Continuing Intermittent Connection Issues

Support Technical Support
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For the last several months now, I’ve had on and off issues with my connections to both WoW and other Blizzard games. (HoTS, D4 mostly.) Things will be okay for hours or days, and then I will start getting annoying and irregular latency spikes and disconnects. In WoW specifically this usually manifests as everything in the game world standing in place, not being able to chat or fight or anything of course. However, it usually takes upwards of several minutes to actually realize I’m disconnected and kick me out. Sometimes it just doesn’t even, I’ve waited as long as ~10 minutes in a “frozen” instance before giving up and Alt-F4ing.

I don’t believe this is anything on my end, I’ve taken just about every personal step I can to deal with it. Connections, equipment, and cables all analyzed and changed by my ISP. Happens both with a straight connection and while trying the ExitLag program. Does not affect other programs on my computer like Discord, IRC, or non-Blizzard games.

I can only assume there’s a connection issue somewhere, but I’m really at my wit’s end what to do about it. And the irregularity makes it both hard to diagnose and hard to guess when my game is going to abruptly crap out of me. If anyone has any advice or help, it would be greatly appreciated.

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Since I haven’t gotten a reply yet, I’ve been looking at the other threads here about latency issues and disconnects. I didn’t manage to capture an actual DC yet, but this pingplotter was started right after I recovered from one. Don’t know if it will help but can’t hurt to at least share, I suppose.

[(https://share.pingplotter.com/ZN1FeA9Yz9P)]

Looks like I’m having a lot of packet loss at the one hop? Heck if I really know though.

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i’m not as familiar with pingplotter but that looks pretty good to me. I’d keep trying to capture one that’s going while you’re experiencing problems.

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Agreed, definitely hoping to.

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Here’s a PingPlotter from when I lagged and disconnected in D4. I was going to make a separate thread for that, but I can’t attach links in that forum for whatever reason, so I’m dropping it in here in hopes that someone can get something from it as I go slowly mad.

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And one more, just lagged out and DCed from WoW while in Aberrus a few minutes ago.

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Hey there,

I looked over the PingPlotters being shared to see if there is a connection specific cause.

The first and 3rd test look normal. The second test however shows packet loss start at either hop 2 or hop 3. Looking at the time line it appears the bulk of the issue happened around the 12:18a mark

Momentary connection issues can cause what you are reporting. And that is also is supported by the fact you are seeing this across multiple games which are hosted in different locations, created by different teams often using different game engines and using different types of server hosting.

There have been some service instabilities occasionally caused by various internet level issues which would have affected multiple services but those do not match the issues you describe.

So this could indeed be a connection issue but because its so momentary it can be hard to accurately capture with testing.

The latency on your lan is fine in all tests So the issue, if it is connection related begins at the modem or the first ISP hop.

I have some steps you can try but we may need more specific system information to dig into this further.

Try doing an extended power cycle on your system. Turn off all devices including the modem. Wait 30 minutes, turn on the modem, wait 5 minutes, turn on any network devices, wait 2 minutes, turn on your computer and try the game.

You can try switching your DNS settings to use a free public DNS servers instead of your ISPs Servers:

We do not have individual steps for specific modems or routers so if you need assistance accessing or updating the devices, contact the device maker/provider.

In some cases there is a corrupt or misconfigured setting within the router or modem. We cannot say what that might be offhand but the easiest way to resolve these conflicts would be to factory reset the router and/or modem.

You may need to look up your specific model for the steps on how to do this and in some rare cases you may need to have this done by the ISP. Feel free to reach out to them for assistance if necessary.

You can try using a VPN. This can help determine if the issue is routing based. Please note we do not support VPN usage though we do not prohibit its use with most of our games. Some countries around the world do restrict VPN usage so you will want to research these restrictions for your country before attempting to use a VPN.

Many VPNs offer a demo or trial version of their service to allow you test without commitment.

This is not meant to be the solution, just for testing but if it solves the issue and are comfortable using the VPN, you can continue to do so.

Do you have the ability to connect the system to a mobile hotspot?

We do not support this setup for playing but it can provide contrast to your normal connection. If you go this route make sure you are on mobile data and not on your wifi network and if you have a limited data plan, restrict your testing to prevent excessive data usage.

There are online guides for most smartphones on how to do this and most carriers can guide you through the setup process as well.

Do you have the ability to try a different computer on the same network? Or, the ability to try your current computer on a different network? This can help us determine if what you are experiencing is due to an network issue or something specifically with your system itself. Give it a shot and see what happens.

Let’s manually clear the Battlenet Desktop Application and all supporting data from the system. This will not remove existing game clients.

  1. Open file explorer/file manager (Right Click Windows Start)
  2. Navigate to the folder where the desktop application would normally be installed. Delete that folder if it exists (usually program files x86)
  3. Type the following into the address bar (not the search bar): %APPDATA% and press enter.
  4. Delete the Bnet and blizzard folders inside the appdata folder if they exist.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 with %PROGRAMDATA% %LOCALAPPDATA% and %TEMP%
  6. Empty the recycle bin.
  7. Now reinstall the app to the C: Drive.

Try running your system in selective startup mode: https://battle.net/support/article/200483

Create a new administrator account: https://battle.net/support/article/34550

Once the account is created, shut down the computer, wait 60 seconds, restart, log into the new profile and try the app/client.

If that doesn’t solve the issue, then I recommend submitting a ticket with an msinfo attached for further investigation. (instructions for collecting that msinfo report will be on the form.)

Click your name at the top right of this page, click support, click contact support.

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A post was split to a new topic: Have to Reinstall Client Every Two Weeks

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Thank you for the detailed reply. I will run through these things and try them out, I very much appreciate your help.

I will definitely look into the various options, the frustrating part is that as you said it is momentary. So it’s hard to know if I’m dodging latency at any specific time or not. But regardless of that, thank you.

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