Howzit everyone
I understand the frustration (everyone?) is feeling about disconnects, but is it really necessary to descend into that sort of language?
Make no mistake, I can cuss with the best of them, but have always found that making a solid, cogent, well-informed argument is better than ranting obscenities.
Secondly, I played a random alt shot game a little while ago, and even though I certainly never covered myself (or my partner) in glory (we lost 4 down), there were only 2 disconnections the whole game.
2 players from Australia, 1 player from the UK and 1 player from South Africa (me)
I would say that was a fairly representative cross-section of WGT membership. Both disconnects by the way, were caused by a blue screen on loading the next hole. A simple game window close and re-open solved it in both cases.
My rating is green - has always been, simply because I don't seem to suffer from this disconnection issue that so many have.
I live in Cape Town, South Africa, a country hardly well known for its proximity to the epicentre of Internet connectivity. I usually have at least 3 other tabs open in my browser (Firefox), my mail client (Thunderbird) is always open, polling for mail every 2 minutes, and I never ever clear my cache even after an update. I have asynchronous DSL, connect to the router using wireless and have a very middle of the road laptop.
So why am I so special?
WGT's content is distributed by Akamai, a global content provider, with presence in almost every single country. It can't be therefore a connectivity issue to the WGT servers.
WGT uses Flash, an admittedly flawed platform, which although able to deliver crisp graphics, an attractive interface and relatively quick load times, is prone to security issues and various bugs. This has never detracted from my enjoyment of the game though.
I'm flummoxed by the people who complain about the crashes/disconnects/etc they suffer every single game they play. This can't be universal and I can't be in the minority of "Blessed Players"
Cheers,
Peter