Romax:does having a friend with a HUGE friendlist have any effect on my meter.
Easy question first. No it has no effect on your meter since it doesn't appear on your PC.
Romax: Does having a large friendlist really mess with the meter ??
Most definitely it can cause stutters or stops in your meter.
Scroll about a third to a half way down this page and read my post:
http://www.wgt.com/forums/t/32264.aspx?PageIndex=6
In a nutshell....Every 60 seconds your game client gets a bunch of work from the WGT server in the form of a friend list update. The bunch of work is done to update your friend list status for every single one of your 160 friends. (that work causes the spikes on my CPU usage as shown on the graphs in the linked post above.)
The way Flash works, it does the friend list work first before it draws on our screen. If Flash doesn't complete the friend list work in its assigned time slot, it skips drawing to the screen. What I'm saying is a friend list update can take precedence over drawing the meter. The meter stops momentarily while Flash works on the friend list update.
We all, mostly, optimize our computers to minimize the background work being done by our CPU. (see Gamebooster for example.) Yet WGT sends our computers extra work, not related to playing the game!
There is also anecdotal evidence, some of the top players have cleared their friends list when playing the virtual USOpen and virtual Open qualifiers and championships. They obviously think it has an effect.
I'm sure players with 150+ friends on their list will now post they have a smooth meter. LOL