my brother has a strong cable hard line hooked up to a wireless router (runs at 2 - 3 megs usually, its really fast). the USB router runs at 99% all the time, i play games like battlefield 3, and other online games with no problems or hang time.
i am using NETGEAR WNDA3100v2 wireless usb Adapter, also he lives in the suburbs which is not to crowded.
Sure, but surely those servers aren't located on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean?
The problem is most likely that the server is far away. You'll therefore notice the extra latency and jitter introduced by the wireless network. Also, nwn doesn't have predictive models for npcs and pcs, as most 3d-shooters have, so it's not really a fair comparison.
By the way, bandwith, i.e., 2-3 Mb/s, is a horrible metric for latency and jitter. The good old example from Tanenbaum goes something along the line of: "Network one consist of a trained dog, carrying a 1TB hard drive between two houses. It takes the dog one hour to go from one house to the other. Network two consists of a 1Mb/s line. Which has the highest bandwith?"
It turns out that the network consisting of a trained dog has a bandwith of ~4.7 Mb/s... I don't think that particular network is any good for gaming.
edit: Misspelled Tanenbaum's name.