Is game play quality tied to internet connection quality?

I'm in a new house and lack any form of internet aside from tethering my mobile to the computer to share it's connection. I get decent speeds (200kb/s) but it's nothing to write home about. The game starts up fine, and when I'm at the Battle.net login screen the graphics run smooth without any stuttering. However, as soon as I log in to Battle.net ( as in the moment I click the log in button) everything grinds to a slow 10-15 fps. By everything I mean everything, main menu is slow with it's transitions, movie playback, and game play. But, if I don't log in and play as a guest everything runs decently. I haven't messed with my settings, and the game set everything to ultra on it's own. Below are the components in my computer, but I seriously doubt it's what causing it:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.2ghz
RAM: 4gb DDR2 1066 ram
GPU: ASUS EN9800GT Ultimate (512mb VRAM)
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

So, my question is as I stated in my topic "Is game play quality tied to internet connection quality?"

Thanks!

 

The animations have nothing to do with your internet connection, so the answer is no. When my internet access is slow, the menus load and move fine, only thing missing is the content (e.g., news, achievement points, etc.). Achievement points, for example are at 0000, so they still load fully, just don't get info from b.net.

 

I didn't think so, but I wasn't too sure. I suspect something else is up then.

Does anyone else have this issue?

 

Post a full dxdiag dump txt file on your system. Read my FAQ to find out how. The more we know about your system, the easier it will be to help you (The machine playing SC2).

 

Just a follow up, I tried every setting possible and it still slowed down as soon as I hit connect. Also, I played the first two missions on ultra setting offline and it worked fine. So, it's something to do with my connection to Battle.net.

 

I was having the exact same problem when connecting to battle.net, as well as a number of other problems like skirmish maps not showing up and general game slowdown. While reading a thread about the skirmish maps, someone suggested deleting the battle.net cache folder. I tried that, and it fixed ALL my problems! More details here: http://starcraft2forum.org/forums/showpost.php?p=368225&postcount=42