There are many good reasons to use Reduce the Lag (aka RTL), mainly to lower your in game latency, but here are some of the finer details about RTL, and how it works. Enjoy.
ReduceTheLag quick summary:
Supported Games:
World of Warcraft – All US Realms (Oceanic, West, East and Central Regions)
Aion – All Servers (Not working since 1.9 we’re working on it to!)
50% reduction of latency – anywhere in the world.
Windows XP 32 & 64bit / Windows Vista 32 & 64bit / Windows 7 32 & 64bit
30 day unlimited use trial
No time limits – You play WOW 24/7 ? That’s a little weird, but we don’t care.
At $2 / month, reducing your latency is really cheap
Don’t forget that our prices are in AUD. Take advantage of our exchange rate.
Completely custom software.
No need to login or open it every time, just set it up once and go.
Automatically chooses our servers with the least players
No socks cap / freecap / proxy cap / putty / etc, not even hidden in the background. It’s a totally different & custom solution.
Coming Soon (we’re already working on it!):
Mac OSX & Linux Support
World of Warcraft – EU Realms
Age of Conan
Note about Aion: We recently introduced Aion, the website just hasn’t been updated yet. For now, just pretend this says Aion everywhere instead of Wow
Does it really work?
Yes!
The hardest thing we’ve found is convincing World of Warcraft players that we can really half their lag. The results are too unbelieveable. But its true!
We use our network and servers to fix the problems with Blizzard’s networking protocols. People forget that Blizzard and their ISP are only interested in the cheapest, highest profit, options available to them, leaving us a lot of room for improvement!
Reduce The Lag (RTL) can reduce your lag by approximately 50%. These are not doctored screenshots, try the free trial and see.
Many users also use Reduce The Lag to prevent dropouts, simply because their internet connection is not so reliable.
Who uses Reduce The Lag?
For starters, we do!
RTL is best suited for anyone who can benefit from knowing something in-game has happened 1/2 second before everyone else does, and having their attacks, heals and other actions arriving at Blizzard’s servers twice as quickly.
PVP and Arena players.
Raiding players, especially 10 and 25man high level content.
Leveling players wanting to quest and loot without lag.
Players with unreliable, high packet loss, internet connections.
RTL is not very suited to the casual social player who spends most their time talking in chat, unless you can type really really really really fast!
Will it also work for me in ___ country/location?
Yes. It will almost halve your latency, no matter where you are.
Our servers are located in USA very close to Blizzard’s. So you can use RTL from anywhere in the world and get the benefits. General rule of thumb is that it’ll halve your lag, sometimes more than half (If you live far away from USA) sometimes a little less (if you live in USA/Canada).
We started out by trying to aim for Oceanic realm based users. But we’ve found that RTL works just as well for users in any country just as much as it helps Aussies, as long as you are connecting to US based WOW servers – Give it a try.
Our top 10 countries are: Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, South Korea and Chile. We probably should have restricted what people can put for their country, because we’ve even got a few paying happy customers who claim theyre from exotic places like ‘Im Aussie Mate!’.
>400ms latency is fine, I play with this lag all the time.
We suggest you give the free trial a go. Run through an instance, do some PVP or some questing. You probably won’t even notice the difference.
When your free trial runs out, uninstall it and then You’ll notice the BIG difference.
Its the way humans work, we only notice it when things get bad, not when things are good.
Most users of ReduceTheLag have used the trial for a while, and then tried to go back once it ran out. But once you’ve experienced such an improvement in latency its almost not worth bothering to login and play without RTL ever again.
How do I login and play now that I’ve installed it?
“Set and forget”. Just install Reduce The Lag and login to WOW like you would normally.
No programs to run, no extra logins to do every time time.
You never have to think about it again. You’ll might even forget you are using RTL. (This hasn’t worked out to be the best marketing policy for us, but its very convenient for our users.)
Is it Safe?
ReduceTheLag is not against Blizzard’s Terms of Service.
