My girlfriend keeps blaming FFXIV on slow internet

[MagiusNecros]

She's the reason for your slow internet. : D

[technole]

I'm honestly surprised WiFi is still as crap as it is. It hasn't been good since day 1 and doesn't seem to have improved much since the early 2000s. I've ended up using powerline adapters and wire connecting all my devices (excusing mobile and tablet). As long as the wiring in your house is good, you'll get significantly better and more reliable speed/connection. You do need to be near a plug socket, but depending on where your girlfriend likes to sit on her laptop, that might not be an issue. Powerline adapters are pretty cheap too.

I highly doubt it's FFXIV for all the reasons people above have mentioned. Outside of trying the above, you could look at upgrading your WiFi box and checking out how old her laptop is and if the issue is her hardware being dated. That would likely end up being pretty expensive however.

Edit: To clarify I'm talking specifically about the powerline adapters that have ethernet slots to wire connect devices

Powerline adapters are what I call a last ditch option, and really shouldn't be used converting to Wi-Fi ever, they should be from router-to-device only. As they are severely limited in bandwidth because of electrical noise, and distance. If you have old and bad wiring in the house, I like to say good luck, use at your own risk. Manufacturers that like to chest thump they get 100mbps consistently, that's lab testing. Not always actual real world use.

[Liam_Harper]

Is FFXIV the cause of our slow internet, or is it just because our internet is spotty garbage?

FF14, in fact most MMO's are very light on bandwith and almost definitely not the cause. It's either your internet is bad, and/or she had background updates/downloads going on.

[GrizzlyTank]

Games transfer an insignificant amount of data compared to streaming.

[BluexBird]

If you are on Windows, you could try this:

1. Open your Start Menu.
2. Search for "resmon" (without quotes).
3. Press ENTER, this will open the Resource Monitor.
4. One of the tabs will be called Network. Click on it.

This tab lists all of your current connections, as well as how much data they are sending and receiving.

With that window open, try watching a YouTube video on Chrome. You will see that a simple video uses over 10,000 B/s, sometimes going over the 100,000s. This is a very active, "heavy" connection. But even this isn't really enough to cause a "slow internet", unless your internet is REALLY bad.

But that's not even the point.

The point of this experiment is for you to see, in comparison, just how little data FFXIV actually requires. Check the list for ffxiv_dx11.exe, and look how much it's using in total. Mine sits comfortably in the 60-70 range most of the time. This is EXTREMELY low.

This is true for practically all other multiplayer games out there. Explain this to your girlfriend - help her understand that it's not FFXIV that's causing your slow internet. It's definitely something else. And in fact, you know what? Maybe the source of your problem might show up on Resource Monitor.

Best of luck figuring out what's going on and calming your girlfriend. lol

[LianaThorne]

I'm no expert on girlfriends, but it sounds like she is trying to say "stop playing that game and pay attention to me." In my experience, they don't ever just say what they want, but drop hints and see if you get it.

Agreed but also date better women if the only ones you've been around are only capable of dropping hints and not being blunt about their needs.

[Nafreyu]

Get rid of her.

[SuperSxyNerd]

If someone wants to be my gf I will listen to you complain about all your problems and be your emotional landfill so long as you don't look like honey boo boos mom IRL.

[JohncarterIx]

No your net sucks

[RobynDaBank]

MMOs in general require a consistent, but not heavy internet connection. I have run FFXIV off of a phone hotspot before and used less than 5GB of data for the month I did it.

A quick Google search tells me that FFXIV uses a little less than 20 MB per hour. That would be 44.4 kilobits per second. You could literally run this game off of an old 56K modem. I wouldn't recommend it, but you could.

I do the hotspot thing myself sometimes because my WiFi is just weird; it severs the connection to anything on its own whenever. Especially given the queues I end up spending from morning to late evening on hotspot until I get the alert that my 1.5 GB a day is halfway done for. It's great.