Tiscali stops all Sony PS3 owners playing Call of Duty 4 (COD4) Online
January 29, 2008 | Filed under Gaming, Sony Playstation 3
Its hard to know where to start with this issue, simply put Tiscali are stopping all Sony PS3 owners playing Call of Duty 4 Online at certain times (mostly the whole evening up to 12 midnight).
I first looked into this when I could not connect to games on my Playstation 3 and got “error 33” with Call of Duty 4, and also having many other connection problems in the game.
After a little research I found out I was not the only one with these problems and even more amazingly nearly everyone was a Tiscali or Pipex (owned by Tiscali) customer.
I have read all 41 pages on a Tiscali forum, which shows many of the ISP’s users moving away to another broadband provider and getting their Mac codes.
It looks like the issue is COD4 uses P2P to find games and Tiscali are blocking this at certain times…they are going to lose thousands of their customers over this if its not fixed fast.
The reason this has affected so many people is because COD4 is not the only game using P2P when gaming and lots of gamers playing other games are affected. You can read all 41+ pages here on Tiscali’s forum and there are many other sites with thousands of other gamers complaining.
Now we are left with the questions:
Are Tiscali legally allowed to block gamers from playing games online?
Will they ever bother to fix it if they are allowed?
Leave a comment below if you have been affected by this Tiscali problem, also tell us what games system you are using and what game.
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Well to tell you the truth i am pretty peed of with all of this. I have been having nothing but trouble getting to play this game online.
The funny thing is, well funny to you not me is that I was with Virgin Media and changed over to Tiscali, the reason i changed because i think Virgin Media in simple terms is crap.
I have not lost net once and had no trouble, then behold, i try to play COD4 online with friends and family and cannot. You are right Daniel its seems that the problem happens from evening to midnight.
If they do not sort this problem out, they are on the verge of losing a new customer that only joined them 3 days ago. Tiscali sort the problem out or lose a lot of business, simple choice really is it not.
Its not just Tiscali, I’m with toucan and I can’t get online with COD4 either, I am in a 12 month contract with them and can’t terminate my connection I’m paying for a service that I can’t get its all wrong!!!
Tiscali brought Toucan, same people same problem of stopping P2P gaming.
Shut up you bunch of ridiculous $0NY fanboys.
This website is a joke.
You know what, I’m glad you’re having problems with your P$3’s.
HA, HA, HAAAA….
We really need to start a campaign, all of us who are having problems really need to get these comments coming in then they should be printed off and sent to Tiscali. That will get them thinking some.
Daniel do a post like a campaign then send it to Tiscali. make it happen and make it work now.
Just so you know, Bulldog, Toucan, Tiscali, Pipex, Nildram, Freedom2Surf are all under the management of Tiscali now. The actual termination of your PPP session differs depending on your original provider, but that’ll change over time.
It is nothing to do with being fanboys G1GAHURTZ, it is about not getting a service we deserve. It would be the same if i had the problem on the 360 as well.
What makes me laugh is that you call us fanboys when in fact it sounds like your a fanboy yourself.
Tiscali is what we are chatting about mainly here and why we cannot play games, even if you had the problem with games on any console the argument would be the same.
I have the exact same problem. It only happens at the weekends and between 4pm and 12am weekdays. They also done the same thing with PSN at the Euro PS3 launch too.
Strange, I’m with Bulldog (pipex) and have no problems playing COD 4…
I also run p2p software on my pc with no problems…
STRANGE
I have been having the same problem as the initial post and after a week of inactivity (this was about a month ago) I had enough anger to sit though the long laborious process that is Tiscali’s Customer Service helpline. WARNING! This is not for the impatient. After having script after script read at me and having problems with extremely slow connection speeds in general between 6pm and midnight. I started to get a little p***ed of to say the least and rightly threw it all at the customer service advisor. Being an IT Technician myself I explained that I knew that this wasn’t a problem with any of my hardware as this was working fine for a long period of time before hand and having tested this my self on another connection (Never let them say you are in the wrong that’s what they want you to think). So I had them ring me pretty much every day for two weeks trying this and that, some of the poor excuses came about saying it was BT’s fault (as if!) and “we have an engineer installing some chipset up date at the exchange (what a load of tripe). As I said before, this went on for two weeks and only after loosing my rag and almost hurling abuse at the guy on the other end of the phone did my connection somehow magically start to work PS3 included.
