Are patches compulsory?

[Steve M]

Many MMO's I've tried seem to want to download patches, and these always seem to take forever. Have they got to be downloaded? Can't you skip it and play the game as it used to be?

My frustration regarding games is growing rapidly, and my hatred for computers is growing.

[BC_Programmer]

Patches for MMO games are necessary so that everybody is running the "same" game. That is, patches will resolve bugs, problems, exploits, and what-have-you. If it's not an MMO game, and you don't plan on playing any sort of multiplayer, you can usually skip patches/updates.

[quaxo]

Exactly what BC said. I don't know of a MMO game will let you log in if you're not running the exact patch the server is running.

The reason for this is mostly critical changes and balance issues. For example, think of a character having a far overpowered ability in say patch 1.10. The MMO company thinks "oops, we overdid that, let's tone it down a bit", so they lower the effectiveness of that ability in their next patch, 1.11. Every player must now upgrade to 1.11 in order to continue playing, because now the server knows that ability as being less effective than it was before, and for one person to stay on 1.10 with that overpowered ability makes it unfair for anyone who upgrades.

When playing an offline game, this doesn't matter.

[Steve M]

I see what you guys are saying and it makes sense. Things is, I always seem to have more trouble with downloading patches than the original game!

[quaxo]

Might be your firewall settings. Most MMO games use a downloader that is separate from the actual game executable to download and apply patches. For example, World of Warcraft has wow.exe (the actual game executable) and launcher.exe (the launcher and downloader). While the game's executable itself might be cleared by the firewall, the downloader may not be and this can cause download issues.

Also, many MMOs use a certain protocol for transmitting actually game data, but use BitTorrent protocol for transmitting updates and patches. If you ISP throttles BitTorrent traffic (and many do) this will cause issues with patch downloading. Many MMOs offer an alternative to their downloader, like an HTTP or FTP downloadable update, but not all do. If the problem is something beyond your control (like your ISP throttling), this is something you might need to look into for whatever games you play online.

[reddevilggg]

Might be your firewall settings.

Maybe this also has something to do with your other post. Might of been an idea to keep them together. Anyway.......
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,121169.msg799295.html#msg799295