I feel your pain but SD seems to be skirting this issue saying "well online play is working for most players". Well guess what - I paid as much money for the game as "most people" but I still cannot play (10-20K pings). My advice to you is get your money back before you waste countless hours tryin to get this pile of #$%@#$ workin. Sorry for the rant but I'm so fed up with Demigod.

no one is on my network at all..and nothing is running..what happens is when i join a game with maybe about 1 person in lobby..my ping is fine at about 72 ms 50 even..but as soon as more people start joining up my ping skyrockets..at one time 4 people joined at once and i guess it was connected to all of those people..and bam my ping shot up to 10k..another thing is when i join a game that already has 5 people say sitting in lobby my ping is ridiculously high..it shouldnt be 10ping even with a 56k modem..i should be able to link up to 5 people and have an upload speed decent enough..i dont have 56k though i have dsl and i am still getting these pings..but nothing in the backround that has anytyhing to do with my network..no one stealing my connection or w.e..its just when there is maybe alot of bandwith use or stress put onto my connection from perhaps all of these packets sent from the game or from connnecting to all of these people it becomes unstable.

About 15K according to this thread.