League of Legends has no doubt taking over the world, with millions of players taking part in MMO-based sessions online and attending tournaments, both in person and online, to watch the pros battle each other for big prizes. Now, Riot Games is taking the next step to devoting itself to the game, by working with several internet service providers to set up a special network optimized for League of Legends.
The company explained in a forum post that it plans to improve connectivity speed and stability for players in the United States. The company is currently in discussions with both ISPs in both the U.S. and Canada to enable players to get closer access to a dedicated network, stabilizing play sessions and connectivity with other players.
“Currently, ISPs focus primarily on moving large volumes of data in seconds or minutes, which is good for buffered applications like YouTube or Netflix but not so good for real-time games, which need to move very small amounts of data in milliseconds,” said Riot Games brand strategist Charlie Hauser, speaking with GamesIndustry International. “On top of that, your internet connection might bounce all over the country instead of running directly to where it needs to go, which can impact your network quality and ping whether the game server is across the country or right down the street.”
Hauser expects the services to be up and running by the end of March, although contract negotiations with certain ISPs are still happening. “This network should bring a marginal improvement for everyone – coast to coast,” said Hauser. “West Coasters are impacted by this as well – we’ve seen traffic in San Francisco get bounced across the country before finally getting to the server.”
Such a move could help create a new devoted network for online gaming, one with higher speeds and processing that would enable game sessions to go faster across the board. It’s not an unfamiliar strategy, as several companies, such as Activision and Microsoft, have set up devoted servers in the past for such games as Call of Duty and Halo.
