I thought I'd try the browser embedded flash version today only to discover the whole experience was slow and frustrating.

It almost always gets stuck at the "Authenticating" stage of the startup, I can leave it 10 minutes and it does nothing, on the odd occasion it does load up properly I can play the game ok for a while but travelling between stages is just as bad, it'll either wait a minute or two before the next stage appears or it does nothing even after waiting several minutes.

This is not just one one PC but 3 different ones all running FireFox, a 3ghz core2duo XP desktop, a 2.2ghz core2duo XP laptop and a 2.2ghz core i5 win7 laptop.

It's not my internet connection as my Nook Tablet runs AL perfectly fine with none of these issues.