Someone needs to stop the Agent malware because it has completely hijacked my bandwidth. There are no updates, but it’s keeping my internet speeds maxed and I can’t do anything. I keep trying to close it, but it just keeps coming back.
SOMEONE FIX THIS.
does the same for me: world of warcraft.exe and battlenet.exe both run together. I stood for a good 3-4 minutes in amirdrassil in the middle of the pip fight unable to move…was lucky I didn’t die.
it’s a fairly regular occurrence atm and doesn’t seem to be related to where I am in game. here’s hoping they can fix the issue.
What I’ve been doing is as soon as WoW launches I close the Bnet app then go to my task manager and end task on Agent.exe and I get my bandwidth back. You can also go into settings in Benet and tell it to close once WoW starts. I’m on 10Mbps DSL and frequent random Agent downloads plays hell with my game latency and endless buffering of any live streams I have going.
The issue you are describing is usually caused by another program interfering with the battle net app like security software. What kind of f internet connection do you have?
10 Mbps is not really enough bandwidth for the game. That would be why you are having issues. Most ISP only guarantee 60 to 80 percent of the advertised amount of bandwidth between you and the ISP. By the time you reach blizzards servers you very well could only have 2Mbps connection to blizzard
I have been playing WoW since 2007 and not always even on a 10Mbps connection and NEVER had these issues until recently. This NEVER happened until the past few months. Until recently I never saw Agent.exe taking all my bandwidth WITHOUT WARNING just randomly whenever it felt like. As for the bandwidth issue you claim, when Agent.exe sneakily starts downloading it is taking up my ENTIRE 10Mbps bandwidth for however long it decides to hijack my internet.
As to the “The issue you are describing is usually caused by another program interfering with the battle net app like security software.” claim, how do you explain that? How does some security program trigger Agent.exe and make it use up all my internet speed? I just want the Bnet client to go back to behaving like it has until the past few months with all the random unexplained downloads whether I’m in game or not. I’m having to keep my Bnet closed now just to keep from having other stuff interfered with by Agent.exe.
If a security app keeps closing requests that the Bnet client is making to the system or internet, it could get stuck in a loop, eating resources.
As for the connection, 10Mbps doesn’t meet the system requirements for WoW. Broadband is defined as “actual download speeds of at least 25 Mbps and actual upload speeds of at least 3 Mbps.” source: FCC
What makes the Bnet app so special it has to behave this way? NO other game client behaves this badly. This only started a few months ago. What it sounds like you’re saying is Blizzard decide to exclude those of us stuck on slower internet from playing WoW. This behavior from ONLY THIS ONE GAME CLIENT is making me not even want to play WoW anymore. I don’t get this nonsense from Epic, Rockstar or Steam. They always say what’s going on with any sort of download and I have the option of letting it happen or not AHEAD OF TIME.
Current behavior of Bnet client sneakily hogging my bandwidth has me just about ready to cancel WoW and not play it. I’ve been thinking getting back in to FFXIV and this is just about the breaking point for me. Blizzard needs to do MUCH better if they want my money.
Edit: I never have trouble playing the game at all in terms of bandwidth, just this stupid sneaky download crap from Agent.exe. I’ve been on this 10Mbps connection for 8 years and was on this speed once before and never ever had issues with sudden sneaky downloads from Bnet app.
Also, for about 2 weeks last June (2023) my connection was only at 5Mbps and I had no issues with Agent.exe running in the background and I had no issues with latency in game.
They are developing a game that requires minimum connections and hardware, not targeting you. Blizzard put the system requirements up before this current expansion started. I believe Broadband Internet has been the requirement for several expansions, but would need to check. What it means: You can play on whatever you want, but they only officially support connections and hardware meeting the minimum requirements.
I noticed you keep referencing the Bnet downloads (that’s what Agent.exe controls) as “sneaky.” You can close the app so it doesn’t perform any updates, you can also block it on your firewall if you feel inclined. But it’s only performing the intended job.
quote=“Jeolene, post:1, topic:1817017, username:Jeolene-scarlet-crusade”]
it has completely hijacked my bandwidth.
[/quote]
I blame plunderbuss…
doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the app? is its intended job to stop folks from being able to access and play the game easily?
You can open Bnet and set it to close when launching the game. If the Agent is still running, it’s there to verify your license to the game. Beyond that, it shouldn’t be performing any data-heavy tasks. I’ve closely monitored my network traffic and I do not see any evidence of the Agent going rogue and eating through my bandwidth.
WoW never uses more than 0.8 Mbps for actual gameplay, what are you guys even talking about?
Maybe the content you’re playing doesn’t, but we’re discussing the system requirements posted by Blizzard.
No content in WoW requires more than 1Mbps for the single player.
World content tops at 5 KBps, and raids never go over 100KBps, which are all under 1MBps.
Maybe an open world event with a huge amount of players might need more bandwidth but then again WoW’s own servers can’t handle the load.
Source: I use NetLimiter and log WoW’s traffic + any search on the subject.
It would be nice if you guys, and Blizzard themselves, stopped spreading this misinformation about what the actual bandwidth requirements for playing the game are.
Latency notwithstanding, even a 2.5G mobile connection or ancient DSL connections would suffice for actual gameplay.
I guess they made up the requirements for fun.
Maybe for RPing or old-world 5-man content, but not for raiding. Some newer DSL lines are fine, but not something clocking the same speeds and reliability as 2.5G.
Check your own bandwidth usage and see if it’s made up.
Like I said, “latency notwithstanding”, 2.5G has enough bandwidth to support average WoW gameplay.
For raiding etc. you’d need 3G at least. 4G for enough stability. 5G is overkill.
Yes, Blizzard is grossly overestimating how much bandwidth WoW consumes if they’re stating you need more than 1 Mbps for gameplay.
The high requirements should be related to the download/install experience, not gameplay.
I’d have to double check it by trying it in a raid, but I’m pretty sure the advanced combat logging will make WoW use a metric ton more bandwidth than normal. If you have it enabled, disable it. As for the game requirements themselves, it requires a broadband connection. 10mbps is not considered broadband anymore and hasn’t been for a while now(it was 25mbps and was just raised to 100mbps). So with a 10mbps connection, you likely only have 1mbps upload, if that, and that can definitely affect gameplay if you choke that out.
EDIT: oh and packet loss… if you’re playing with a cellphone connection, packet loss will make the game look like it’s using more bandwidth, due to resending packets.
I will be posting it later, but I’m sure you’re both very wrong.
It’s been discussed already on these very forums:
Those are from 3 and 5 years ago… and one of them is talking about Classic WoW, which uses significantly less data.