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[Werdna]

I've had people with ping times in the 300s load quickly, and people with less than 100ms ping times take minutes. Is that their ping to the server, or their ping to me? (And my ping is typically <100ms)

Pretty positive that is their pings to the server that you see. 

Here's the thing - most home networking involves downloading.  You rarely upload much, so if you look closely at the fine print, your ISP usually 'guarantees' a certain down/up and the up is usually much less than down.  The up can range from decent to abysmal, but users usually don't care so long as the down is great.  You can have a fantastic, low ping network connection but also have a tiny upload speed*.  In fact, ISP's to some degree want that - giving you a crappy up speed is one way to ensure their home users don't set up huge web sites or ftp servers and chewing up even more of their bandwidth.  In the rare network situations where it involves you uploading a large quantity of data (as I'm theorizing here), however, you're going to be slow if this is the case for your connection. 

Most of today's networks hand you a pretty solid upload speed now, but there are still a lot of older networks that severely restrict the up.  My guess is those people that finish last at summoning are on such networks.  There's quite a few complaints in the LoL forums where people with solid rigs are complaining about poor load times, and many of the support responses refer to typical network solutions like disabling AV shields and the like.  Also noticed many complaints about poor speeds right after patches - which is exactly when the highest demand for patch d/l'ing would occur!

This is all just a guess and lots of anecdotal evidence though, but I plan on loading up a sniffer tonight and watching the traffic, from the launcher to a game, and see if I can get a nice graph to shed some more light on it.  I was just wondering if it was general knowledge or not.

* By speed, I mean max bandwidth in Mbps, and not packet turnaround time

[webadict]

Allow me to explain.

The client you use to login and browse stuff is completely separate from the game itself. The client uses Adobe AIR and you can just think of it as the launcher that starts the game. All patches and external stuff are downloaded and saved when you start the launcher.

The loading screen itself merely loads the game. It's basically as if every time you start a game, you are restarting the entire game. Think of it as playing say... Starcraft. Where every single time you wanted to play a match, you had to restart the entire game. That's how it works. So for some people, it can take a super long time (ask Jar of Jam) but for people with more up to date computers, it's pretty fast.

While all this is going on, something called Pando Media Booster is acting as a sort of pseudo-bittorrent client that helps mitigate server load by spreading some of it out over every single computer that has LoL installed. I've tried uninstalling this thing a few times but every single time LoL patches, it reinstalls itself.

That would be the P2P software that lessens server strain.

Also, there has got to be a faster way to load the game then.

[Bluerobin]

I'm skeptical that it's using loading times to stream patches. The sheer number of people with pando media booster uninstalled (it's a commonly named solution to various in-game, post-loading issues) means that if uninstalling it significantly boosted loading times it should be pretty common knowledge by now. Also, I know Starcraft 2 loads significantly slower than LoL (about 1.5x or so) on average for me with my brand new highish-end system and depending on their coding, it could be loading ALL of the champions with each game, not just the ones being used in the current match. I would guess that a fair chunk of that loading screen IS network-based though, since I've noticed speed-ups of slow loaders once the fast loaders finish in enough cases that it should be an actual thing and not something I'm making up. I've also noticed VERY different loading times for myself and my three friends who fairly often play from the same connection. At this point I'm just kind of listing off things without creating much of a coherent argument though, so I'm just going to stop. I'm curious what you find out, if anything.

[Sirian]

@Werdna : i doubt it's as you say, i have a really shitty upload speed (10kB/s) and i load faster than most people.

[Werdna]

Interesting Sirian.

I'm skeptical that it's using loading times to stream patches. The sheer number of people with pando media booster uninstalled (it's a commonly named solution to various in-game, post-loading issues) means that if uninstalling it significantly boosted loading times it should be pretty common knowledge by now.

That too is an excellent point against, I even saw the rec. to remove the Pando service in some of the troubleshooting FAQs in the support forums.  I wonder if Pando is there for file-serving outside the game/in launcher and the game has its own peer networking built-in?  Besides serving patches/new game downloads, I couldn't think of any other networking task that it could be involved in though.  Ah well.  Sorry if anyone is bored by this !!Science!! talk.  But if any of you are at home and curious, you could try a quick simple experiment (this is XP):

1.  With LoL closed, hit Alt-Ctrl-Del, launch Task Manager (or Win-R, 'taskmgr')
2.  Select the Networking Tab
3.  Select View menu, Network Adapter History, and check both 'Bytes Received' and 'Bytes Sent', uncheck 'Bytes Total'
4.  Size the graph as wide as you can and throw it on a side screen if you have it, so you can watch it as you summon
5.  Launch LoL launcher.  Start a game. 

The red line in the task manager indicates your uploading. It should shoot up during the Summoning screen if it is truly doing any file-serving, then be lower but active during the actual game.  If instead your yellow line spikes, then that means you are downloading, which would be quite curious.  And if they only flicker around a little bit during the loading screen, then your computer is indeed simply loading the game and yours truly is imagining things.

[umiman]

Then you are truly imagining things, because all I have to do is look to the left of my screen and see that no uploading takes place during a loading screen. Unless you consider 1.3kb a lot of uploading.

[Werdna]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ah well, its not the first time, lol.  Thank you for indulging my curiosity.  Now I'm wondering just what is it doing that it acts so odd, but I will bore you guys with that no longer.

