Regardless of what you hear, I believe wholeheartedly that internet games are quite possible over 14.4K modems.
Time is a drug.
Although I now hum along at 33.6K, don't be afraid to use your 14.4K or to join a game with 14.4K involved. Provided people have good connections to their ISPs and there is little in the way of packet loss, a good game can be had by all. Finally, from the creator of Avara , Juri Munkki offers some hints on latency tuning , while from his penthouse office at Ambrosia Software, Andrew Welch offers his angle on bandwidth settings . Both of these should help you understand what these numbers mean and how you can tune your games to get the best performance possible.