WoW Classic freezes, sound stutter, interface/animation delay

Support Technical Support
1

Hello,

Before I opened this post, I looked for similar issues on this forum and with my old friend I call SearchEngine.

I don’t play WoW retail, I only started playing WoW Classic since launch day. Ever since I’ve been experiencing random freezes (for 10-30 seconds), sound stutter, interface/animations loading delay (for example, missing background when opening merchant, skills windows, map. Also missing animations when using skills which then come all at once 10-30 seconds later).

These events occur with no particular pattern, or none that I noticed. I could be walking, changing zone, fighting, and all the sudden I can experience a full frame freeze with no CPU/RAM/GPU spike (I’ve checked with task manager), on the contrary while the game if frozen, the WoW process seems to be idle and takes almost no resources. I could also experience interface and animation lag, meaning I still can interact with the world normaly but merchant windows have no background, some items are not loading correctly, the discovered parts of the map I’m on are simply not discovered anymore at least not until the “lag” ends, when I cast buffs or spells, they’re in fact casting/cast but with no animation effect at all. Sound also stutter /loop during the “episode” . When this “lag” period ends, everything is catching up, all the animations are appearing at the same time even though the fight is over.

A bit more about my configuration :

CPU: i5 6600k
RAM: 16go
GPU: RTX 2060
Resolution: WQHD (2560x1440) 60hz
OS: Windows 10
Internet Access: Optic Fiber (1 gb/s down 300mb/s up)
WoW is installed on a SSD with other games which run perfectly (like The Elder Scrolls Online or GTA V for example)

Even though this problem is present since I installed the game without doing any changes to it (meaning, no addons), I’ve tried every “solution” I could find on the internet, even though they were for WoW retail.

  • Cleared Cache, Interface and Addons folders
  • Checked Windows update, GPU drivers
  • Uninstalled/reinstalled Battlenet client and WoW Classic
  • Reset default settings in the game
  • Tried with/without V-sync
  • Changed audio quality like suggested in some other posts with similar issues.
  • Disabled Nvidia GeForce Eexperience and Battlenet streaming features
  • Set Windows power managment param to high performance
  • Checked SSD even though other games installed on it don’t have any issue (did a simple Windows scan, any tool recommandation for better testing ?)
  • Checked processes that could “block” things in the background
  • I don’t have any antivirus installed and use the built in Windows 10 firewall
  • WoW Classic and game launcher run in Admin mode

I’m a bit out of options. I thought there would be more people in the same boat, but apparently not as I don’t see any other post about this (for WoW Classic at least).
I saw that Dx12 has some issues with WoW, but in Classic there is no option for switching to Dx11 so couldn’t test that.

I am alone in this… ?

Thank you.

1 Like
2

I am having the same/simular issues. at first my pc would just randomly freeze, where i could move the mouse, open start menu, but nothing else. could not click on anytihing at all. So force restart was the only solution. this would happen maybe once pr day. But today the game has crashed 3 times in a row while killing murlocks outside of theramore. Suddenly animations and sounds are gone on some spells. backgrounds on chatbubble, tradewindow etc is gone.i cant see other people but i can hear them, and then my PC crashes. sometimes the sounds and animations just catches up looong after i have killed something.
i literally heard a mage make water right next to me just now but i couldnt see him. i saw a mob get attacked but no one was there.
Ive allso experianced micro freezes when traveling, zonechange etc, and i can see a glimpse of a white line down in the left corner with some command line on it. but its so quick that i cant make out what it says.

My suspicion was that my SSD is about to die. but since you are experiancing the same thing, maybe not ?

My specs are
Gtx 980ti Sli
3930k cpu
64gb ram
2560x1440 165hz G-sync. running on ultra setting with 122% resolution scale.
And the game is on a samsung 500gb ssd. wich allso has windows on it.

3

I don’t really have the problems as you have. It doesn’t crash the game or my PC at all. Only the game freeze (no response) but I still can use Windows in the meantime. Even when animations and interface are “delayed” and sound is stuttering, I can see other people, chat and interact.

2 Likes
4

you can have similar symptoms but different causes … so hard to say.

Anyway … what i would recommend is maybe run windows performance toolkit and record some data and then have a look at it to see whats going on.

Beside that i also recommend watching tems , clocks speed and checking pc utilization .

From the reported hardware you both have there should be no issue really …

Though iskaldt i see you use SLI … i wonder if maybe there is no good SLI profile from nvidia for classic? maybe try turning of SLI ? and see if that improves anything maybe ?

5

Well, when there is a complete freeze, WoW just stops using resources, CPU, RAM and GPU are close to 0% use. I’ve tried to use WPR and WPA but can’t really understand what I’m looking at there.

6

those are performance data … saying what is using what … and how much of it … it should give you a general performance overview … but if you computer completely freezes up … it might not help allot … but you say it says 0% right around it freezes ? sounds like something else is interferring … can you see any other app that is suddely using something like cpu . disk or anything ?

also worth checking event viewer and seeing if there are some errors there on the drives or so

7

though i thought the game did freeze not the pc ?

if its only the game … checking drivers etc and updating all of them would be worth it

but there should be no issues really there since i also run Nvidia and intel and all fine here :-/

also make sure windows is up to date … but there is apperently an issue with one of the latest windows patches that uses allot of cpu … but that should not freeze the game

beside that … you can also do a memory test via the build in windows memory testing tool that requires a restart and preformce a test in Dos

8

Only the game is frozen not the computer (could not check task manager otherwise). And basically nothing is monopolizing CPU, RAM or GPU while the game is frozen and yes during freezes WoW.exe gets to 0% usage.
I haven’t checked during the lag/delay parts but I don’t think that would be different.

My drivers and Windows are already up to date like I said in my original post :frowning:

The last windows update is not over consuming CPU resources in my case.

9

mhhh

the only other idea i have left is maybe to move the game to a different drive and reinstall it … if that is not helping … i have no other idea especially you most likely not getting any errors recorded anywhere ether …

I read allot from other post that people recommend removing all addons not just disabling them … could be an addon ?

if that is not helping then i am out of ideas and a blizz guy would need to help you

10

Already tried without any add-on when installed and reinstalled the game. Same result.
I’ll try my main drive which is an Ssd as well.

EDIT : So, last update on this issue, turns out, the problem is my SSD, I still don’t know why though, it works perfectly for the rest, but for WoW Classic, usage goes from 0 to 100 sometimes and lasts for 10 to over 60 seconds. During that time the game either freezes or animations and interface encounter some delay.

I tried scanning the ssd, updating all drivers I could think of (thanks to driver easy) I updated my BIOS, changed the SATA port, no change.

I have finally moved the game folder to my main system SSD and changed the path in Battlenet settings. No problem ever since.

That is not a fix, because I’m sure my SSD is fine, so I don’t know if there is some kind of incompatibility between the game and the SSD or maybe Windows is messing things up, I can’t really know for sure.

Fortunatley, WoW Classic is not too heavy and does not take much place on my system SSD.

2 Likes
11

Dude you’re a legend. It worked for me aswell unless i dont have an another ssd just a harddrive. And yeah it took me like 2 days to find this thread so not many of us have this problem. My SSD just as good as yours with other games. Wonder whats causing this laggs…

12

Thank you !
This did work indeed, after trying a **** load of different things :confused: .

Just to add information for other ppl, it doesn’t seem to be related with ssd specifically.
I had Wow installed on a SSD, and i reinstalled it on another ssd and it wortked.