It’s not against the rules. But just to be safe we contacted Blizzard to confirm. After lots of effort in getting contact with the right people we were able to double confirm that proxying your WOW connection is not against their rules.
Why did you ask for my Battle.net username?
Since v2 of our client RTL does not need to know your Battle.net username.
We’ve removing this requirement from our website, but because it was so heavily integrated it’s much easier said than done . If our site still asks for your battle.net username anywhere just use your email instead, but please let us know where it was!
And just to be safe, Never tell anyone your WOW Password, not even us!
Reduce the Lag will not prevent you from using a Battle.net Authenticator. We think they’re awesome and encourage you use the extra account security.
I heard that someone using a Proxy service (RTL and/or others) had their account suspended!
Others may tell you that there are no problems. But we feel its important that you know a potential issue, no matter how remote.
Repeatedly enabling/disabling your access to reduce the lag may automatically trigger WOW’s ‘account sharing’ 24hour suspension. This is because, to Blizzard, you appear to be playing from USA, then from your country, then USA, then back from your country again. To them this looks like you are sharing your account with someone, which is against the rules.
This will have the same effect if you play from multiple PC’s, one with RTL and one without. Even if they are in the same house.
To prevent this from happening just install RTL on both computers.
We’ve worked with Blizzard to to try prevent these suspensions from happening, but we cannot guarantee what their systems do. Last time this happened to one of our users was back in August 2009.
Update July 2010 – We’ve had three (3) users report suspensions after running on GDKP runs. It appears Blizzard are suspending any party who ends up with gold purchased against the TOS, even if its third (and forth?) hand. We suggest you take caution.
Will this break anything?
Nope. Using our proxy will not effect any other programs, and the only thing that will change is your World of Warcraft latency. But you may notice a second or two extra delay when logging into each WOW realm server, its just our network setting everything up so your ready to pwn some noobs.
Some other solutions break some features, including in game voice chat. This will still function correctly with our gateway.
Your pc’s ability to use and download from the internet will not be effected, our solution does not require you to modify your windows registry.
RTL is custom written software, We don’t use any sockscap / freecap / proxycap or any cap software, putty or other ssh programs, not even hidden in the background.
What about Firewalls / Security Software?
RTL needs internet access to do its stuff. And any firewall/security software you may have running might be preventing it from doing this.
We’ve tested RTL on several firewalls, but we cant cover all the virtually unlimited combinations possible.
Try disabling your firewall and/or security software to confirm that that is the issue. If so, you may need to add rules rules as exceptions in your software’s configuration. All ReduceTheLag traffic is over TCP port 6112.
Advanced Users: You can change RTL’s registry entries to use port 1120 if you are having issues with the port 6112. However RTL will overwrite this setting every time you restart your computer.
What servers can I play on?
All WOW-US servers are supported (United States, Oceanic and Latin American)
You don’t have to do anything special to start playing on a different server (change realm as you would normally), but for best results you should select which Realm you are using from our members area.
I decided to give RTL a go, but when I logged in my lag was still very high!
After logging in each time it can take up to 10 minutesfor your latency to stabilize (especially after logging in to a busy major city area or auction house).
While your computer is busy loading WOW, all the 3D models, sounds, music and all of your addons, its not able to respond to the WOW server very quickly. This makes your ping time skyrocket.
The ping time shown in your interface is calculated as an average of your ping times over the last several minutes. Meaning that even though you are on low latency, this false ping time that skyrocketed doesn’t appear go away for at least 10minutes.
How much will it reduce My Lag?
Aside from your network communication with the Blizzard’s servers there is an infinite number of other factors which can effect your lag. Such as your internet connection usage and quality, WOW’s servers overloaded, Interface Lag (including slow computer), etc. So we cant gaurantee a 50% reduction in latency.
But most of our users using the gateway experience about a 50% reduction in lag. Sometimes better.
After logging in each time it can take up to 10 mins for your latency to stabilize (especially after logging in to busy areas such as Dalaran).
