High latency, lag and freezing

Support Technical Support
1

Hello there,
As per ticket request, I am now making a post here.

Firstly I want to say this is ONLY happening with Blizzard titles. No other online game is affected and I reliably sit around 12-18 ping in any other online game.
I have a 1000/1000 connection and as said, there’s no issues anywhere else.

I have experienced high ping, both home and world, though mainly world, in wow since Wednesday 5/2-25 late afternoon/early evening. I did a raid on Tuesday, 4th, and the issue was not present. I have not installed or updated anything between those 2 days.

This is really noticeable when going into an instanced area, such as dungeons. I have not tried Battlegrounds as I don’t PvP.
My ping is usually anywhere between 12-22 on both, yet lately they’ve sat at 30-50, to then climb to 700-800 when I am in an instance - sometimes even 3-4k.
The game will often “freeze”, yet the boss quotes will display normally above them even when the game isn’t responding.
This is making the game pretty unplayable, as the freezes can last up to 15-20 seconds.
I can also sit still somewhere in the world (not an instance) and get spikes in ping.

Here’s things I have tried:

  • Made sure everything is up to date (drivers, addons, windows etc)
  • Reinstalled drivers just in case
  • Reinstalled WoW
  • Reset my UI
  • Done the Ipconfig commands
  • Booted in Selective Mode (Not sure if that is the English word for it)
  • Disabled AddOns and uninstalled CurseForge
  • Disabled / enabled different settings in game
  • Tried to tether from my phone
  • Contacted ISP which states there’s no issue on their end
  • Tested on my desktop, laptop and even MacBook Pro, same results
  • Tested on both Ethernet and over WiFi, same results

Does anyone else experience this, or does anyone have any suggestions I haven’t thought of? Any help would be appreciated as we’re now going on day 5 with horrible latency.

EDIT TO ADD: My problems are in Retail WoW. I tested Cata Classic to compare and it also happens there while just standing in Stormwind.

1 Like
2

I have the same issues and have gone through the same troubleshoots and it all happened at the same time for me as well. To up this post; please anyone who can help. I don’t get how this is only an issue with Cata Classic, but nowhere else

3

I’m having the same issue in SoD

4

Same issue here - no problems with Retail, but in Classic Cata I’m getting the exact same issue. And it only started happening recently - last lockout (29th Jan to 4th Feb) there was no issues, then the current lockout (5th Feb to 11th Feb) I’ve had this issue. Tested everything from Addons, to reinstalling the game and rolling back drivers! Even tried testing my 5G network rather than my wired connection (so phone network instead of router) to no success.

5

I’ve been having terrible lag in raids and m+ the last ~2 weeks (everyone starts running in place for 2-60 seconds, but never DC) and also made a post here, but got no replies.

While I lag I can be discord streaming, girlfriend watching shows, streaming twitch etc. without any issues except in wow.

Here’s a WinMTR log from right now:
https://imgur.com/a/O6ajnCq

To me it looks like Blizzard is dropping a bunch of packets, but maybe someone with more knowledge can help interpret this log and some other people could try to chip in with their own log.

What confuses me is that no one I play with experience any issues, so I feel like I cannot for sure say that it’s a Blizzard issue.

I’ve tried using wi-fi instead of ethernet and have also tried using hotspot on my work phone, which still resulted in in-game lag, so I feel like it has to be Blizzard at this point. I’ve also been on this internet connection and ISP for 4 years without a single issue until now and Denmark has excellent infrastructure.

6

Hello,

I am just curious if people who’ve replied to this post are Scandinavian by any chance?

I did a similar WinMTR test like Aeroz to the same host and we got very similar results. I can see we’re both on the same provider and it seems the connection is having issues around the same point which seems to be at or right after Netnod.

Here is my WinMTR results:
https://gucci.zira.moe/HauntingMonarch.png

I connected to a VPN and got a connection through Germany, that does not go through Netnod, and the connection seems more stable and seems more playable.

7

Same her, scandinavian, everything was fine before this last reset. We all know its on blizzards end, its on their end 9/10 times

8

Thanks for also doing a WinMTR, I’m glad to see this getting discussed, as it has become very difficult for me to do any raiding or m+ anymore without griefing the people I’m playing with.

I will see if I can get some of the people I play with (also from Denmark) to do a WinMTR, as they are not experiencing any issues. Maybe they have a different ISP who has different routing.

What VPN did you use? I’ve been meaning to try one myself to see if it could change the routing and “fix it” temporarily.

9

I called my internet provider after exhausting every other option - and they told me I’m not the first to call about Blizzard products, ranging from Diablo to WoW. They told me it’s not on their end, they’ve tried. So it’s up to Blizzard to fix the issue.

10

Would be interesting to see the results of their test if you can get them to do one. Usually when I’ve had issues with the connection it was always when it went through Sweden (which is seems Netnod does too?).

I don’t know the stance on VPNs when it comes to WoW, but since I specifically asked in a ticket and got the OK to use one, I assume it’s fine to talk about.
I am using Proton, the paid version, with split tunnelling so only WoW traffic goes through the VPN since that’s the only service having an issue.

Just like Anadriend, I contacted my ISP which still reported no issues. My issues also started after server reset, so it seems something wonky happened.

11

I’ve had the same issue since wedensday. Also scandi.
Found a fix for it.

Download VPN and set it to anywhere in Europe.
Problem solved.

I dont know why it works, but i’ve have 0 issues all day.

12

Just bought a month of VPN myself and so far it seems to be better. I will do some more testing over the next few evenings.

Hope Blizzard fixes this soon, as it sucks having to add 5-10 euro on top of the wow subscription to play.

13

Unfortunately I’m not in an economical situation where adding another expense for a VPN is responsible. WoW is only on my list of expenses because of the amount of hours I spend on it for the price, which is cheap for a hobby haha.
I really hope they fix it :confused:

14

FYI, i’m living in Belgium. Without VPN, problem, with VPN located … in Belgium… no problem…

15

Got a reply from my ISP here in Denmark (Telenor), who said they had received multiple complaints and that they had made some changes in the back end and they want me to test to see if there’s any difference.

Maybe they could have changed the routing? I will give it a try later, but I did an m+ last night with the VPN and had seemingly no issues.

16

I’ve yet to get an email back from them, yet I did try to call them a few days ago and they had no reports. (also Telenor)

I was trying to do a dungeon earlier and I had a great 800ms - Swapping to the VPN dropped it to 20.

I will keep testing on and off today until I get a reply from them =)

17

Sounds like the issue is re-appearing from the launch of War Within.
Was mainly an issue back then with danish internet provider Norlys, but since Norlys is busy buying companies like telenor, it’s possible its affecting other ISP’s aswell.

Theres a whole thread dating 6 months back about this issue right here:

Conclusion back then was that Norlys was aware of it, Blizzard was aware of it, but neither wants to take responsability.