The only advice I can give to those having this problem is to “Let them have it” and ring them day after day and have them “escalate” the call. Although it took two weeks, I am now a happy player of COD4:MW everytime I finish work. HAPPY DAYS
I hope those of you out there experiencing the same problem have as good a luck as I have had.
i know they block ports in the evening cause i do torrents. as for sony and cod4 doing a p2p thing when playn games,shoulda got a xbox 360 cause i never had any problems with xbox 360 and tiscali.been with tiscali for three years now,if i werent moving to oz i would most likely switch in the future tho.
I’m with Toucan and have the issue
They allow p2p and gaming outside of there peak hours something like 6-11pm but unfortunately thats the time i’d often want to use it rendering there broadband rubbish as even stuff like PSN is really unreliable.
I have migrated away from their poor network, it slows to a crawl after 6pm, hopefully my next provider is better.
I had the same problem with Pipex,Traffic managment they call it !! whitch means they can & will restrict your ports at peek times, it seems most of the bigger isp’s use it,sucks really you pay for a service ! what difference should it make using ps3 or pc for gaming.I changed to Idnet(no traffic managment) f*ck Pipex and all those traffic managed isp’s.
Really it’s kinda not the IP’s fault(Tiscali and the sort), well except from what I’ve heard that they do traffic management because if they didn’t they would get charged more by those they hire the lines from, namely BT and Virgin.
Which is rubbish, just tell them your not happy with their service and fell like your not getting what you paid for and that you are seriously thinking of backing out of there company, that usually gets there ass in gear.
something has to be done about this. COD4, is the highest played game on PS3 (pretty positive about this).
This was the final straw for me, had endless problems with tiscali over the last few months. They don’t seem to care, I called them up to cancel, said i had a cheaper option elsewhere. They offered me a cheaper rate, so I then said i wasn’t happy about the ps3 thing. They had no comeback to this, so said they’d send the mac code within 5 days, so I’m off to O2, £7.50 a month
to the chubby one
too bad your on a one year contract! tiscali have (censored) you just like all their other customers including me formally
Ok, I have a strongly sourced rumour that Tiscali broadband are going to change their name YET AGAIN this time to TESTICLE broadband, simply because they suck !! Good Move Tiscali.. Shares will go down the toilet, excuse the PUN!!
i play cod 4 online on the x360 but this is totally unfair 4 the customers who purchased the game nd console….seeing as they PAY 4 THE SHITTY TISCALI SERVICE!!!!!!!! Just change company…….simple
I’m with BT and I have the same problems. Maybe it’s all the companies fault. I think all ps3 users should threaten to stop using their phone lines. It is also probably the game developers fault for not thinking of this, why is xbox different?
Got my MAC code today from Tiscali!!!! The contract ends end of Feb, sod them! I’m sure their in breach of their contract by port blocking, etc. Going to try IDnet, anyone know any bad points with them?
WHAT ABOUT TIME WARNER ANYONE HEARD ANYTHING ON THAT
I work in the broadband industry and I can confirm that Tiscali ( and eventually there sister companies ) all use data streaming, this allows them to do traffic shaping alot easier than shall we say other broadband providers. The idea is so that the bandwidth is not hogged. What they fail to fully understand is that online play for COD4 uses less than 60mb an hour and if you play on average 4 hours per day that still works out less than 7GB per month. Most companies traffic shape ( and this is on extreme conditions and after several warning letters ) if you exceed more than 9.2GB per week then your usage is capped. Tiscali have major issues identifying what P2P is being used i.e the difference between bit torrent downloading and online gaming. I remember there was a mass protest regarding the World of Warcraft and eventually they released a patch to resolve the issue. I would swtich providers to either BT or Sky where online gaming is very relaxed ( within reason ).
WOW Giga, ya at least the PS3 can handle all the players online….You tards pay to play online and still your Breakbox-Please-Fix-Me can’t handle it. HAHAHAH, ya you are so funny, you should be a comedian.
I didn’t look through all the comments on this page, but does anyone know if it will affect Xbox 360 users?
Considering I will have to pay for my online gaming. :/
i am with pipex and i am movin to talk talk. is there anything wrong with them.
What like you COMMODORE ??HAHAHAHAHAHAH
Virgin media is upgrading 4mb accounts to 10mb for free now!
I always play COD4 at night because that’s the only time I’m free and I ony get disconnected from the internet like once or twice a week. I play COD4 with 10 of my friends every night till 2 or 3 in the morning and PSN works perfectly fine. If this site is trying to screw up ps3, it’s not going to work. Whoever made this article is an amateur loL no offence. I know someone eventually will call me a Sony fanboy but I’m not sorry, I own all three consoles.
