Ever since 8.3 I have been experiencing a problem I’m calling desynchronisation. It most frequently occurs when first entering combat and using abilities, and when I’m in a group with players from the US on a US shard. I’m Australian.
What will happen is this. I will start to experience lag, my abilities won’t work, but for a short time, allies and enemies will still be moving around and using abilities. After a few seconds, everything will be running on the spot. I won’t be able to use any abilities or perform any ingame action, with one exception. I can still chat with people. I can talk in /say, or in group channels like /guild and /general. Messages from other people will show up, and I will be able to have a back and forth conversation. My internet hasn’t dropped out, I’m able to load webpages and I’m still talking with my friends on Discord as if nothing has happened. It’s as if a small blip on the connection has tripped me up, and while I’m still connected to the server for the purposes of chat and communication, it can’t resynchronise my character’s actions with the server. No matter how long I wait, nothing will stop people running on the spot.
I need to Alt+F4 to close the game, and relaunch it. This often doesn’t work on the first try. The game may get stuck on the loading screen, it might fully disconnect me while on the loading screen, sending me back to the main menu. It might finish loading, but when I can see my character again, everything is still frozen, and my UI isn’t showing that I’m still in my party. I can still see chat though, but I need to Alt+F4 and restart the game in order to load properly. Sometimes the game gets stuck loading the realm list. Sometimes the game can’t load the dungeon I was doing when this error occured until I log into a different character, travel to the dungeon in question on this other character, load into it, log off, switch to the original character I was playing, and only then will I be able to load and resume play. This is the worst case example, but thankfully it hasn’t happened in the last week.
This problem doesn’t always happen every day. I can go several days without it happening, or, as just happened to me, it can happen twice in the one dungeon, ruining the keystone for myself and four other people. The symptoms are always the same: I can still chat and converse with people ingame through numerous channels, but all characters and NPCs are frozen, running on the spot, and I can’t interact with anything or use any ability.
This never happened before 8.3. Has anyone else experienced this type of problem? What could be causing it, and how do I stop it?
Thanks.