Can we have someone from the support team commenting here for assurance?
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This is happening to me as well. 2/3 games are on SG servers. This only started happening in the last few weeks, it seems just after the lifeweaver update.
This is NOT my routing, my ISP, or anything on the client side. I’ve tested this on multiple connections, and tried using VPN etc and no difference.
I’ve submitted technical support cases but have been told that they don’t have any insight into the server side of things and to post on the forums instead, which seems rediculous as well?
It seems like the issue is more likely that Blizzard’s AU servers can’t handle the traffic and so it starts choosing servers from other regions. Either this is the case or they messed up something badly with the server picking algorithms in one of the recent updates.
Blizzard please at least acknowledge this issue!
Still happening. Got comp banned because Singapore IPs are blocked but I’d rather that than play 120ms ping.
Wait a minute… the whole of Australia is being affected by lack of servers, there are hundreds of people posting and yet one post about a single person in florida gets a tech support post?
I know you probably don’t actually work for Blizzard (billion dollar company can’t afford to) but at least ACKNOWLEDGE we exist and reply to us. Then maybe contact someone at blizzard and let us know whats going on?
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Hey everyone,
I wanted to chime in here and give some clarification on a couple of things.
The forums here are for community based troubleshooting of local technical issues involving the game client, the system or the connection to the service. Most assistance with troubleshooting will come from the community. Blue and Green Posters will chime in if they have any specific advice or information to offer on a particular issue.
In regards to the specific reports I am seeing here. There are no known service side issues to cause specifically what you are seeing.
Overwatch uses dynamic servers and those available servers can change depending on need. I know that some changes were made at the start of season 4 to some servers meaning that in some cases players may now connecting to a different server. But in that situation it would be consistent because the old server isn’t up anymore. You’d always connect to the new server.
The typical reasons to see yourself bouncing between different servers would be either a local system, client. connection issue.
There could also be some issues with matchmaking/population limitations that have you matching more often to players in other locations.
This second reason is something best addressed through a potential bug report/feedback report on the bug report forum or general discussion forum
The first reason however typically means there is potential troubleshooting that could be done to solve the issue.
Atm we have about 70 posts (not all unique) over about 20 days. Enough to raise some concern but not what we would expect if the entire continent were experiencing issues like this. We also have dedicated teams monitoring population and service quality so any significant changes there would be very noticeable. (Not to say there can’t be a service issue, just that it is more likely local than service side.)
So the best course of action here would be yes, continue reporting. (number of reports helps us gauge impact and focus on specific potential causes for those reports.) but to also start providing some information as mentioned in this support post.
Ideally we want basic system information from a dxdiag, connection data run while playing, preferably one result from a good match and one from a bad match, and also provide yer city/province/ISP names so we can start looking for trends and patterns.
Lol bliz devs gaslighting their Australian community.
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Hahaha for them to think it’s not a whole continent issue is the reason I decided to leave Overwatch last night after 6 years… Sad but they just don’t care about us
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Mate, the issue is clear we are not stupid so please do not treat us like we are.
- Blizzard has reduced the amount of Sydney servers to save money
- Users are being placed on Singapore servers as Sydney servers are completely full
- The issue is occurring more frequently during peak times
- People don’t know how to report issues because creating a support ticket is intentionally hard to do - instead people just complain in in-game chat in the hope that something changes
The solution is simple
- Stop cheapskating on Australian servers because you do not have enough to handle the capacity of the region, they’re not that expensive for a multi billion dollar company
- Allow users to select which servers they would like to queue for with a region select tool (wow, groundbreaking technology)
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Hi Kershew,
Firstly thanks for taking the time to post.
Pretty sure this is the 6th? time this widespread issue has happened since OW1 launch and it is a bliz side issue. Because bliz does not disclose this stuff, all we have to go on is that its something to do with the dev teams ‘internal tool’ that causes this mess. It only comes back sometimes after big updates to overwatch.
I did a breakdown of this last round of it happening 6 months ago:
How this has been handled in the past:
The average player likely thinks bliz monitors this stuff and must be aware of it given how bad it is, but because bliz apparently can never see the issue I think we can both agree it wont be fixed automatically.
And just because people arent flooding in to the forums does not mean it can be ignored and not pushed through to the devs, especially when we cant raise tickets anymore to get through to the dev team directly.
Does this include its and the dev teams ‘internal tool’ configuration?
Or are you simply refering to numbers here? AKA congestion/capacity/etc.
Also it might be worth seeing if Drakuloth can pitch in, as theyve been involved in this re-occuring problem in the past. They’d be able to help alot here.
So as I mentioned, (Also not a dev just technical support), it is possible for there to be some matchmaking issues. But that is not what this forum is for. So if that is the case, then bug report forum for matchmaking issues.