I’m with BT and have this aswell so I don’t think it’s just tiscali. I read that there was a problem because of an update on the ps3 that seemed to affect this game, apparently there’s a way to get rid of it
am DO NOT USE TALK=TALK they are even WORSE than Tiscali..TRUST me, they are nice and cheap BUT you pay for you get,,Helping you out friend :>)
Everyone should switch to sky broadband, its cheap and fast, i’ve had it for a year now and have not lost connection once, i can play any games online with my ps3
Its not just PS3’s and COD4 which are having the problem. odd spin you put on this.
Addman, thats who I’ve just migrated to (goes through tonight) so I’m glad to here that it works fine.
I used to have this problem with Tiscali as far back as 5 months ago. On one occassion speaking to their call centre in India or wherever they even confirmed ports were blocked and shaped at different time most between 6pm and midnight. Obviously being a online gamer I cancelled immediately and moved over to BT. Have not had one problem since and even now got Homehub (excellent router), Internet phone and free vision box (a HDD recorder). True BT is more expensive but suppose you get what you pay for really thats why Tiscali is £4.99 a month or whatever ridicolous price it is now.
If your a gamer or use P2P or download basically anything stay well clear of Tiscali and associated companies.
I had a problem at the start of the year with pipex, basically i could not connect to PSN at all from 5:30PM until 11PM, i dropped them an email stating i would stop using them, then a couple of days later i could connect again, although when playing COD4 i found i was being disconnected very rapidly, i could get into a game, but after two seconds or so i would be disconnected from PSN altogether.
Someone informed me to set the MTU on my BB router to 1400, whioch i have done, and so far have had no issues since doing so.
you get what you pay for. you pay nothing for that shabby PSN and obiously there are problems. or why isnt it a problem with XBL and Tiscali??
LOL, you fony boys crack me up, waiting beyong instead of jumping in, how “not smart”, LOL
my cod4 works great,all day and all night.loven it. p.s , WHERE THE HELL IS SOCOM 4 OR IS IT 5?
AND IT BETTER BE GOOD……………….
Has this been resolved as I’ve been playing ok all times of the day on COD4 and I’m with tscali. I have noticed my P2P downloads are always really slow takes a week to download a dvds worth.
Would I be able to cancel my 12 month contract, as Pipex are not fulfilling thier part of the contract?
Cod4 is has terrible atmosphere for ps3 compared to xbox anyway. Why don’t you guys use headsets?????
I’ve been told by a mate who works for TalkTalk that they are going to crack down on P2P links
He says they may change things so that people have to change their contract and move onto a higher tariff. However, people who change their contract within the first 18 months of joining their broadband service will be hit with a large switch over penalty charge.
“Why don’t you guys use headsets?????”
Xbox Live is ridiculous, its full of American 12yr olds screaming racist abuse down the mic the whole time. Better off without it.
I really think anyone who made a law suit of this would win.
cod4 now works for me and i am on pipex it works all the time.
What a pathetic excuss rick……better off without it. If someone annoys you just block them and you’ll never hear from them again. Even better you can just have private games with all of your friends giving banter as you play. You guys paid for this console knowing that it had a shit network, so why do you act surprised when it doesn’t work? You get what you pay for.
Error 33 is back! Today (10/03/08) I tried to get online on COD4 on my PS3 and low and behold, Tiscali have decided to block it again - after a month and a half of un-interrupted online gaming. The problem seemed resolved after the end of January (2008), so why have Tiscali changed things again?!! W*****S!! Unfortunately, I am unable to change ISP as I am not the billpayer. Anyone else having this problem again?
I got a PS3 yesterday
Im on tiscali
seeing as though its half term atm i am able to play during the day alls fine and jolly then when i try and play at 8 o clock this eveing it wont let me play cod 4
i ask one of my other friends via msn who has tiscali can he play cod 4 same problem i then ask a non tiscali user and he can
this isnt the only game either
about a year ago for battlefield 2 on the PC i get cut off at peak hours because of tiscali
i would move instantly to another provider but my dad won’t let us as it is “cheap” and he doesnt like ps3
so i am stuck here playing single player on a majority based multiplayer gaem great..
well that what you all get by using consoles if you had a pc and playing cod 4 you would have no problems like this,and what on earth do you pay more for.My mate has a pc and cod 4 and is on tiscali broadband but he has no problems.