[Luke_Prowler]

I think he's referring to the major slow from Teemo mushrooms. It certainly would make long distance assaults with Xerath much easier. Should try that actually, good idea! =P

Anyway, bored a bit, so let's make a list! I shall call this list... THE TOP 10 CHAMPIONS I DON'T WANT TO SEE COME FLYING OUT OF A SIDE BUSH WHILE I'M IN LANE. The rules? I actually have to see the bastard come out of a bush. Not magically teleport next to me out of nowhere somehow.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

10. Mundo
Lol, Mundo jungle. That guy so silly. *smack* ow wtf? Holy shit my movespee- *smack* ow! *smack* ow! OH GOD I CAN'T REACH MY TOWER! *smack* This is what happens when cleaver procs red buff...

9. Skarner
He reaches you, it's GG. Hope you brought flash! And better hope he's not level 6! Course, he has to actually reach you fir- oh wait, silly me... he's got that incredible speed boost and probably flash too! Ah. Ha. Ha. Ha. Fuck this guy.

8. Udyr
It's not only the unavoidable goddamn flash stun that's the problem. It's his ridiculous damage. Why on earth can this guy do so much damage and still be tankier than Cho Gath?! Boom, you get hit 4 times? Bye bye, first blood.

7. Lee Singer
A super long distance dash. A slow. Another dash. All at level 3... At level 1 this guy can remove 50% of your hp with just his freaking Q. He doesn't even need to kill you. Just does that and herp derps away, good you lost your lane forever.

6. Jarman
Why is this guy higher than Lee Singer? Because this bastard has the same goddamn thing as the blind monk except he has a freaking knockup too!!!! Not to mention he's even harder to kill...

5. Karthus
First, I smack you with my overpowered wall to remove all your defenses and speed. Then I remove ALL your hp. And if you're not dead? Gimme sec let me call my homeboys in the orbital space cannon.

4. Xin Zhao
Here you stand. Only a few inches from your tower. Here comes X^Z, you run backwards. TOO LATE. Slow, knockup, dead.

3. Malzaherp
Here's my thought process when I see Malzaherp coming to my lane. "Well... I'm dead." 30 seconds later I'm dead.

2. Maokai
HEY LET ME CHAIN CC YOU FOREVER HUE HUE HUE TOWERDIVE YOU WOOOO!!!

1. Blitzcrank
Ever tried to fight a Blitzcrank with red buff? It procs with his Q, his E, and even his ultimate. Neverending true damage. You can't 1v1 him. You can't escape him. Might as well just go make a coffee when he appears in your lane since you're dead anyway.

What, no Mr "DEMACIA!!"?

[webadict]

You know what's incredibly satisfying?

Juking the enemy team for a solid 30 seconds, and then walking away fine.

[ansontan2000]

Anybody know when the new champ rota is coming out? This week was excessively boring for me.

[Bordellimies]

Played another game as jungle Twitch, getting first blood as expected. Got 3 bloodthirsters + B.F, but thats it. Ended up with 14/3/14. Enemies bought a total of 1 oracle (their Shen, when I was 13/3/13) and Shen was also only one to get any armor. Like, any.

The enemy Shaco actually said that Twitch is a noob champ to play, always sitting around in stealth. Kinda funny to hear that from a Shaco player.

[Yodamaster]

Anybody know when the new champ rota is coming out? This week was excessively boring for me.

Tomorrow I think?

Also. Just had an impossibly bad Morde in my normal game. 3/16 vs Nasus top. QQs all game. Solution to Nasus problems? Build Force of Nature. Die every time he spawns. Every. Time. He spawns.

I'm sticking to high-elo ranked from now on, this game can be ridiculous. Just when you want to practice a champ in normals...We were doing fine mid, bot, and jungle too, but when Nasus came out of freefarming top...Could 1v5 no problem.

[webadict]

Played another game as jungle Twitch, getting first blood as expected. Got 3 bloodthirsters + B.F, but thats it. Ended up with 14/3/14. Enemies bought a total of 1 oracle (their Shen, when I was 13/3/13) and Shen was also only one to get any armor. Like, any.

The enemy Shaco actually said that Twitch is a noob champ to play, always sitting around in stealth. Kinda funny to hear that from a Shaco player.

Shaco never stealths or surprise attacks. Only noob Eves and Twitches do.

[umiman]

Played another game as jungle Twitch, getting first blood as expected. Got 3 bloodthirsters + B.F, but thats it. Ended up with 14/3/14. Enemies bought a total of 1 oracle (their Shen, when I was 13/3/13) and Shen was also only one to get any armor. Like, any.

The enemy Shaco actually said that Twitch is a noob champ to play, always sitting around in stealth. Kinda funny to hear that from a Shaco player.

I think Twitch is probably the number one champion I don't want to see get 18,000 gold.

If I were to make a list, it'd be like:
1. Twitch
2. Vayne
3. Tristana
4. Ryze
5. Vlad

I think if any of those champions get a full item build, you can safely surrender the game. At least Tryndamere, GP, and Master Yi are all melee, so they won't obliterate your entire team if you have exhaust and good positioning. Twitch with 100% crit? Press R, 2 seconds later pentakill.

[penguinofhonor]

You know what's incredibly satisfying?

Juking the enemy team for a solid 30 seconds, and then walking away fine.

It's more satisfying to do that as your super minions are pounding the enemy nexus. I've done that multiple times.