Game Freezing/Crashing – 100+ Crashes and Counting and What I've Tried

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Blizzard, please take a serious look at this. I’ve done everything I can think of to isolate and resolve this issue, and nothing has worked. It’s making Mythic+ nearly unplayable, and I’m not alone—this is affecting players across multiple realms, specs, and PC setups. The only consistent thread seems to be server-side triggers like boss pulls, Bloodlust, or heavy mechanic moments. There’s speculation this could be related to backend character file processing or server overload. Others have reported huge spikes in Ethernet usage in Task Manager during freezes, and I’ve personally seen my memory usage hit 100% when it happens. It really feels like something deeper than a local addon or driver issue.

Issue:

  • Game freezes for 5–30 seconds during critical moments (often completely locks up)
  • Sometimes requires force close and relaunch from Battle.net
  • Happens on average 1 time (sometimes more) per dungeon
  • This has been happening over roughly 120 M+ keys between my own crashes and party members freezing too
  • Not isolated to my setup—many others report identical issues

When It Happens:

  • At the start of Mythic+ bosses
  • During /pull countdowns
  • On Bloodlust
  • When major mechanics hit (e.g., swirls, adds spawning)
  • When multiple party members are using their major cooldowns

What I’ve Tried:

:one: Addons & UI

  • Ran with only Cell, Details, Plater, and WeakAuras
  • Switched to Shadowed Unit Frames instead of Cell — no improvement
  • Uninstalled all dungeon WA packs — issue still happened
  • Updated WA, removed non-essential auras
  • Tried Luckyone’s WA for addon profiling fix from his post on X
  • Both plater and details have update rate as slow as possible (max)

:two: Graphics & Client Settings

  • Toggled anti-aliasing, triple buffering, and G-Sync on/off
  • Manually selected GPU in WoW settings
  • Set NVIDIA control panel to Prefer Maximum Performance for WoW Application
  • Have also tried following step-by-step instructions from Luckyone’s Github post
  • …and have tried Quazzi’s latest settings video
  • Adjusted other control panel settings
  • Changed WoW client’s power settings

:three: System & Drivers

  • Overclocked CPU using AMD Ryzen Master
  • Updated to latest NVIDIA drivers (currently on Mar 18, 2025 release — before updating I was on Oct 2024 release)
  • Game is installed on NVMe SSD
  • Ran WoW repair
  • Some have mentioned it being a Windows 24H2 issue, but I can confirm that is not the case as I am running 23H2 and have the issue.
  • Some players have reported fresh installing wow (and even windows 10 & 11) and have the issue still
  • Issue also affects users with top-end specs (latest and greatest gigasupercomputer)

:four: Realm Transfer Test

  • Moved to a medium/low-pop realm
  • Ran 30+ dungeons without a single freeze. This is very interesting and I wonder if it’s pointing to some sort of issue with the server side character profile since when the character was “fresh” the issue did not appear.
  • Used exact same WTF folder, addon setup, and config files
  • After a few days, issue started to creep back in (5 crashes today)

Next Step:
Going to test undervolting as a last resort, based on this article:
Tom’s Hardware – Undervolting fix for high-end Intel CPUs

Specs:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core @ 3.70 GHz
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
  • OS: Windows 23H2

Ask:
Can Blizzard investigate if this might be character file corruption, realm server overload, or something deeper on the backend? At this point, I—and many others—are out of options. We just want to play the game.

04/02/2025 Update
I have since tried the following, and none have solved the issue:

  1. Ran the game with no addons
  2. Fresh installed WoW (uninstalled from client then deleted all wow folders and began fresh)
  3. Undervolted PC
  4. Contacted ISP regarding what might be a faulty node on Blizzard’s end (ISP is Cox Communications)
  5. Flushed dns
  6. Attempted playing on wifi instead of Lan
  7. Installed NordVPN

All of these steps did not help the issue. The only thing worth noting is after fresh installing I did not crash for about 4 hours of gameplay. Then it was back again.

04/09/2025 Update & Solution
Okay everyone. After 57 troubleshooting steps I finally fixed it for me. Here’s the last steps and it could have been any one of these.

:white_check_mark: Install DDU and download Nvidia Graphics Driver 572.60

:white_check_mark: Boot into safe mode, unplug Ethernet and turn WiFi off for added safety to avoid windows installing another drive instead

:white_check_mark: Run DDU clean, then install the 572.60 driver

:white_check_mark: Download and install the latest AMD Chipset Driver package

:white_check_mark: Turn off Discord Overlay

:white_check_mark: Delete wow data folder

:white_check_mark: Run scan and repair

:white_check_mark: I lowered my monitor freq to 100Hz down from 120Hz since I remembered I had some screen overlapping on broodtwister. This step probably isn’t needed but I’m including it because I took this step.

This should reinstall wow but will save your configuration and weak auras etc.

I’ve run 20 dungeons and a full raid without a single freeze. The only micro lag I experience is on the cleave dummies in Dornogal.

9 Likes
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Did you try running without any of those? Not just disabling but fully uninstalling.

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Yes. I have run with zero addons.

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Did you perform a UI reset, including the CVars?

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Which Nvidia drivers are you using? Can you post a dxdiag and any errors you may have. What kind of cooling are you using. Original heatsink that came with your cou or are you running a aftermarket cooling solution

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By UI reset what do you mean? I have removed weakauras and addons which I primarily used for my UI. Do you mean also the base UI? Can you guide me on how to reset CVars?

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Don’t skip the advanced step.

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I am using GeForce Game Ready Driver Version 572.83 - Released Mar 18, 2025. I am using the original heatsink, no aftermarket cooling. After running DxDiag it found no problems. Would you like me to post the dxdiag.txt?

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If you are running even a moderate overclock with the original heat sink the CPU playing wow will most likely reach thermal throttle temperature. If you are using power now it definitely will hit thermal throttle. I have many AMD CPUs and all of them I had to replace the original heat sink with something else to keep it from overheating in WoW

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The issue was already happening before any overclocking. I did the overclock to try and fix the issue.

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If you were running power now which is by default on it’s automatically overclocking. And the heat sinks that come with those is insufficient for any kind of overclocking. What temperatures is the CPU hitting peak

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About 50 celsius. What do you mean running power now?

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Power now is AMD version of Intel speed step. The CPU auto overclocks based on load. Looking at when it freezes it very well could be a combination of a addon and power now OC the CPU to thermal throttle during pulls and cool downs.

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Roll back Nvidia Drivers to Nvidia 572.60, Nvidia absolutely broke something in 30XX series cards drivers trying to fix the mess they have in thier 50XX series GPUS.

See this thread, im not reposting all the steps I went through trying to figure this out. Good solid two weeks of crashing like clockwork in M+ content. Use DDU to clean out all of Nvidias drivers, and go through the thread for more information.

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I am not running power now and do not see that in my Task Manager.

Since I’ve made my original post, I have tried overclocking and undervolting. Neither fixed or resolved the issue. I did a fresh install of the game and it didn’t freeze for the first day but now it’s back again. This is with no addons whatsoever. I bought NordVPN to try and solve the ethernet spiking issue and the game still froze.

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It’s a bios setting and by default it’s active.

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Someone in that thread said they did those steps and continued to have the problem, even worse. Don’t think I want to try that – are you sure that was the solution and not maybe something else?

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I’m having these same issues, OP. Hopefully enough threads have been made now that Blizzard can see the issue isn’t on our end. I’m fully updated, use multiple sources of internet etc., minimal addons.

No other issues with anything on my PC at all. This is something with WoW for sure.

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Confirmed it’s disabled in bios. PBO is disabled and so is core performance booster.

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