I have been experiencing this issue since the pre-patch. Most of the time the game is running fine, and suddenly people and NPCs will be running in place, but my character can move but not cast, and then 5-15 seconds later, the game catches up. This happens most often during delves or dungeons or raids, preventing me from performing mechanics or dodging things, which is extremely frustrating.
When the issue occurs, Discord is still working fine, no addons show high memory usage, the in-game home and world latency show very low (15ms-20ms). My issue is unrelated to opening the map.
I’ve tried the game on two separate computers with different graphics settings (one low and one ultra), and both have experienced the exact same issue. I have tried unchecking the new graphics checkboxes that were introduced in the pre-patch, but the issue still occurs. I have tried windowed and full screen, but both have the issue.
It’s not an issue of decreased FPS or the game slowing down, as that would look more like a slide-show which is not happening. The game basically pauses receiving server input for that time and then all of a sudden processes it all in one go.
As others have suggested, I tried closing out the bnet app to see if that helped. It didn’t help–the freezes are still there.
This issue is extremely frustrating as it often leads to my death because I can’t dodge mechanics when it happens. Because of this issue, I can’t heal a dungeon without the constant worry that my group will wipe due to me not being able to heal anyone, I can’t tank because the issue prevents me from using my defensives and dodging mechanics, and I can’t raid lead for my guild because you need to be able to see the mechanics to call them out.
Please figure out what you changed in the pre-patch that is causing this behavior. I did not experience any of these issues throughout the entire expansion of Dragonflight until the pre-patch. If you look around the forums, you’ll see a number of people having these exact same issues. Please help. Thanks.
Here are some links I found of others with the same issue:
Mines doing it to just started today im really frustrated ive deleted everything. i just bought the computer a month and half ago . i know its not the computer. i thought maybe interface or cache or wtf files. nope nothings working it just continues to constant freeze. im trying to uninstall game and reinstall if that doesnt work i dont know what to do. frustrated i cant play the game
This is still happening for me, and I’ll add some more threads that I’ve found since my initial post. One thing that was suggested was if you are in a big guild, unchecking all of the checkboxes in the news filters may help. It did not help for me. Last night, I unchecked all of the news filters and ran a couple dungeons, still experiencing the random freezes.
I have also been having the same issue. Game freezes for up to 15-20 seconds, game continues around me and then everything catches up on my screen. I can no longer do keys, delves are a struggle and raids are impossible. I have done everything imaginable to try to fix this and it just keeps happening. It’s not lag or latency. It’s now so bad, that I don’t even want to play anymore.
I have been experiencing this freezing issue for over 4 months now that was introduced in TWW pre-patch. I’ll link the posts below made by others also experiencing this or similar freezing issues. It would be great if Blizzard would acknowledge that there is a problem. It would be even better if they they said they’ve got people working on it. And it would be best if they actually solved it, since it is really difficult to enjoy the game when the game itself prevents you from doing so.
For me its mini freezes and the problem is after the freeze the resolution changes to custom and cannot put it back to normal, you have to use resolution default to do it, i have a 7800x3d its was not happening on my other non x3d pc.
I wish had an answer. It is now over a month and still game freeze. Only in Blizzard. I would like a remedy or may have to cancel my account. Please someone reply with a remedy. thank you.
March 2025 checking in, this is still an issue for people and now it’s plaguing me and ruining TWW season 2 runs because I keep randomly freezing for 5-10 seconds during M+ bosses and by the time I come back I’m dead along with everyone else because I’m a healer. :')
I’ve turned my settings down to 1 whenever I do content and disabled nearly every addon except for DBM. I’ve tried re-downloading, checked my drivers, everything is fine it’s just WoW. My computer was recently upgraded a couple of months ago so I know it’s not that either.
Please fix this massive lag spike some of us are suffering from, several months later.
Anyone found a fix for this 3-5 second lag/freeze mid raid fight? Sometimes in M+ randomly as well. Definitely a 11.1 thing. Happened to me numerous times during raid last night.
Yep only started after the season 2 launch patch for me (March 4th '25). Of note: my fiber ISP doesn’t support IPv6. Any combination of settings in the networking tab doesn’t make the issue any better or worse. (any of IPv6, Speed mode, or adv combat checkbox states). I have had all the guild news filters toggled off for a long time. Disabled ALL addons while I was in raid, and the issue persisted. A /reload sometimes seems to fix it, but perhaps its just staring a loading screen for 5-10 seconds and it would’ve resolved itself anyways.
Happens in pvp, raid, dungeons and generally in the undermine zone.
The longest pause I saw was on the first boss of liberation of undermine, where on my screen the boss was stuck at ~10% hp, and the rest of the raid was already to the last trash pack before the second boss. Well over 1 minute without being disconnected, everything moved in super speed for like 5 seconds once the latency spike stopped.
Also of note, my ping on the ? icon would alternate between game restarts where 10000ms (home) but 60ms (world) or alternatively 60ms (home) but 10000ms (world). I would restart the game until chat was laggy, but npc’s generally moved fine, I don’t recall which of world/home is the chat. Also actions like clicking logout or exit game would also freeze.
It is not a general internet issue, as discord voice calls work perfectly fine while the issue is happening, and I even ran a packet loss test during an especially long spike, and didn’t drop any packets ( I never drop packets over ethernet anyways )
If you’re having this issue, and you cannot accept rez or release spirit after the lag stops, this is a workaround:
I can’t even log into the game for the most part since the 3/4 patch. the few times I was able to actually get passed the log in screen the lag was so terrible I had trouble just trying to farm herbs let alone play any content. I had no issues before this patch, and blizzard has remained steadfastly SILENT to bug reports. They didn’t even treat us this badly during CATA when everything went FUBAR for that release. I returned after a long break, but I have been a WOW player since the first release. I’m not a fan of this new flight style, but having the ability to revert to old flying style makes this not a deal breaker. I was planning to upgrade after a few days of getting into the new content on a new toon, but if this is how they run things these days, IMA have to pass.
A new roundup of the random game freeze issues. It seems like the issues that I’ve experienced since TWW pre-patch are becoming more prevalent for people since 11.1.
I’m getting really sick of dying to mechanics that I can’t do anything about due to these freezes.
I have been having the same problem. However for some reason my SSD is no longer registered when it happens, I had WoW on my HDD for awhile, but i moved it recently, worked fine until this. Doesn’t happen with any other game either. But now I am physically unable to log in because of it, now whenever I try and log in it disconnects me, and as I log in it acts like this is a new install. I am currently doing the “Scan and Repair” to see if that helps, but I hope this is fixed soon, because I am paying you monthly blizzard, so if it isnt fixed, why the hell am I paying you? (Edit, apparently it just needed me to restart my computer, but I know the freezing and the SSD not being registered is a problem."
Same issue that began in the new patch. It only seems to occur in M+ for me (I don’t raid), I don’t experience this in the outside world. I’ll be in a M+ run and the game will lock up for 5 seconds give or take when the freeze ends I’m typically dead.
