I’m honestly baffled that the BFA world lag issue has been allowed to persist so long.
It happened at launch. Oceanic servers bore the brunt of the issue, though certain North American servers experienced it semi-regularly (including my own server of Turalyon). Player’s server-side latency appears fine; all suggested tests from Blizzard’s tech support return no issues. And yet there is an inexplicable 100ms-2000ms delay sometimes when casting spells, attempting to mount, or taking any action in any moderately-populated zone (i.e. most of the BFA zones when current). Boralus for Alliance has been especially bad for the lion’s (pun not intended) share of the expansion. The one notable exception to all this is that instances such as dungeons and raids never really experienced any issue at all.
8.3 has now amplified the lag problem severely. The assault zones experience this issue constantly, and it’s only gotten worse since 1/21 when world bosses start spawning. The lag when Grand Empress is pulled in Vale is twice as bad as when either of the Nazjatar world bosses were pulled. Somehow, 8.3 has made this issue worse.
Back during 8.2, Blizzard had a hotfix maintenance that attempted a fix at this. I was overjoyed when I first read it because I thought we might actually see a solution. The reality? It lasted about a week and then the lag returned.
Blizzard, this lag issue throughout most of BFA is an embarrassment. It reminds me of the year-long struggle with Star Wars: The Old Republic’s ability delay issue. Bioware refused to acknowledge any problem for nearly a full year until they suddenly were like “oh, hey, we found the problem, gonna be fixed in this patch”. The difference here is that SWTOR was a brand-new game on a new engine; WoW is a game that has been around for 15+ years.
There was zero ability delay in the world throughout most of Legion with the notable exception of when Broken Shore world bosses were pulled. It went to hell when BFA launched. Oceanic’s thread started literally the week of launch; NA had the issue but we didn’t really get a thread started until December 2018. Both issues are unresolved. Please do something about this. I really, really hope that this issue does not persist into Shadowlands, but at this rate I have trouble keeping hope.
Source threads for those who haven’t seen them below.
Oceanic: Ability/Loot Lag on Oceanic Servers Despite Normal Latency
NA: Ability/Loot Lag on North American Servers Despite Normal Latency