Ping spikes/packet loss - same pattern since December 2023

[Nuv-burning-legion]

Hello, this post gonna be a bit longer than standard ones about connection issues - REMOVE SPACE FROM PINGPLOTTER LINKS; straight to details:

Since December 2023 I’m experiencing packet loss/ping spikes - at the beginning it didnt happen everyday, but since march/april 2024 there’s no day without problems. While this happens connection other than Wow is working perfectly, twitch .tv streams in background, Youtube, Spotify, Discord etc. It is happening no matter what time it is or what Im doing on my PC in the background.

CONNECTION DETAILS
• So I’m from Poland
• Fiber 600/100MB/s
• Router: Halny HL-4GQVS
• PC connected to modem - Cat.6 S/FTP

PC SPECS:
• CPU: i7-10700KF
• GPU: Asus ROG Strix Radeon RX 6600XT Gaming OC
• RAM: CRUCIAL BallistiX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3600MHz CL16
• RAM2: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3600MHz CL16
• MOBO: MPG Z490 GAMING PLUS

WHAT DID I DO
1.
I had contacted with my ISP sending them all the details (I will paste links to PingPlotter at the end of this post)

• They changed my router twice, checked home cables, changed splitters etc., basically they can’t do nothing about it, their explanation is DDOS attack at my IP or their infrastructure
• Changed routing to Blizzard servers:
  • OLD share.pingplotter .com/19aVQgApBWf
  • NEW share.pingplotter .com/aoHnawkZEop

2.
I did multiple WoW reinstalls, about three full PC formats in 2024

• Tried connecting through a phone hotspot with my home WIFI - issue still persist

3.
Followed every troubleshooting guide from Battle.net, flushes, renews etc. - nothing helped

4.
Tried using VPN/ExitLag - 2nd one fixed the problem I think or maybe it was a placebo effect, PingPlotter was showing a ping spikes and packet loss but I didnt experience ingame problems while connected to Netherlands

LET’S GET INTO PINGPLOTTER
I won’t paste every link that I have collected since problem has begun cause it would be too long to check, I’ll show examples of patterns how does it look from August only

01.08.2024
• Blizzard: share.pingplotter .com/aoHnawkZEop
• Twitch .tv for example: share.pingplotter .com/AhwQPWWxfXd
We can see the problem hapenning at the same time on Twitch and Blizzard IP

03.08.2024
• share.pingplotter .com/EoowjzxXaSu

• Hop 13/14 visible ping spike + packet loss, when this happens I have to quit Wow and wait till Battle.net reconnect again to start the game

04.08.2024
• share.pingplotter .com/cQ4eeKE4WZB

• same here with more losses

05.08.2024
• share.pingplotter .com/ABFhiE7tQqY

• packet loss and no ping, still have to quit the game and wait for Bnet reconnect

LETS SKIP COUPLE DAYS

11.08.2024 - yesterday
• share.pingplotter .com/XTUjnn2C4V3

• 5 times on 11 minutes exactly

12.08.2024 - today
• share.pingplotter .com/fGXqVvoYTki

• four spikes+losses in less than hour

ADDITIONAL EXAMPLE
• share.pingplotter .com/fWXaMWZkNmn - my connection
• share.pingplotter .com/iYD2e7vRMb - my friend connection

• Same day same time but he has no problems (different ISP tho, routes looks the same)

So, thats about it. It is really exhausting having in mind that while playing M+ keys and streaming at the same time I can get a spike/loss and waste other people time and mine too, had multiple situations where my connection problems depleted the key.

If you need more details please just let me know and I’ll do my best.

[Sellblade-stormscale]

Very detailed post with a lot of information, sadly, from my own experience with the exact same problem, anyone able to help or respond (no blues, they apparently don’t do Connection Troubleshooting anymore) will literally just say they either suffer from the same/similar issues with no further information or you’ll get an MVP/Know-it-all regular player response that’ll tell you it’s your ISP, and by that symptomatic, all ISPs across a couple of different regions or countries (it’s not just one region or one country where people are affected with the same symptoms), only to then pivot to say that ACTUALLY, nothing can be done and you should complain to your ISP about the people hosting the nodes where you see issues happen. Your ISP will tell you they can’t do anything, because it’s not their job/responsibility, they don’t host or own that node, Blizzard will say the same and the node hosters/holders will tell you to go back to Blizzard, it’s their issue.

