Whether you are looking to protect your privacy or or want play games that are restricted where you live, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a useful tool for gamers. Read more about what a VPN is and why it's important.
WTFast is not a typical VPN. It does not route all of your web traffic through its servers, and instead only handles online game traffic. The company calls its collection of servers around the world a Gamers Private Network (GPN) and claims this network creates an optimized path to reduce your ping and minimize dropped connections.
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WTFast is among the more affordable VPNs you’ll find, but again it doesn’t offer the protection and anonymity of a full-service VPN. This is a product for online gamers and online gamers only. The service costs $9.99 a month billed monthly, $28.47 billed quarterly, $53.95 billed every 6 months, or $99.90 billed annually. WTFast offers a 14-day trial so you can test it out with your favorite games to see if it improves your ping and connection stability.
In the UK? Start a free trial with WTFast VPN here.
Both plans lets you connect only one device at a time, so splitting a WTFast subscription with your roommates isn’t an option. Also it's worth noting that other VPNs allow up to five or more simultaneous connections. The lack of simultaneous connections is less of an issue here than with a standard VPN since you're unlikely to be gaming on more than one device at time, but it's something to keep in mind if you live in a household with multiple heavy gamers. The Advanced plan lets you tweak settings to remember settings, use multi-server connections, and use custom server ports. I tested the Basic plan on a Windows 10 PC, and there are not versions for Mac or Linux, or mobile apps. The company partnered with Asus to bake WTFast into two Asus routers.
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WTFast installs a small icon in the Windows system tray that you can use to launch the service, but it also connects you to its service automatically once you have connected it to an online game. If you launch WTFast manually, like other VPNs, it gives you the option of connecting to what it deems the optimal server or letting you choose a specific server. When selecting your own server, you can sort by ping or geography. WTFast has more than 200 servers in 48 countries. Of the five VPN services we tested, that’s a below-average number of servers and an average number of countries. Unlike some VPNs that let you choose only a country or city, WTFast lets you drill down further and select a specific server to connect to.
To use WTFast, you must tell it which online game you want to route through its servers. You can pick your game from WTFast’s extensive list or add a custom game by pointing it to the game’s EXE file. After you have registered a game with WTFast, it fires up each time you launch the game to route the traffic through its servers. It all happens automatically with no further user input required.
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Because WTFast doesn’t reroute regular Web traffic, the SpeedOf.Me test for measuring upload and downloads speed we've used to evaluate other VPNs is not applicable for the service. I was able to test WTFast’s effect on ping in online games of League of Legends, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2, however. After I launched WTFast and picked League of Legends from its list of games, each time I launched the game from that point on, WTFast sprang into action and routed the game’s traffic through its servers.
With League of Legends, I had an extremely snappy average ping of 43ms without using the service. With WTFast, my ping slowed by a single millisecond to 44ms, which isn't the result you want to see, but frankly there was little room for improvement there to begin with. For this test, I was connected to a League of Legends server in North America. I live in southern New Hampshire and when I launched WTFast, I let it choose a server, and it selected a server in New York. Because my baseline ping was so good, none of the VPN services were able to lower it. To WTFast’s credit, its ping was tied with that of IPVanish for the fastest ping of the group, ahead of Private Internet Access’s ping of 46ms, ExpressVPN’s ping of 47ms, and Keep Solid VPN Unlimited’s ping of 65ms.
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When I routed the game through WTFast my ping dropped to 43ms.I ran a second test in League of Legends where I connected to its Oceania server. Without WTFast, I had a respectable (for the distance) ping of 246ms when connecting to this distant server. This time, WTFast was able to very minimally improve my ping to 241ms. It's an imperceptible improvement, but still, it was the only service to improve my ping on this test. To run the test I let WTFast choose the best server in Australia for my League of Legends traffic.
Next, I ran two tests using Overwatch. Without WTFast, I had a ping of 301ms when I connected to the game’s server in its Americas region. When I routed the game through WTFast and let it choose the best server connection, my ping dropped to 43ms, a change that made the game feel quicker and more responsive. I ran a second test with Overwatch where I connected to a server in the game’s Asia region and experienced a slight improvement in ping that had no real effect on my gameplay, but could possibly feel perceptible to very high-level players. Without WTFast, my ping on Overwatch’s Asia server was 249ms, and it dropped to only 202ms when I used WTFast and manually selected the “East Asia (Choose Best)” option.
Lastly, I played Team Fortress 2 and found WTFast had little to no effect on the game. In fact, my ping increased ever so slightly when I routed the game through WTFast. Without WTFast, I had a very fast ping of 28ms on Team Fortress 2. With WTFast, my ping dropped to 31ms, an imperceptible difference and well within a range of standard fluctuation.
Depending on where you live and the locations of the servers for the games you like to play, your mileage will vary. If you are playing a game with servers located a great distance away from you, WTFast may be able to help, though to what degree will depend on your unique location and connection. If you already have a low ping for your favorite online games, then it’s unlikely to be able to help.
