I’ve been experiencing an issue where launching World of Warcraft takes about 10 minutes from pressing the start button until the game actually launches. After investigating the problem, I found some interesting technical details.
After launching the executable file, I used Process Explorer to look into the TCP connections. I discovered that the game isn’t launching immediately because it’s waiting for a connection to be established with IPs in the range 137.221.64.0/24. The issue is that I’m sending SYN requests but not receiving any ACKs back from these IPs; instead, the connection attempts just time out. Once the game gives up on these attempts, it finally launches.
To work around this, I tried blocking this IP range using Windows Defender, which solved the problem. By blocking the connection attempts, the game no longer waits for the timeouts and launches immediately.
So, my question is: Why am I getting timeouts from these IPs and not receiving a response?
Temporary Solution:
Create an outbound rule in Windows Firewall.
Choose a custom rule.
Select “This program path” and choose the wow.exe file in the retail folder.
Select any protocol.
In the scope, add the remote IPs section, select “These IP addresses,” click “Add,” and type the range “137.221.64.0/24.”
Click Next, select “Block the connection.”
Give the rule a meaningful name so you can delete it later.
My guy! I did the exact same thing, opened up process monitor and saw those IP addresses, but I had already tried with the Firewall completely disabled which didn’t help!
I hadn’t thought about trying Wireshark.
However, blocking the connection actually DID help.
Same with the guy above me - I dub thee the Champion of Azeroth!
Having wireshark running, is one of the things that can cause Warden to automatically permban your account, as running any form of network packet inspection software or debugging software against World of Warcraft, is against the ToS.
One famous tech youtuber (a LTT staff member) got permbanned just for having a debugger loaded into memory, not even activly being used, just loaded. It took a petition, a large number of followers, and a segment on LTT itself, to have a senior exec intervene, and agree to unban him “on this one occasion”.
You got lucky this time, but be aware of how risky it is.
Oh, thanks. I didn’t know that. I was just wondering why my game isn’t launching, and it seems to be a network issue. Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll keep that in mind for the future.
you put “137.221.64.0/24" in the “this ip or subnet” section since “/24” is CIDR notation which already specify the range from 137.221.64.0 to 137.221.64.255
solid solution, fixed my problem, thanks a lot.
a decent bunch of us from israel esp those who are using partner’s internet services seem to be stuck with this issue but that’ll do for now, cheers
At lassst someone gives working answer.
nothing worked for me except this !!
very bad blizz customer support give only general answers
like delete addons ,cache ,update driver, disable all services etc…
Thanks man !
By the way, this method also works for launcher stuck on “initializing” and takes a very long time to download. Just add another rule where the program path is pointing to the agent (for me it is on: ‘ProgramData\Battle.net\Agent\Agent.8806’. I assume it will change on a Bnet update)
