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Under the Surface of Azeroth:
A Network Baseline and Security Analysis
of Blizzard's World of Warcraft
Step 7: Enter the World of Warcraft

There's been a lot of work behind the scenes up to this point. The launcher has provided news, the client version has been checked and perhaps even updated, and the World of Warcraft player has logged in and selected a character with which to venture forth. Once the "Enter World" button is pressed, the activities on the client workstation really move into high gear.

Entering the World of Warcraft gaming environment is a sensory delight. The world is amazingly interactive, and the music and sound effects add to an already amazing visual experience. The 360 degree views, graphical displays, and gaming options are a delight for the eyes, the ears, and the mind.

Most of these environmental elements are stored locally on the hard drive of the local workstation. Although the World of Warcraft character is moving around the local environment, conversing with other players, and battling the inevitable groups of monsters, the amount of network traffic traversing the network is remarkably low.

This graph shows the network profile of World of Warcraft activity during normal single-user gameplay. This two and one-half minute period was selected because of the differences in the game play profile between the first half and the second half.


(Click to pop open a larger view)

The most notable section of the graph is the relatively large spike in the middle, followed by an increase in activity. Just as notable is the Y-axis scale, showing that the quick bandwidth spike only amounted to approximately 70 kilobits per second. This entire session was well within the capabilities of a dial-up connection, which is exactly what Blizzard had planned from the beginning.

The spike shown in this graph occurred when moving from a large area to a smaller, more confined area. For knowledgeable World of Warcraft players, this spike occurred when traveling from the wide-open Wetlands into the more confined Whelgar's Excavation Site.


At this important point, a transition occurs between managing the perspective of the large Wetlands area to managing the game play in an area with a larger concentration of monsters and more interactivity with the surroundings. The change in traffic patterns after this transition are the result of seeing more activity on the screen at one time, participating in more battles with monsters, and an overall increase in the number of events occurring around the World of Warcraft character.

Although the second half of the graph shows an increase in network activity, notice that the increase is rarely more than 30 kilobits per second of bandwidth usage. Although a dialup line will have a large amount of utilization, these activities won't appear to have a dramatic impact on the in-game experience.