When can I renew my account?
An account can be extended at any time you like.
Payment options are available in the members area once you’ve logged into our website. We currently accept Paypal, Visa and Mastercard.
Our system automatically sends a reminder email three days before your account expires.
We suggest renewing early in order to avoid any gameplay interruptions. You wont loose any time, it simply adds to whatever you’ve got left.
What happens if my RTL account expires?
Before your account expires we will send a reminder email 3 days out, and another reminder email once it is expired.
After your RTL account has expired we will reject your connection attempts and email you an ‘Expired Account’ email every time you try. Each time you try to login it will instantly come up with ’connection failed’ or ‘disconnected’ error messages in WOW.
If your account expires while you are playing we don’t kick you off. We’re not that mean!
I know what your thinking – Why not just stay logged in and never log out! If you went to all the effort and somehow managed to stay logged in for several days, we think you probably deserve the whole $0.20 worth of RTL time you just saved yourself, you cheapskate
We’ve also added a feature to give expired accounts a once off few extra hours to play for free. If its available to you, your account will be automatically extended when you next try to login, and an email will be sent to remind you to renew your account.
Why do I have to pay to use it?
Because when your using RTL, your using our servers and our network to get better latency.
Like those “hackers” in the movies, we’re bouncing your WOW data through our network of servers before finally giving it to Blizzard’s servers at the other end. Obviously we cannot maintain this network for free.
Why is everything in AUD (Australian Dollars)?
Because we are! Reduce The Lag’s parent company is a real life Australian business Ireckon Pty Ltd, Reduce The Lag started out as something to help our staff play WOW better.
RTL uses Ireckon’s servers and network and has grown to have its own dedicated range of servers in USA. RTL is managed and supported by Ireckon’s staff and RTL has the backing of a company that has been around for more than 10 years.
The good thing is that the prices you see on this site are now even cheaper because of the exchange rate.
I’m trying to pay via Credit Card, but it says ‘Session Aborted’
Our credit card processor is a little overprotective sometimes and might reject your card because your country doesn’t match your IP, or it doesn’t like your bank/etc/etc.
It’s not something we can easily get around (without getting yet another card processor). We suggest your use your credit card via Paypal instead.
Will it effect other computers in my home network?
The software will effect only your PC, you’ll need to apply the settings on each computer you play with.
You can give the software to whoever you like – but they’ll an RTL account to use it!
What if your software doesn’t work or crashes?
We’ve worked pretty hard to make sure the RTL client doesn’t get stuck or mess up anywhere. But if it does and you cant login, uninstalling it from the control panel makes it try several times to remove whatever its done.
If you have our software installed, but don’t have an RTL account, our servers will reject your login attempts. This will prevent you from playing WOW. Just signup for a free account to fix it.
Note: In Dec 2009 we updated our software’s uninstaller to try to prevent an issue where uninstalling RTL left the system in limbo and players were unable to login at all! We dont want that! If this happens to you – the simplest solution to this is to install RTL then to uninstall it again via the control panel. Wierd huh.
I have multiple usernames / multiple people use my computer to play
Once RTL is installed and configured anyone using your computer can use it and benefit from RTL.
You are limited to one simultaneous connection per RTL account on trial accounts. So if someone uses your RTL account on another computer it may cause you issues.
However we do allow you to go above your limit for up to 30 minutes. This is just in case you need to login a second time for some reason, eg: trade some items/etc. If you still exceed the connection limit after 30 mins we will automatically disconnect all but the newest session.
For now we’ve decided to allow up to 5 simultaneous connections for paid accounts. Ie multiboxing is permitted on a paid account. But we may have to change our policy if we find people are absuing our generosity.
Simultaneous connections from different IP’s are not permitted.
Who’s this ‘Ireckon Pty Ltd’ that ive seen buried throughout the site?
Its not a secret – Ireckon it’s us! ReduceTheLag was created and is run by us at Ireckon Pty Ltd.
