Update Cost 2x More Bandwidth Than Patch Notes Indicated - Why?

AugustAvatar

Have mercy on those with limited bandwidth! This is the first time I've dared to touch ESO in a long while. I thought I was downloading a hefty but manageable update worth 25GB at most. That's what the patch information I read claimed anyway. Roughly 7 hours of downloading later the update finished, after consuming a whopping 43.1 gigs of bandwidth - close to double that amount! That's nearly half my monthly data limit for a single update to one game! Forgive me for grumbling, but I live in a region which does not offer Unlimited data and I already pay a very substantial $135AUD a month for this connection. As you can see from the attached picture, if I hadn't been so conservative in my data usage the rest of the month I wouldn't have had a hope of downloading it.

What gives? Is every substantial update going to eat double the suggested bandwidth like this?

DakotaCoty

AugustAvatar wrote: »

Strange. I don't know why it doesn't show, but no biggie - it was just a bandwidth usage graph from my ISP pointing out what I mentioned in my post.

Yesterday's small patch for Tamriel Unlimited was, thankfully, much closer to the stated download size.

That said, a thought occurred to me. Like I mentioned, I had not touched The Elder Scrolls Online in a long while; since shortly after it was officially released, in fact. Did that mean my game launcher had to systematically download and install Updates 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 before it could download Update 6? Is that why the download was so large?

Maybe the initial game and patches stated how much is required to download them; then it might be downloading the fixes / stealth patches that have been implemented to fix a variety of issues.

DakotaCoty

AugustAvatar wrote: »

Have mercy on those with limited bandwidth! This is the first time I've dared to touch ESO in a long while. I thought I was downloading a hefty but manageable update worth 25GB at most. That's what the patch information I read claimed anyway. Roughly 7 hours of downloading later the update finished, after consuming a whopping 43.1 gigs of bandwidth - close to double that amount! That's nearly half my monthly data limit for a single update to one game! Forgive me for grumbling, but I live in a region which does not offer Unlimited data and I already pay a very substantial $135AUD a month for this connection. As you can see from the attached picture, if I hadn't been so conservative in my data usage the rest of the month I wouldn't have had a hope of downloading it.

What gives? Is every substantial update going to eat double the suggested bandwidth like this?

The image you linked doesn't show up for some reason.

AugustAvatar

Strange. I don't know why it doesn't show, but no biggie - it was just a bandwidth usage graph from my ISP pointing out what I mentioned in my post.

Yesterday's small patch for Tamriel Unlimited was, thankfully, much closer to the stated download size.

That said, a thought occurred to me. Like I mentioned, I had not touched The Elder Scrolls Online in a long while; since shortly after it was officially released, in fact. Did that mean my game launcher had to systematically download and install Updates 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 before it could download Update 6? Is that why the download was so large?

AugustAvatar

That may be it. Although I must say, it was a shock to see just how much extra data was needed all at once.