[Raya]

To put this in proper perspective, how many people reading this have cursed Blizzard for its slowwww patching techniques in World of Warcraft? Well, according to MS watchers, the giant corporation's UK research lab has developed a new Peer-to-Peer system that is head and shoulders above the currently popular process called Bit Torrent. So where is the Vanguard connection?

Here's what's so meaningful for Vanguard fans. The new process, with its network approach, is claimed to be 20 to 30 percent faster than systems that require coding at the server. And it is supposed to be 200 to 300 percent faster for distributing unencoded information! Although the system is much the same as Bit Torrent in some respects, it additionally solves such problems as distributing a lot of data to a large number of people in the fastest yet way discovered.

Sigil Games Online (the developers of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes) has not made any statement regarding the use of this new system (called Avalanche), but it would certainly stand to reason, given that MicroSoft is the publisher for Vanguard, for the developers to investigate such a speedy patching process. I suspect Vanguard fans would be deliriously happy with a system like that for patching content.

Three cheers for MicroSoft!

For the full story on this research breakthough by The Register's Lucy Sheriff, go here.
For the technical paper on this discovery by Christos Gkantsidis and Pablo Rodriguez Rodriguez, go here.
For The Register's description by Johan Poulwelse of the Bit Torrent process, go here.

[Dillgaar]

Thank GOD! Blizzard's bit torrent was craptastic.

[Skarlath]

Ooo, very cool news. We will need to pester the devs until they talk to us about this and Vanguard then - just to make sure they utilize it.

[Ieranii]

OH wow...the possibilities are very exciting!! /drool