Ireckon is an Australian company based in Woolloongabba, Brisbane, Queensland.
RTL started out as one of those staff ‘idea factory’ things, but has evolved into a service used by many thousands of users. It is maintained by (and used by) Ireckon staff mostly in our spare time. But its also been a really good excuse to play WOW during work hours!
What do you do with all the latency you are removing?
We’re stockpiling the latency time we save for our own time travelling experiments. It was all over the news in 2148, you must live in a cave if you didn’t hear about it.
How is Reduce the Lag Different?
There are many good reasons to use Reduce the Lag (aka RTL), mainly to lower your in game latency, but here are some of the finer details about RTL, and how it works. Enjoy.
ReduceTheLag quick summary:
Coming Soon (we’re already working on it!):
Note about Aion: We recently introduced Aion, the website just hasn’t been updated yet. For now, just pretend this says Aion everywhere instead of Wow
Does it really work?
Yes!
The hardest thing we’ve found is convincing World of Warcraft players that we can really half their lag. The results are too unbelieveable. But its true!
We use our network and servers to fix the problems with Blizzard’s networking protocols. People forget that Blizzard and their ISP are only interested in the cheapest, highest profit, options available to them, leaving us a lot of room for improvement!
Reduce The Lag (RTL) can reduce your lag by approximately 50%. These are not doctored screenshots, try the free trial and see.
Many users also use Reduce The Lag to prevent dropouts, simply because their internet connection is not so reliable.
Who uses Reduce The Lag?
For starters, we do!
RTL is best suited for anyone who can benefit from knowing something in-game has happened 1/2 second before everyone else does, and having their attacks, heals and other actions arriving at Blizzard’s servers twice as quickly.
RTL is not very suited to the casual social player who spends most their time talking in chat, unless you can type really really really really fast!
Will it also work for me in ___ country/location?
Yes. It will almost halve your latency, no matter where you are.
Our servers are located in USA very close to Blizzard’s. So you can use RTL from anywhere in the world and get the benefits. General rule of thumb is that it’ll halve your lag, sometimes more than half (If you live far away from USA) sometimes a little less (if you live in USA/Canada).
We started out by trying to aim for Oceanic realm based users. But we’ve found that RTL works just as well for users in any country just as much as it helps Aussies, as long as you are connecting to US based WOW servers – Give it a try.
Our top 10 countries are: Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, South Korea and Chile. We probably should have restricted what people can put for their country, because we’ve even got a few paying happy customers who claim theyre from exotic places like ‘Im Aussie Mate!’.
>400ms latency is fine, I play with this lag all the time.
We suggest you give the free trial a go. Run through an instance, do some PVP or some questing. You probably won’t even notice the difference.
When your free trial runs out, uninstall it and then You’ll notice the BIG difference.
Its the way humans work, we only notice it when things get bad, not when things are good.
Most users of ReduceTheLag have used the trial for a while, and then tried to go back once it ran out. But once you’ve experienced such an improvement in latency its almost not worth bothering to login and play without RTL ever again.
How do I login and play now that I’ve installed it?
“Set and forget”. Just install Reduce The Lag and login to WOW like you would normally.
No programs to run, no extra logins to do every time time.
You never have to think about it again. You’ll might even forget you are using RTL. (This hasn’t worked out to be the best marketing policy for us, but its very convenient for our users.)
Is it Safe?
ReduceTheLag is not against Blizzard’s Terms of Service.
It’s not against the rules. But just to be safe we contacted Blizzard to confirm. After lots of effort in getting contact with the right people we were able to double confirm that proxying your WOW connection is not against their rules.
Why did you ask for my Battle.net username?
Since v2 of our client RTL does not need to know your Battle.net username.
We’ve removing this requirement from our website, but because it was so heavily integrated it’s much easier said than done . If our site still asks for your battle.net username anywhere just use your email instead, but please let us know where it was!
And just to be safe, Never tell anyone your WOW Password, not even us!
