You can send packets as often as you like with TCP. And they are guaranteed with an automatic resend mechanism that maintains packet ordering (to avoid rubberbanding). Actual send rate depends on bandwidth and Nagle's algorithm - unless you disable Nagle's algorithm.
The only real advantage that I can see to UDP is multi-casting. Yes, if you structure your data correctly you can become resilient to data loss and improve performance, and maybe that's what they tried to do here. For example if a single positional message is lost, then it doesn't really matter because the information is obsolete almost as soon as it is sent and the next packet, with updated data, replaces it.
However here the networking is clearly inadequate. My wife and I used to play WoW simultaneously, both with an active TeamSpeak connection too, and we almost never had network issues at all, and when we did it was because the server was having problems. Sure Blizzard undoubtedly had top of the range servers etc., but then if the server available cannot handle the load then it should have a login limit - and anyway should have a better mechanism to prevent the please wait happening. Perhaps the current mechanism is great for high bandwidth and performance server end, but not scalable down to low bandwidth and/or poor performance. Maybe it just needs tuning or something.
How about, instead of limiting levels to 125 etc. etc. the game has two servers, a cheap server for trial/free to play, and a second, better, server that is only accessible to subscription members. As more players pay subscription, a yet better server, or a second server, plus better bandwidth, can be purchased.
As for volunteering to help, I already offered what help and assistance I can. The dev team has my email, they are free to use it!
The only real advantage that I can see to UDP is multi-casting. Yes, if you structure your data correctly you can become resilient to data loss and improve performance, and maybe that's what they tried to do here. For example if a single positional message is lost, then it doesn't really matter because the information is obsolete almost as soon as it is sent and the next packet, with updated data, replaces it.
However here the networking is clearly inadequate. My wife and I used to play WoW simultaneously, both with an active TeamSpeak connection too, and we almost never had network issues at all, and when we did it was because the server was having problems. Sure Blizzard undoubtedly had top of the range servers etc., but then if the server available cannot handle the load then it should have a login limit - and anyway should have a better mechanism to prevent the please wait happening. Perhaps the current mechanism is great for high bandwidth and performance server end, but not scalable down to low bandwidth and/or poor performance. Maybe it just needs tuning or something.
How about, instead of limiting levels to 125 etc. etc. the game has two servers, a cheap server for trial/free to play, and a second, better, server that is only accessible to subscription members. As more players pay subscription, a yet better server, or a second server, plus better bandwidth, can be purchased.
As for volunteering to help, I already offered what help and assistance I can. The dev team has my email, they are free to use it!