When playing Overwatch the past 6 years I’ve typically gotten about 40 ms in matches. The past 2 or 3 days it’s been spiking during matches to about 120 and sitting there. This is causing noticeable lag between event usage and their audio cue, a gap when I watch my own gun fire and when the projectile actually leaves, etc. It is not FPS lag and it’s unplayable.
I ran a traceroute with Blizzard’s looking glass tool and these are my results:
TRACEROUTE:
traceroute to [My IP address], 15 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 Blizzard Blizzard 0.375 ms 0.338 ms 0.337 ms
2 24.105.18.130 (24.105.18.130) 1.335 ms 1.351 ms 1.353 ms
3 137.221.105.14 (137.221.105.14) 1.352 ms 1.353 ms 1.353 ms
4 137.221.66.22 (137.221.66.22) 0.619 ms 0.639 ms 0.640 ms
5 137.221.83.86 (137.221.83.86) 830.129 ms 830.135 ms 830.137 ms
6 * * *
7 137.221.65.12 (137.221.65.12) 180.325 ms 180.335 ms 180.333 ms
8 137.221.72.32 (137.221.72.32) 56.205 ms 56.217 ms 56.694 ms
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *
27/02/2022 05:36:56 UTC
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I’m pretty sure the jumps where I’m hitting 180-830 ms are Blizzard IP addresses. What’s going on?
The looking glass test you ran measure our connection to you however any data within our network is masked or deprioritized so cannot typically be used to determine if there is an issue.
However all data after our network is missing in this test so overall the test will not be of any diagnostic use.
Run a WinMTR as instructed here:
Reply with the results of that test and that will help the community troubleshoot this with you.
The WinMTR looks great. Your average ping is 38ms, your worst ping is 56ms. There is also no data loss, as all packets on the first line made it to the server line. If you had a ping spike, it wasn’t captured in this test—unless you’re considering 56ms a ping spike.
My worst number in that test is actually 107 at BLIZZARD-EN.ear7.Chicago2.Level3.net, and I was experiencing it for most of the match’s combat. This hasn’t happened in every single game over the past few days but has in probably a third of them.
Edit: Here’s another WinMTR I took in a match from less than 5 minutes ago (~11:50 AM EST). The lag in this match was pretty representative of what I’m experiencing.
I want to emphasize that during the matches where I’m getting this lag my FPS is not dropping ever, and the two yellow network icons from this support document (https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/7779) flash the entire time.
But that number didn’t carry through to the later hops, so you can ignore it. Blizzard servers don’t want people pinging them, that’s how a DDoS functions. As a result, you get inflated pings/responses.
You can, but seeing as it’s not a widely-reported issue, no changes on Blizzard’s end will likely resolve the issue. They offer connection troubleshooting as a courtesy, but they aren’t responsible for how you connect. This is the same stance all other online gaming companies take as well.
I’ve noticed that other players with issues are running Vanguard, causing lag or disconnections. Is that the case for you?
I am not getting bad ping in any other multiplayer game.
So where is the bad ping coming from in my second WinMTR test then? The game client is telling me there are network issues during the match. That my ping in game is over 140ms. All of this at the exact time I was recording that WinMTR.
Why tell me to run WinMTR at all if you’re going to dismiss the numbers at Blizzard’s end as if they’re 100% the result of some masking effort. Blizzard is not immune from a hardware or connection issue. It’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
I’m trying to offer you assistance, but your test is simply not showing a connection issue. You’re providing that data, not me or Blizzard. Everyone running a WinMTR will see high pings on the Blizzard nodes at some point. For instance, I’m not having any connection issues yet the ping for me on that node shows over 4300ms. Clearly, it’s not 4300ms (that’s 4.3 seconds) or I wouldn’t be able to log in.
I just remembered an issue from the WoW forum concerning Microsoft Defender Cloud-delivered Protection. Check that setting because it caused lag and disconnects for people on WoW.
Aside from that, you may want to open a ticket and see if the staff has any further insight, or speak with a PC technician.
A line issue at a big internet carrier is the only explanation that makes sense thus far.
I have run MTR many times while in game and it conveniently has never shown a problem, even though the game experience is extremely laggy and terrible. From what I’ve seen, the in-game netgraph shows LOSS IN ~54.1% when the problem is occurring.
So sure, the server is capable of receiving all of the ICMP traffic you’re sending it. But when literally more than half of the game’s packets are being dropped on the return path, something is clearly going wrong. This means the MTR results will be unhelpful at best (or actively misleading at worst, as they seem to be in this case).
If I was having a broader connection issue I would have spoken to my ISP first. But I most certainly am not. A single service I use is sporadically ruining the bed and I’m not seeing latency in any other online multiplayer game I play.
I have extremely good and reliable internet that is not currently displaying problems anywhere else. My router is working fine. My computer is not at fault. I keep getting told that none of the testing I’ve done shows a connection problem in between my computer and Blizzard’s data center. So where exactly am I supposed to think the problem is at ¯_(ツ)_/¯?
I should have been clearer in my original post and explicitly asked if there was an issue with/near Blizzard’s Chicago data center. “What’s going on?” Didn’t cut it. But that possibility has been dismissed out of hand because I am “blaming” Blizzard.
Now I can only relay what my ISP told me - that the problem is somewhere near that data center - and wait.
.