Because there is no technical support here to solve a potential service issue (Not even saying there is or isn’t one but right now more information is needed) it needs to be on the QA and dev team’s radar and the best way to ensure that is bug report on the bug report forum.
If it’s an issue of server availability, then posting that feedback in the general discussion forum is the best course of action. The General discussion forum is specifically where the devs collect and consider any feedback or suggestions and that sort of thing can get lost here on the technical support forums as it is for troubleshooting local issues.
Posting in the technical support forum indicates a desire to receive localized technical support assistance first and foremost from the community and when possible Green and Blue Posters. (Devs are Orange btw) And since the volume of contacts, the populations in game and our internal monitoring are not currently raising any flags, it’s a good idea to try and look at all possible causes.
No one is treating anyone as stupid. I mentioned all possibilities then pointed to what the current provided data suggests and that is this could be a more local issue than people are assuming. The best way to rule it out is to get more data.
You can choose to help out and provide it, or not, its voluntary and up to you. If you do however, I will be here to help dig through it and make any potential recommendations based on what emerges from it. Outside of that unless more information comes to light to give some clarity on potential cause, not much progress will be made.
If you don’t feel comfortable sharing system or connection data here a simple step you can try is to test using a VPN, that changes routing depending on where you set the host location to and if there is a route specific issue should help.
It would still be beneficial to get connection data, but if you don’t want to share it here, you can submit a ticket. Point to this thread. Ideally two sets of connection data, one on the vpn and one on the normal connection while experiencing the issue.
Again it is absolutely possibly for this to be as large an issue as being reported but the best way to show it, is show me the data I am asking for to try and help you.
Also Faeberry:
Good questions, So we look at a bunch of different variables. There are internal population and network quality monitoring tools. Post count/ticket submissions, social feeds, etc… we can gather a lot of information just from these methods alone.
Do I personally think this is a larger issue? Possibly but I only look at the data I can get and offer advice that may possibly help. It’s why I asked for additional data.
When it comes to our SEA/OCE players, there definitely can be a lot that goes wrong. many times it is local, Sometimes it is ISP based, Sometimes it is Internet backbone based and sometimes it is absolutely service based.
I don’t suggest it is not possible to be any one of those potential reasons, All I or any community, blue or green poster here can do though is offer troubleshooting advice on the chance that is something that can be affected by that troubleshooting.
Previous instances may not have the same reasons behind them so when a new instance pops up even if it is similar to previously reported issues, we still need to take a full look at it.
Keep in mind, We want you to be able to play. Nobody wins if you can’t or the experience is bad. My wheelhouse is troubleshooting, this forum is for that purpose so that is what I will offer.
Now if I get more information that confirms a service issue, even if it’s exactly what some players are suggesting, then I will share that here. I’m not discounting anything, just offer advice to those who want it and asking for more information to help us investigate.
So the current request remains, check out the troubleshooting post I mentioned earlier, If you wanna help, run through the steps, (Also feel free to see if using a vpn makes a difference), gather the requested information and put it here so I can continue working for everyone on this.
PS. Green Posters are volunteers from the community, Treat them with respect if they offer assistance. Blue Posters are Employees usually in Support or Community. We are not able to be on these forums 24/7 and are more here to fill in the gaps (I get a few hours a week to post here) if we have info to share, need to moderate forum posts (Typically merging them together, cleaning up bad posts etc…) or requesting information from posters to help us investigate potential issues.
While I of course ask that discourse remain positive and constructive, I get the frustration and understand it. I am approaching almost 2000 hours of played time (and I don’t get paid to play,) I’ve felt the disappointment and anger of not being able to enjoy something you love because of a poor technical experience. I am here to help. Try to keep that in mind
I guess you are just going to let your OCE playerbase die then.
I understand what your saying, but you have to understand bliz wont allow us to make tickets on this anymore, and are specifically directing us to post on this technical support forum. The devs on the feedback forum are also very selective with what they respond too, so just like every time before this you blues are our only real avenue.
Agree to disagree here. I understand the devs are always busy and require a certain amount of troubleshooting be done before you can poke them, but the only information you’re going to get from anyone posting results is that they have no issues when connected to either SYD2 or GSG1. WinMTR, or dxDiag, will not show you why they are being connected to singapore. We’ve done this song and dance many times before and it took even 7 months once of providing these before the devs actually tweaked things on their end and ultimately fixed it.
Some key notes here:
- Its the same GSG server (formerly known as PSE1) as its always been in the past.
- Its happening at the same times of the day, as its always been in the past.
- Its happening to both au/nz, creating full lobbies of au/nz players.