Reduce the Lag will not prevent you from using a Battle.net Authenticator. We think they’re awesome and encourage you use the extra account security.
I heard that someone using a Proxy service (RTL and/or others) had their account suspended!
Others may tell you that there are no problems. But we feel its important that you know a potential issue, no matter how remote.
Repeatedly enabling/disabling your access to reduce the lag may automatically trigger WOW’s ‘account sharing’ 24hour suspension. This is because, to Blizzard, you appear to be playing from USA, then from your country, then USA, then back from your country again. To them this looks like you are sharing your account with someone, which is against the rules.
This will have the same effect if you play from multiple PC’s, one with RTL and one without. Even if they are in the same house.
To prevent this from happening just install RTL on both computers.
We’ve worked with Blizzard to to try prevent these suspensions from happening, but we cannot guarantee what their systems do. Last time this happened to one of our users was back in August 2009.
Update July 2010 – We’ve had three (3) users report suspensions after running on GDKP runs. It appears Blizzard are suspending any party who ends up with gold purchased against the TOS, even if its third (and forth?) hand. We suggest you take caution.
Will this break anything?
Nope. Using our proxy will not effect any other programs, and the only thing that will change is your World of Warcraft latency. But you may notice a second or two extra delay when logging into each WOW realm server, its just our network setting everything up so your ready to pwn some noobs.
Some other solutions break some features, including in game voice chat. This will still function correctly with our gateway.
Your pc’s ability to use and download from the internet will not be effected, our solution does not require you to modify your windows registry.
RTL is custom written software, We don’t use any sockscap / freecap / proxycap or any cap software, putty or other ssh programs, not even hidden in the background.
What about Firewalls / Security Software?
RTL needs internet access to do its stuff. And any firewall/security software you may have running might be preventing it from doing this.
We’ve tested RTL on several firewalls, but we cant cover all the virtually unlimited combinations possible.
Try disabling your firewall and/or security software to confirm that that is the issue. If so, you may need to add rules rules as exceptions in your software’s configuration. All ReduceTheLag traffic is over TCP port 6112.
Advanced Users: You can change RTL’s registry entries to use port 1120 if you are having issues with the port 6112. However RTL will overwrite this setting every time you restart your computer.
What servers can I play on?
All WOW-US servers are supported (United States, Oceanic and Latin American)
You don’t have to do anything special to start playing on a different server (change realm as you would normally), but for best results you should select which Realm you are using from our members area.
I decided to give RTL a go, but when I logged in my lag was still very high!
After logging in each time it can take up to 10 minutes for your latency to stabilize (especially after logging in to a busy major city area or auction house).
While your computer is busy loading WOW, all the 3D models, sounds, music and all of your addons, its not able to respond to the WOW server very quickly. This makes your ping time skyrocket.
The ping time shown in your interface is calculated as an average of your ping times over the last several minutes. Meaning that even though you are on low latency, this false ping time that skyrocketed doesn’t appear go away for at least 10minutes.
How much will it reduce My Lag?
Aside from your network communication with the Blizzard’s servers there is an infinite number of other factors which can effect your lag. Such as your internet connection usage and quality, WOW’s servers overloaded, Interface Lag (including slow computer), etc. So we cant gaurantee a 50% reduction in latency.
But most of our users using the gateway experience about a 50% reduction in lag. Sometimes better.
After logging in each time it can take up to 10 mins for your latency to stabilize (especially after logging in to busy areas such as Dalaran).
When can I renew my account?
An account can be extended at any time you like.
Payment options are available in the members area once you’ve logged into our website. We currently accept Paypal, Visa and Mastercard.
Our system automatically sends a reminder email three days before your account expires.
We suggest renewing early in order to avoid any gameplay interruptions. You wont loose any time, it simply adds to whatever you’ve got left.
What happens if my RTL account expires?
Before your account expires we will send a reminder email 3 days out, and another reminder email once it is expired.
