When I enter an instanced arena I’m getting rather severe lag spikes in about 50% of the matches. Sometimes, the instance doesn’t lag at all and other times it’s unplayable; with the game swapping between usual my 200ms responsiveness and 3+ second delays.
I’ve noted a few other people in trade chat say that they are having similar issues, and it’s worth noting none of us are having any lag issues from our OCE world server.
I have the luxury of access to multiple internet connections (from different ISP providers) and I’ve also tried to disable all addon, restart my computer, router etc …and am still encountering this issue no matter what changes I make.
Can I/we get some help? I don’t think this is a consumer side issue.
This forum is for players assisting other players. Blizzard offers generalized connection troubleshooting, but ultimately, they develop games and are not an ISP or routing company.
Since OCE and NA players share instance servers, you’re likely experiencing increased lag routing into an NA server. Unfortunately, there are so many nodes/companies between you and those servers that these problems are very difficult to resolve. Your best course of action is to run a networking test, capture where the lag is happening, and then discuss it with your ISP. You may need to become an annoyance to your ISP for them to act on it.
Hi Elocin, I genuinely appreciate that you’re trying to help but
Outside of running a networking test, this isn’t helpful advice nor do I think it’s prudent for the potentially hundred (or thousands) of players who are having these lag spikes to have to harass their ISP provider (or in my case, providers).
If it was one provider, I could understand this being an ISP issue. When it’s multiple providers, I doubt it’s something on the client side that can be fixed.
The last time there were widespread server issues, Blizzard eventually stated it was an underwater cable that caused the issue then it was resolved a week later. I’m not a telecommunications engineer, so I’m not privy to how they would operate or how these issues are fixed but I assume it was a change on Blizzards end that resolved this.
With that said, would you recommend any specific networking test? I see there’s options for a Pathping and a WinMTR? Happy to do either if I get a spare minute.
Also, finally
Okay so if my posts here won’t make it to Blizzard, where would you recommend me posting this? Should I open a ticket instead?
In my experience winmtr/traceroutes are helpful because they either make the user error or the blizzard problem fairly obvious.
I was having big (1000-4000ms) world latency issues in lfr last night. Haven’t checked today.
As best I can see, this is a Blizzard problem.
Doing a route to the oceanic IP support articles give. The US IPs suggested got similar results. The first place where the latency shoots up is an IP that whois says Bliz owns.
I’ve removed the first two legs for privacy but there’s nothing abnormal on either.
Your ISP sells routing and connections to services. Blizzard can’t force an ISP or routing peer to resolve a problem. The ticket/request would need to come from another company involved in that line of business. All we can provide in this forum is an assessment of a networking test, but it’s usually the same advice at the end.
Thousands of ISPs share routing peers and undersea cables. If one routing peer goes down, those ISPs experience issues. Sometimes they re-route quickly, if such an option exists.
Your ISP will know about an underwater cable problem before Blizzard does. You can also look up the submarinecablemap site and see which ones you rely on, then use a search engine to see if there is any news about them.
If your ISP uses IPv6, you won’t be able to use WinMTR and you’ll need the Pro version of PingPlotter to set the packet type to UDP instead of ICMP.
That node is ignoring your ICMP requests (that’s what WinMTR uses) as a DDoS protection mechanism, so we don’t know the actual response time.
Notice how the line says only 197 packets reached it, but somehow the last line has 272 packets? The test can’t add packets in the middle of the route. Also, if you were losing 59% of packets, you would not be able to login. Even a 5% loss would affect login ability. WinMTR is an insanely old program with no updates since 2011 (or earlier), so you’re better off using PingPlotter.
I am getting similar lag when instancing with other servers that aren’t OCE. Yesterday it was completely fine, the expected 2-300 ms ping but playable, now it tends to freeze randomly as if I am playing with 2000+ ping. I don’t think this is just an ISP issue if its affecting so many people.
EDIT: Should also mention apparently a large amount of my guild mates also having issues starting from last night.
Also happening to me in exactly the same circumstances as described in this thread. I am also Australian based. No issues in oceanic world server, but in a BG or other instanced content it shoots up to 1500-6000ms.