- It only re-occurs sometimes after updates to overwatch and overwatch only.
- It does not happen to any other bliz service on the DC.
Likewise if you or the dev’s can VPN to au/nz during prime times you’d also be able to confirm its happening yourselves immediately.
So thats a no the tool’s config/sensitivity settings then?
I’m more than happy to start troublshooting for the 6th time if the dev’s can first confirm its not the same internal tool issue first.
5 Likes
*cracks out the old WinMTR for tonight*
So this will be my last post for the week as I will be out of office for a bit but others will be monitoring this post looking for information we can take action on. I cannot promise they will be able to provide further information on the situation but the will be able to collect any provided data and investigate and determine what is to be done next (either confirming the issue or finding something that can be worked around/resolved with troubleshooting.
As for the VPN test. It actually can help us find the source of the issue and it doesn’t mean the issue is on your end. We don’t actually support the use of VPNs but they make great testing tools in a lot of situations and can help here. Especially if we can get connection data running both on the VPN and on the normal connection. It is about seeing the routing and determining if something along the route is causing the game to think a worse server is better for you for a particular match. (And yes it could be a population issue and server availability. Server changes were made at the start of season 4 and that absolutely could be the source of the issue.
So right now we are asking for information, and once we have that, we can can get a better handle on what is happening.
This is the part I want more details on.
This exact issue happened during OW2 beta which scared a lot of us with regards to server allowances for the OCE region being reduced for whatever reasons.
I have continuous AWS latency logs for singapore, ohio, sydney and they were completely stable for Sunday night which was the worst it’s ever been imho.
I guess the best we can all do is capture WinMTR data and send it through.
Helpful WinMTR instructions for peeps to use;
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Just to add another voice to the chorus - me and all my friends (Hobart/Melbourne based) are being placed into what appear to be Singapore servers regularly during peak hours. Around half of our comp games are affected by this issue, we mostly play in the evening AEST.
Ping is usually around 110-120ms on these servers, which is enough to influence what heroes we decide to play. Normal ping on Australian servers is around 30-40ms. From what I can tell the lobbies are entirely full of Australian players, and they’re all complaining about the same ping issue.
Pings this high used to be quite rare. But now it’s every other game. It’s playable, and if it happened one game in 10 it probably wouldn’t bother me, but this is very frequent.
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You are right! Overwatch does use dynamic servers! so why in the world would there be ANY cases of Australian players getting put onto incorrect servers? Shouldn’t new servers be spun up to give your users an ideal ping?
unless Is there some limit set to the number of servers for the AUS region to make use of the reportedly 40% cheaper hosting costs in Singapore? That couldn’t be the case…
Every game I get into where we have been connected to the incorrect server it is not the first time for anyone in the lobby, I can only surmise that if every game with bad ping, has every player complaining that it’s not the first time and has been happening consistently, that it’s probably the entire continent.
Probably look at your metrics counting the number of people leaving games, or average ping for players from our region to gauge the problem, not how many people drag themselves to the forum to complain… Blizzard is collecting metrics/ analytics… right?
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Here is my WinMTR of the instance that I connected into a 125ms Singapore server. If I had a choice I wouldn’t have Telstra. It is what it is.
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| TELSTRA-MODEM - 0 | 44 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| 58.162.26.11 - 0 | 44 | 44 | 6 | 13 | 47 | 16 |
| ae10.woo-ice301. brisbane.telstra.n e t - 0 | 44 | 44 | 5 | 11 | 42 | 23 |
|bundle-ether25.woo-core30.brisbane.telstra.n e t - 0 | 44 | 44 | 6 | 7 | 10 | 6 |
|bundle-ether4.stl-core30.sydney.telstra.n e t - 0 | 44 | 44 | 16 | 18 | 20 | 19 |
|bundle-ether1.chw-edge903.sydney.telstra.n e t - 0 | 44 | 44 | 16 | 17 | 19 | 16 |
| twi3639888.lnk.telstra.n e t - 0 | 44 | 44 | 16 | 22 | 79 | 19 |
| et-0-0-49-br01-eqsy4.as57976.n e t - 0 | 44 | 44 | 19 | 88 | 287 | 20 |
| et-0-0-0-pe01-eqsy4.as57976.n e t - 0 | 44 | 44 | 16 | 18 | 39 | 18 |
| 37.244.40.1 - 0 | 44 | 44 | 16 | 17 | 20 | 18 |
|____________|||||||
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
Screw it I quit, doing content on my new account over the last few weeks unranked to to highest on Doom. Have lost 3 divs and dropped to diamond at this point. Me and my mates will be playing other games, feels bad for the players I dragged down with me, feel free to ping me when it’s fixed and I will return to OW2.