Chicago server down?

It keeps connecting me to LAS1 ive even tried manually blocking the ips for las1 but it’s not kicking me over to Chicago server :frowning: my ping is 90ms wired my internet is really good too 1.5gbps I’m in Massachusetts far East coast so Chicago works best for me!

Mine is kicking me to EU servers, I have 150ms when im in america, so it’s very awesome that blizzard is just not addressing this issue that’s been going on for a week now

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I used to get 32 ping on east coast :frowning: haven’t seen that since like 2023 also blocking the servers doesn’t work cause blizz has some dumb code that overrides my fire wall ip rule no clue how or why im about to take my net and back feet 127gbps into it till I dont see that damn las1 server no more lol my router shows the Chicago server when I ping all the ow2 servers so it’s there

I don’t think Chicago is offline, I’m seeing it in my matches right now. All players in North America can connect to LAS (Las Vegas) and ORD (Chicago), depending on number of players in your rank and a spot for you in those games on the closest server. I’m in Florida and sometimes connect to Las Vegas instead of Chicago.

That’s great but I rather have the choice of which one Im on i used to get 35ms now im 90-100 that’s a big difference

As far as I know, they’ve made no plans for adding a server picker in the nine years of Overwatch being online — at least not a plan they’ve shared. You’re welcome to suggest a server picker in General Discussion though, as feedback is not collected in the P2P troubleshooting forum.

Hi Nicole, I see you respond frequently to this subject and I know theres not much it seems you can do, but the many many people voicing there concerns on the latency with the east coast servers being gone is highly saddening. I live in Massachusetts, have gb dl speeds, and I used to get 20-30 ping with east coast servers active, now on average im at 70-90. I’ve seen your many responses on how you feel its an insignificant change and should still be playable, thats how blizzard seems to feel, but I just as many others have experienced such a downgrade in gameplay ever since these changes, I mean this is my first forum post, I hate doing stuff like this, and at first I thought it was a connection thing on my end, but im at my end for solutions and seeing how blizzard doesnt seem to care about certain parts of the US kinda sucks. We all miss our low ping and days of having a fair experience with the less chance of going against these ping differences. I get how from a workers perspective it might seem pointless, but players on the northern or southern east coast voice these problems. We just want the good servers back.

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Chicago and Las Vegas are the only two permanent servers. Previously, Las Vegas server was in Los Angeles.

Any servers outside those two were temporary to handle the load of players during big launches (when the game came out of beta and when OW2 launched). Blizzard has used this practice for most of their online game titles.

I think you missed my note in each thread you read about how I don’t work for/at Blizzard. I am a fellow player who has been assisting with technical issues in Blizzard game title forums for about almost 10 years.

Since my reply 24 days ago, there have been no announcements or shared plans about adding more servers.

As for latency, that can be affected by a lot of things. I always hear the same chorus about how “this is the only game where it happens,” but for most, it’s the only game they play where it happens. It could be happening to other services they don’t use, but other people using their ISP might notice.

In many cases, it can be the ISP throttling your gaming traffic to certain companies since net neutrality is dead in the U.S. It can also be the ISP choosing a cheaper route, which might have packet loss or just send your data on a wild route to reach the server. Packet loss and increased latency have little effect on streaming services, email, browsing social media, etc., so most people (aka non-online gamers) won’t notice it.

Ultimately, the two servers I mentioned are the only ones available for all of Blizzard’s online titles. Your latency from the East Coast to Chicago should probably be 70ms at most when viewing the LAT metric in the HUD (mine is 50-70 from Florida to Chicago). If it were me, I would look into using a VPN service that gives a more optimal route, and then raise the issue with the ISP after seeing that a better route is possible.

Edit: Added a link to the explanation of the LAT metric in Overwatch.

Chiming in here, with some more data.

This isn’t just a routing issue on my connections end. I have spoken with my ISP (Verizon), I have changed my DNS server, I have used two different VPN services, and I have five friends who I play Overwatch 2 with that have incredibly inconsistent pings one local to me with a different ISP, and three from other regions and all of us have massive packet loss, only with the Chicago servers, and only since the DDOS that happened earlier in the month.

For the last 10 years I’ve gotten 40 ping to this server, I am currently sitting at anywhere between 70 and 120. I have only ever experienced these issues when Blizzard services have been DDOSed. Almost every second game I play I have someone else asking if anyone else is having an issue. I have no packet loss to any other service, and to sanity test I have even tried playing games on the WC server and I have a high (yet consistent) ping, with no packet loss.

I know you’re trying to be helpful here, but how do we contact a blizzard employee to resolve this? Because if I had to put my money on it, based on what I’ve seen, there are issues with the Chicago servers, and as someone who has 10 years of experience working with large scale data centers, this isn’t just some magical routing issue.

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Blizzard doesn’t offer personalized connection troubleshooting anymore. The company still monitors its own servers, but they no longer do deep dives on connection concerns or reach out to ISPs and routing peers at the request of players. That courtesy service ended almost three years ago, which was about a year before the Microsoft deal was finalized and the tech support department was discontinued.

The most the customer support reps can do is link you to a connection troubleshooting document on Blizzard’s site. Connection/technical troubleshooting was never guaranteed or advertised with any of the game license fees. I’ve seen complaints about this change, but I believe Blizzard is sticking with it since it’s the same process most AAA titles use.

Ya, the server pings have been real garbage. I’ve gone from a 30-40 ping to 100-200 ping spikes and then I get disconnected. First two matches today has earned me a 10 min ban.

GG Blizzard

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So they are useless sell outs :thinking:

None of the staff you’re going to interact with at Blizzard make their policies or financial decisions, so not really. They’re just people doing a job per instructions given.

Who would i have to talk to then Aaron keller? I reached out to him before never heard back.