After your RTL account has expired we will reject your connection attempts and email you an ‘Expired Account’ email every time you try. Each time you try to login it will instantly come up with ’connection failed’ or ‘disconnected’ error messages in WOW.
If your account expires while you are playing we don’t kick you off. We’re not that mean!
I know what your thinking – Why not just stay logged in and never log out! If you went to all the effort and somehow managed to stay logged in for several days, we think you probably deserve the whole $0.20 worth of RTL time you just saved yourself, you cheapskate
We’ve also added a feature to give expired accounts a once off few extra hours to play for free. If its available to you, your account will be automatically extended when you next try to login, and an email will be sent to remind you to renew your account.
Why do I have to pay to use it?
Because when your using RTL, your using our servers and our network to get better latency.
Like those “hackers” in the movies, we’re bouncing your WOW data through our network of servers before finally giving it to Blizzard’s servers at the other end. Obviously we cannot maintain this network for free.
Why is everything in AUD (Australian Dollars)?
Because we are! Reduce The Lag’s parent company is a real life Australian business Ireckon Pty Ltd, Reduce The Lag started out as something to help our staff play WOW better.
RTL uses Ireckon’s servers and network and has grown to have its own dedicated range of servers in USA. RTL is managed and supported by Ireckon’s staff and RTL has the backing of a company that has been around for more than 10 years.
The good thing is that the prices you see on this site are now even cheaper because of the exchange rate.
I’m trying to pay via Credit Card, but it says ‘Session Aborted’
Our credit card processor is a little overprotective sometimes and might reject your card because your country doesn’t match your IP, or it doesn’t like your bank/etc/etc.
It’s not something we can easily get around (without getting yet another card processor). We suggest your use your credit card via Paypal instead.
Will it effect other computers in my home network?
The software will effect only your PC, you’ll need to apply the settings on each computer you play with.
You can give the software to whoever you like – but they’ll an RTL account to use it!
What if your software doesn’t work or crashes?
We’ve worked pretty hard to make sure the RTL client doesn’t get stuck or mess up anywhere. But if it does and you cant login, uninstalling it from the control panel makes it try several times to remove whatever its done.
If you have our software installed, but don’t have an RTL account, our servers will reject your login attempts. This will prevent you from playing WOW. Just signup for a free account to fix it.
Note: In Dec 2009 we updated our software’s uninstaller to try to prevent an issue where uninstalling RTL left the system in limbo and players were unable to login at all! We dont want that! If this happens to you – the simplest solution to this is to install RTL then to uninstall it again via the control panel. Wierd huh.
I have multiple usernames / multiple people use my computer to play
Once RTL is installed and configured anyone using your computer can use it and benefit from RTL.
You are limited to one simultaneous connection per RTL account on trial accounts. So if someone uses your RTL account on another computer it may cause you issues.
However we do allow you to go above your limit for up to 30 minutes. This is just in case you need to login a second time for some reason, eg: trade some items/etc. If you still exceed the connection limit after 30 mins we will automatically disconnect all but the newest session.
For now we’ve decided to allow up to 5 simultaneous connections for paid accounts. Ie multiboxing is permitted on a paid account. But we may have to change our policy if we find people are absuing our generosity.
Simultaneous connections from different IP’s are not permitted.
Who’s this ‘Ireckon Pty Ltd’ that ive seen buried throughout the site?
Its not a secret – Ireckon it’s us! ReduceTheLag was created and is run by us at Ireckon Pty Ltd.
Ireckon is an Australian company based in Woolloongabba, Brisbane, Queensland.
RTL started out as one of those staff ‘idea factory’ things, but has evolved into a service used by many thousands of users. It is maintained by (and used by) Ireckon staff mostly in our spare time. But its also been a really good excuse to play WOW during work hours!
What do you do with all the latency you are removing?
We’re stockpiling the latency time we save for our own time travelling experiments. It was all over the news in 2148, you must live in a cave if you didn’t hear about it.