lacking to get games in of BioShock 2's unreasonably good multiplayer mode, but between my dodgy connection and Games for Windows Live's wild instability, just one in 10 matches would have low enough lag for me to actually get a vote out.

John Come across, Print Art Theater director: I played online with a dial-up 56k modem from 2000-2005 because I lived in the middle of nowhere, in a place where sheep outnumbered humans county-wide-eyed. Soldier of Fortune 2 and Performance Flash point were sporting about playable on Britain servers, only my three-digit knock was thus big I even got shod out of a competitive clan match middle-pun, because apparently I was warping around like Leonard Nimoy. People can teach you how to be a finer player, and teach you how to looseness as part of a team, simply cypher ever teaches you how to live with the dishonor of beingness a laggy assclown. My first day at university was a age coming, then when it arrived I shodden up the game only to realise multiplayer games weren't playable on the uni's proxy waiter. FFS.

Tim Clark, Brand Conductor: It was 2002 and my archetypal ever E3—a time when high-speed internet was still in its relative infancy, and screenshots were still handed stunned on CDs. In a terror, I thought it was a good estimation to send everything vertebral column to the UK via a 56k hotel connection, I think because the CMS didn't work remotely or something insane. I remember this vividly because 1) I had to plug the cable in via a socket in the lamp, 2) it took an entire night to send back half a dozen screenshots of Toby Gard's Galleon, and 3) along checkout counter I was presented with a $500+ poster because back then hotels were charging by the MB. My expenses got signed off, but Lashkar-e-Toiba's just say that the site in interrogate is none longer with us.

Jarred Walton, Tom's Ironware Senior Editor: Do pre-internet BBSes count? We bought a Commodore C-128 when they were essentially brand unused — double the memory of the C-64! This was back in 1985. American Samoa an add-in bonus, IT enclosed a 300 baud modem. I don't even do it how I found the info (11-year-old Pine Tree State was already a grind), only I got the numbers racket for some bulletin board systems where you could act as few basic text games. The affair that stands out most in my computer storage is screens of ASCII art appearing at about one 40-character line per second. Combined BBS had a welcome picture that was nigh 120 lines tall, even though most data processor screens (TVs, really) hindermost then were only 40x25 characters. So it required more than two minutes for the picture to scroll past, and I could only sight nigh one fifth of it at a prison term. And yet, I unruffled thought it was awesome! When we upgraded to a 2400 baud modem and the receive page zipped past in about 15 seconds, I was pursy away! Those were heady years.

Andy Chalk, News Hammer: I opinion I'd be the only one to move out back to the 300 baud BBS days—dialing a speech sound number, waiting for the rasping squeal, pushing the button on the modem and watching schoolbook scroll by one line at a time. It was primitive but magical, and as Jarred said, the upgrades in speed o'er the eld that followed, to 2400 bps, and then 14.4, 28.8, and 56K, weren't astir just boosting performance, but sanctioning introductory functionality. It was a beautiful day indeed when "high speed" came to my teeny-weeny town in the form of Bell DSL—a 1MB line, American Samoa I return—and every piece as painful when I relocated to the boonies a few years later, which forced a turnabout to dialup internet. It was other 5 years of that nonsense before wireless broadband service came to my expanse, and plane immediately it sucks compared to "real" broadband accession. But then again, IT's unagitated and I don't have to deal with neighbours. I (usually) consider that a sporty trade.

An undead warlock — (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

Tyler Colp, Companion Editor: My crappy internet connection killed 25 people once. I was playing World of Warcraft during the Burning Crusade expansion era. I was peerless undead warlock in a group of 25 raiders taking along a thaumaturgis boss in Tempest Keep. She had this power that implanted a bomb on someone stochastic in the group. Our orders were to carry it and walk off from where everyone else was standing to minimize the price. My 2008, 1.5Mbps internet had a better idea and gave me a lag spike as soon as I got marked with the bomb. Everyone in the raid was wiped unconscious. When vocalism chat fizzled back in I just heard a good deal of yelling and scolding. Thankfully everyone forgave me, but that moment still haunts me. Thanks internet!

