Local HON players can now play on sub-100ms latencies

Last week iGame announced that it would be hosting a local Heroes of Newerth (HON) server.

Developed by S2 Games, HON follows a very similar gameplay mechanic to the popular Warcraft III mod ‘Defence of the Ancients’ (DOTA). Being big fans of DOTA, the team at S2 Game decided to develop a complete stand alone game, similar to DOTA but with improved visuals and a slicker interface.

The problem that faces local gamers however is that HON uses a fairly large amount of bandwidth, with many users reporting around 30mb of data use per hour. High latencies are also a negative side effect of being located so far away from the international hosting servers. Although S2 have taken measures to reduce the extent to which high latency affects gameplay, it would still be ideal to play on latencies of around 50ms, which is only achievable on local servers.

iGame realized these issues early on and set out to create a local HON server, where Filipino gamers can play using low latency and will eventually be able to use local-only bandwidth.

HON is already promising to become one of the leading multiplayer games for the next few years, and the current beta which is being run all over the world has enjoyed massive success.

For the time being local players still require international bandwidth to play the game on the local server. This is because players need to go through an authentication server which is located internationally. Once the game is authenticated the local servers will host the actual matches. The unfortunate effect is that players will not be able to get into games on local-only bandwidth packages.

This is a problem which iGame hopes to solve in the future. By demonstrating a strong SA HON following, iGame hope to eventually be able introduce a fully fledged authentication server in SA which players will be able to play on using local bandwidth exclusively.

The local server is now up and running and players hosting matches will be able to select the ‘iGame ZAF 1- 16’ server.

While the server is already up, iGame is working closely with S2 Games to optimize it. There have been a number of minor issues with regards to local configurations being slightly incompatible with the international servers, but steps are being taken to resolve these problems. Typical latencies on the server are between 25-60 ms.

iGame’s Johnathan Smit told MyGaming that iGame is confident that they will have the server running smoothly within the next 48 hours.

iGame is also considering possible short term solutions which will allow players to access the server and play HON using only local bandwidth. This however is a step which will only come once the current local server is up and running and is able to demonstrate sufficient demand for such a service.

The iGame HON server has been made possible only through considerable investment from iBurst, with product managers Dawood Patel and Nick Herbert both realizing the potential of a local server early on and having the vision to set out to create such a service.

A number of iGame technicians such as Greg Wildman, James Devine and Johnathan Smit have worked tirelessly to make a local HON server a reality.

Discuss local HON server in the forums

I sure do hope Filipinos can enjoy their own gaming server right at the comforts of their doorsteps!

Happy gaming!

Tags: 30mb, authentication server, defence of the ancients, defence of the ancients dota, extent, gamers, hosting servers, international bandwidth, local heroes, low latency, massive success, measures, mechanic, multiplayer games, s2 games, slicker, unfortunate effect, visuals, warcraft iii

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Others. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.