It might not seem helpful at first, or salty to keep posting this when people come around to the Forums with this or similar issues, but frankly, that’s the experience I’ve had with this exact same issue (I had the huge world lag spikes from December 2023 to April 2024 as well, when portugese players got Blizzard to apparently ackowledge the problem and fix their backbone, which somehow fixed it for me… sort of. Still get ping jitter and high fluctuations and desync between Home/World, input lag etc., just not in the thousands, it’s… annoying but playable for casual stuff).

And those are the most common answers me and others have gotten for this. VPNs/GPNs might help, but obviously it’s not a real “fix” to pay extra money for services that weren’t required beforehand nor are a surefire way to alleviate the problems for everyone, it’s fairly hit or miss.

Temper your expectations for a response or an actual fix, is all I’m essentially saying. I’d say if you were danish, it might be an issue with Norlys, aka an actual ISP issue, that does seem accurate in their case, because all of their issues seem to be exclusively with users of that specific ISP, but… that’s obviously not the case with you being from poland.

[Lustreless-argent-dawn]

The issue has persisted for several months now. At least since the start of this year - there were several threads about it as well, like the one I made half a year ago:

Huge latency spikes every several minutes

Hi! I’m about to just give up and stop playing, but I’ll try asking: since early January, every 30-40 minutes I get a huge latency spike (up to 6000 ms), which subsides after 10-15 seconds. The game requires a restart then, and the key is ruined. This happens only in WoW, everything else works normally - and I’ve tried close to everything at this point: my ISP replaced all cabling, swapped a router, and they tried reconfiguring to a few different settings, tried it via wi-fi (I normally use wi…

And yet there has been no feedback on it whatsoever. Not even a single reply that they’re looking into it. It’s absurd that this kind of an issue could last half a year, and the dev is still merrily ignoring the problem. High-grade absurdity. Shame the butt of a joke is a chunk of their own playerbase though… but oh well, what else is new smh.

Here’s my RIP’d key in pingplotter:

https://i.imgur.com/QBzaWh4.png

[Sellblade-stormscale]

To be entirely fair, IF it was widespread enough to cause serious concern for Blizzard, we’d see more posts. I saw your original post a while ago and that seems to kind of be the problem. Or a huge part of it. It’s not anything they’d take seriously given what their MVP Players usually repeat ad hominem on these Forums (EU and NA), such as “Blizzard doesn’t do any Connection troubleshooting anymore and it’s better that way, others also don’t do it” and ISPs being the problem. That much makes sense. Why start a whole operation if only a few hundred (not even) actively report an issue and even less provide actual information that would otherwise be required IF Blizzard did troubleshooting like this anymore.

I at this point just find it highly absurd that all 3 possible sources of the problem are just pointing fingers at eachother and nobody feels responsible to actually fix or help with fixing the problem, because nobody seems to want to invest (if we don’t give anyone of them the benefit of the doubt). Blizzard doesn’t anymore (hence no troubleshooting, pointing fingers at ISP). Your ISP points back at Blizzard. And if you exhaust both to the best of your ability, they both (and in this case also Forum MVPs on top of that) point at an entity the player doesn’t have sh*t to do with nor any ISPs really acknowledge having anything to do with: The people hosting the nodes they say are really causing trouble. But when I tracked down a couple of problematic nodes, you can scarcely figure out who’s responsible because all of them trace back to Blizzard. And when you do reach anybody, you’re either not authorized to ask them to fix anything, because you’re not a customer of theirs or they just point right back at Blizzard as the people to reach out to.

I also, again, find it absurd that on the portugese end of the December issue, it resolved in April on the high note of a player reporting having made contact with Blizzard and being told that the issue was indeed with THEIR backbone and THEY were SLOW to respond. And after that post the issue actually got eradicated for portugese players AND the fix seemingly affected other regions as well. Same day in April, my own issue went away for a bit and then changed symptoms when it came back.

At the end of the day, especially with these latency/connection issues over the last year cropping up here and there only affecting Blizzard Games/Services for the people in question, I think you can rule out throttling of Game traffic by the ISP, because clearly they don’t give a sh*t about other game traffic. And if it was a faulty node in their area of responsibility, other services and mediums would also have problems with that node and it would get reported by other voices and fixed. And with all the fingerpointing, Blizzard ironically is, given the symptoms, the only company involved that is going to feel any, even minor, loss.