For as long as I can remember, Bit Torrent has been a tool used by
pirates to illicitly ‘acquire’ music and movies. Just recently though,
over the last year or so, Bit Torrent has grown to become one of the
primary download methods for several big MMORPGs. World of Warcraft for example, uses bit torrent for patching while games like Project Powder,  Fiesta Online,
and GodsWar utilize bit torrent to transfer the entire game client over
to players. Personally, I feel that even though bit torrent can speed
up downloads on some occasions, it’s almost always slower than a
mediocre HTTP direct download. For extremely popular games like Atlantica Online, a bit torrent based downloader could work, as the game has millions of players, but for smaller titles like Wolfteam and Angels Online I’d much rather prefer a reliable direct download than bit torrent.

As I mentioned earlier, bit torrent can be helpful in some cases,
but in most cases it’s a lot slower. I can bet that the reason for
implementing a bit torrent type solution has a lot more to do with
saving bandwidth for the publisher than improving the user experience.
I Have nothing against trying to cut costs, but I think publishers
should use HTTP direct downloads for their games over bit torrent, as
it’s almost always faster. This is sort of a pointless rant, as almost
every game publisher offers both options. I guess my what I’m trying to
get at is that publishers should make the ‘default’ download option the
more familiar direct download method while having the bit torrent
option there but secondary. As it stands, a lot of MMORPG games have torrents as the primary download method. At least browser games don’t have this issue!