Shaun Prescott, Australia Editor in chief: I father't induce a glorious internet connector (50mbps max, though information technology rarely hits that) but I've not encountered any real difficulties, aside from having to pre-plan larger installs—anything larger than 40gb is an all-nighter for me. Information technology does affect my playing habits in a sense, though: If I sit down with the urge to play something freshly, I'll usually opt for a lilliputian game that will download in few minutes. IT by all odds informs impulsion purchases: I'm not going away to impulsively buy a new-sprung blockbuster game because I'll have too long to repent IT, but a game that sits around Beaver State below the 2gb mark—instantly gratifying. Information technology's why I bought (and ended upwardly loving) Astalon: Tears of the Earth, for exemplar.

From our forum

Mazer: Being in Australia it'd be harder to name the best cyberspace connection I've ever had, but I'd rather own a whinge nigh dial-up internet. Sure, it was deadening, busy the phone line, and required you to sit through the strong of a thousand demons receiving recreational tabasco enemas before you could go online, but on the other hand it was also expensive.

However I did like doing a direct dial connection to a friends computer thusly we could play Street Fighter II on ZSnes, that was entertaining. Less fun was trying to deal naked ladies, at approximately eight proceedings per quiet double I wouldn't have had the patience if not for the iron grip of puberty.

mainer: Rack up ever would have to Be back in the days of dialup connections when I first got into PCs & gaming, using AOL. It was completely unsafe. I might be connected for a hardly a hours, or it could just randomly drop the connection at any given time.

Since and then it's been Metre Charles Dudley Warner Cable, which became Spectrum, and spell download/upload speeds are reasonable and fairly frequent, the customer service is a forcemeat and the monthly costs ($84.99) have been rising to absurd levels.

ZedClampet: My Comcast/Xfinity went unconscious a couple of months ago, and IT was an ongoing problem, and then spell I was waiting for AT&T to get and install fiber, I had a hotspot activated on my Verizon earpiece. Unfortunately, there was a data cap on it, and it went by fast. After you had hit the information cap, the hotspot went to 'emergency expend', which was 3 KB. That was unusable for anything gaming related, indeed completely online gaming came to a stop (except for the rare occasion when Xfinity was working).

Two years ahead ATT came out to cut in the fiber, Comcast got their crap put together and fixed the job, but I'm really happy to be through with them. They are a nightmare in many polar slipway. Addition, I have quicker Internet now with nobelium data cap and pay $100 to a lesser extent a month. IT was pretty dim that I was still with them in the world-class set back.

GladOS from Portal — (Image credit: Valve)

Krud: Patc it technically wasn't my "worst net connection" (since that would make been 2400 baud back in the early 90's), I was stuck on 56k dialup for WAY too long, because we were surviving in a DSL dead zone, though we could move two miles in any direction* and get DSL, and cable internet was as well rich for our blood at the time

(* - Leave off finished or down.)

So while everyone else was enjoying band and digital downloads, I was swearword below my breath all time I bought a physiologic disc that had to be updated online. The worst was in 2008, when I bought Portal (yep, still on dial-ahead then), and found out I had to download almost 2 GIGABYTES from Steam before it would rent out me play, even though it was single-player and shouldn't have had to be updated. I eventually borrowed someone else's cyberspace to get the files, rather than tie rising our phoneline for two Oregon troika years straight. (We still talked on a landline back and then, too.)

So yeah, I was a great deal anti "extremity download only" games awhile. Past in 2009 wein conclusion got a corking deal on high-stop number cable cyberspace, and my melody quickly changed. But ahead to that spot, I took it kinda personally even when a game wanted an cyberspace connection or a big patch. (Actually, I quieten get annoyed when a single-player game insists that I be online I or that I update, just connected principle. It's why I keep Steam in Offline Style whenever possible. Though IT seems to still connect and update Steam, which is cheating if you ask ME.) Now git offa mah lawn!

Alm: I'm another with memories of telephone dial-sprouted. It would really annoy my best mate's parents if we took up the phone line to trifle Doom (luckily for ME, my Pop had a facsimile machine line so I was a fate less likely to get caught) and then we could only play until we were found out. Cs 1.6 on 128k broadband seemed like a dream in comparison.

Zloth: Well, GEnie doesn't really count as 'the internet,' so I conjecture the worst I had was dialing ahead to the university with some VT100 emulation software. IT didn't really hurt my gaming much. Empire, Nag, Zork, and DND really don't need overmuch bandwidth and can recover nicely if SOMEBODY picks up the headphone.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so helium remembers having to employ a code wheel to play Pool of Refulgenc. A former music diary keeper who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody too co-hosted Australia's first radio evince about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Broad Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was published in 2015, he edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and actually did play every Warhammer videogame.