World of Warcraft gamers blocked on TalkTalk broadband

Gamers struggling to get online using ISP

10 May 2006 9:36 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Customers of TalkTalk's broadband service are reporting issues playing online game World of Warcraft following a change the ISP made to its network at the end of April.

Alerted to the issue by a number of Pocket-lint's readers, it appears that since the 25 April, no World of Warcraft subscribers in the UK have been able to play the game on the Carphone Warehouse's service.

In a statement to Pocket-lint a TalkTalk Spokeswomen told us "In order to protect the internet experience of the majority of our customers, TalkTalk manages traffic in peak hours. We do this to protect the service quality for customers who are emailing, gaming and surfing by prioritising this over peer to peer traffic.
trouble
We are aware that certain configurations of certain games (most noticeably World of Warcraft) are not running as they should and this has impacted the playing enjoyment of a number of our customers. We have had little direct contact on the issue and we’d urge customers who are experiencing difficulties in playing these games to call our customer technical support line on 0871 226 7146. We will look at their usage and the games that are being impacted, and will work to produce an individual solution that lets the customer get back to enjoying their gaming experience."

The problem has been caused by the blocking of port 3724, normally associated with Peer to peer download services which WoW also uses.

World of Warcraft itself is presently one of the most popular MMORPG's (massively multiplayer online role player games) played online boasting over 5 million players worldwide.