Game crashes a few minutes after launch

Technical Support
1

Hi.
My game crashes after a few minutes of being launched, whether in menu or in battle proper.
I thought the issue had to do with some bad cache in either the blizzard launcher or the game files themselves, so I reinstalled both the Blizzard launcher and the entirety of the Heroes of the Storm game.
Neither fixed the issue.

I originally thought the cache or bad update was the problem as whenever I start the game from the launcher, I get a progress bar popup that says “Preparing Game Data”.
This didn’t use to appear everytime I launched the game.

Furthermore the blizzard launcher says the current version of the Hots game is at 2.54.2.85311, however, my crash logs show that I am somehow running version
HeroesOfTheStorm_x64.exe
2.54.1.19775

I know this isn’t right, but a reinstallation and even wiping cache and temp files didn’t fix this. What’s going on guys?

2

Hey there Kyutir,

Thank you for taking the time to reach out and report this. The most common cause of this specific “Preparing game data” behavior is a network-related issue. Can you temporarily test an alternate network such as a mobile hotspot or VPN? This will help us quickly determine whether the issues are network-related.

If the issue is resolved when using an alternate network, at that point we can be sure that the issue is isolated to the primary network. In these situations, ultimately we can only recommend contacting the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for assistance determining what is causing the issue to occur on that specific network. They might need to adjust network-level security/firewall settings or temporarily replace the network devices in your home to narrow it down further. I always recommend requesting to be forwarded to a “level 2 or level 3 technician” when contacting the ISP since the front-line representatives typically only have access to basic diagnostics and troubleshooting tools.

I hope this helps, let us know how it goes! Cheers.

3

So, first, I’d like to point out how you failed to mention anything regarding the disparity in the version numbers between the crash logs and the version number displayed when logging into HOTS. I’d appreciate more information regarding that. I wouldn’t also mind it if you guys actually posted the md5sum or sha-2 hash of the HeroesOfTheStorm_x64.exe so I could confirm that I’m running the right executable.
It sounds presumptuous of you to begin blaming the ISP before you’ve even touched upon your application’s own oddities surrounding its version number, or at least explaining how the relationship between the version number, the “preparing game data” progress bar, and the ISP brings us closer to solving this issue.

Secondly. I have done as you have suggested, even going so far as to once again uninstall the game application, connect to a VPN (this time tunneling through Mexico), and re-installed the game via that connection and attempted to play. Prior to installation of the game again, I went into my windows firewall settings and removed all inbound rule entries regarding Heroes of the Storm. The problem persists, and not only does the game still display the “preparing game data” progress bar upon app launch, but the application continues to crash after a few minutes of idling within the game menu (I’ve stopped trying to even actually play at this point). The first time the app launched after re-installation via VPN al la Mexico the “preparing game data” did download some 137 Megabytes before the game app itself grabbed window focus. Subsequent launch attempts do not show it performing this 137 Megabyte download.

Forgive me if I sound incredulous as to simply taking your word that the ISP is at fault here without a bit of further explanation. I doubt they suddenly started filtering UDP traffic that is addressed to my system.

I have some pathping information here for you.
I have xxx’d out the ip address on my end (even though it’s a vpn address).

TRACEROUTE:
traceroute to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx), 15 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  Blizzard Blizzard  1.173 ms  1.145 ms  1.141 ms
 2  24.105.18.130 (24.105.18.130)  1.138 ms  1.138 ms  1.136 ms
 3  137.221.105.14 (137.221.105.14)  1.135 ms  0.970 ms  0.964 ms
 4  137.221.66.22 (137.221.66.22)  0.515 ms  0.539 ms  0.541 ms
 5  137.221.83.86 (137.221.83.86)  39.881 ms  39.899 ms  39.900 ms
 6  * * *
 7  137.221.68.32 (137.221.68.32)  5.901 ms  6.525 ms  6.504 ms
 8  4-1-3.ear3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.71.135.105)  5.706 ms  5.656 ms  5.714 ms
 9  * * *
10  ae3.asr1.MEX1.gblx.net] (67.16.144.30)  70.887 ms  70.876 ms  70.868 ms
11  168.195.201.234 (168.195.201.234)  73.429 ms  73.565 ms  73.718 ms
12  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)  73.685 ms  74.575 ms  74.544 ms


27/06/2021 00:17:12 UTC
--------------------

MTR:
Start: Sun Jun 27 00:17:12 2021 Blizzard  1.|-- Blizzard                      0.0%    10    0.4   1.0   0.3   6.2   1.8
  2.|-- 24.105.18.130                      0.0%    10    1.0   0.9   0.5   2.1   0.3
  3.|-- 137.221.105.14                     0.0%    10    1.8   1.2   0.8   2.5   0.5
  4.|-- 137.221.66.22                      0.0%    10    0.6   1.9   0.5  10.9   3.1
  5.|-- 137.221.83.86                      0.0%    10   20.9 672.5  20.9 1268. 479.6
  6.|-- ???                               100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  7.|-- 137.221.68.32                      0.0%    10    6.9  16.2   6.0  47.4  16.6
  8.|-- 4-1-3.ear3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net  0.0%    10    5.5   5.6   5.5   6.1   0.0
  9.|-- 4.68.75.37                        80.0%    10    5.6   5.6   5.6   5.6   0.0
 10.|-- ae3.asr1.MEX1.gblx.net             0.0%    10   69.4  69.7  69.3  70.6   0.0
 11.|-- 168.195.201.234                    0.0%    10   73.3  73.5  73.2  74.4   0.3
 12.|-- xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx                     0.0%    10   75.7  73.9  73.0  76.5   1.2


27/06/2021 00:17:12 UTC
--------------------

When the game crashes, sometimes, but not always, I get the “unexpected fatal error occurred dialog” and it gives a ReportID number to share with you of

B0CAA09E-EEC5-4499-B5DF-05E160383BDF

Update: 7/3/2021

I had thought I had this fixed, since I managed to, after copying the game files from another computer, managed to play for a bit without crashing for a day. Unfortunately the next time I started the game application, it crashed after a while, so the symptoms have returned.

Is it too much to ask for blue response to my questions above so we can hunt this down?

Update: 7/7/2021

Please see details for 148CAEB9-53D1-4932-8572-3CB63271AA81 as posted by your app’s crash handler. Supposedly this sent you the crash dump and all associated logs.