Intermittent "lag spikes"

[Luzbelle-khadgar]

Recently, I’ve been experiencing what might be called lag spikes while playing world of warcraft. Everything will be working fine, then suddenly, all characters begin to run in place and I am unable to perform any actions. I am still able to move my character and when the game becomes responsive again, my friends have reported me teleporting to the position I had moved to during the lag.

During the lag, all other services seem to continue running without issue. Streaming platforms and discord continue without a hitch whatsoever. On one occasion, the “lag” persisted indefinitely and I was able to note that blizzard’s in game chat was still functioning as one of our PUGs asked if I had simply given up and I was able to respond to him and have him see it in game, only the game service itself was affected. That time, I waited for about 5 minutes chatting with people in game while everyone ran around frozen but never disconnecting. After 5 minutes I simply closed the game and reopened and being able to rejoin.

I ran a WinMTR to the blizzard datacenter IP i found on wowpedia (24.105.62.129) and these were the results:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |

Host - %	Sent	Recv	Best	Avrg	Wrst	Last
192.168.1.1 - 1	1868	1867	0	1	90	1
No response from host - 100	377	0	0	0	0	0
10.209.4.1 - 0	1871	1871	4	11	67	10
10.29.104.86 - 0	1871	1871	4	11	67	9
No response from host - 100	377	0	0	0	0	0
10.44.61.18 - 30	857	600	15	22	54	25
mai-b2-link.ip.twelve99 - 83	438	77	0	46	104	44
atl-b24-link.ip.twelve99 - 1	1864	1862	53	64	166	62
atl-bb1-link.ip.twelve99 - 2	1776	1752	54	61	108	61
nash-bb1-link.ip.twelve99 - 86	426	61	0	67	77	66
chi-bb1-link.ip.twelve99 - 17	1138	951	68	76	152	74
chi-b23-link.ip.twelve99 - 81	446	87	0	76	119	78
blizzard-ic-348622.ip.twelve99-cust- 2	1789	1768	68	79	177	78
ae1-br02-eqch2.as57976 - 2	1555	1532	75	533	4701	141
et-0-0-1-pe01-evch1.as57976 - 2	1789	1768	68	75	159	78
24.105.62.129 - 2	1789	1768	67	74	154	69
________________________________________________	______	______	______	______	______	______
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

I ran this test while running a delve and experienced the lag spikes I speak of. During the spikes, I looked over and saw the 4.7k ms ping happen so I am pretty convinced this is in fact the issue. I was hoping there was something blizzard could do for me. I read somewhere that I should also submit a ticket, so I will likely do that as well.

Edit: I removed the .net from several of the trace steps due to blizzard forums not allowing me to post because of supposed links in my post.

[Kozzae-doomhammer (Kozzae)]

What kind of internet are you using?

Not sure if the IP you are pinging is accurate anymore, wowpedia even shows it probably is outdated, and Blizzard support pages no longer provide IP or ping instructions.

They do have recommendations on how to optimize your internet. Most likely a ticket response would also include said information, just FYI.

I suspect a peering issues between Twelve99 and as57976. Google seems to think Twelve99 is the new Telia? So your connecting from UK/Finland?

[Elocin-mugthol]

There’s packet loss and high latency on the twelve99 nodes several hops before handing off to Blizzard’s peering partners.

Likely 2% loss overall, and the pings are hitting 104–108ms on those nodes.

[Arraxion-bleeding-hollow]

Yeah, it’s a connection from Nicaragua, 100ms is normal to chicago. 4700 isn’t.

[Arraxion-bleeding-hollow]

I did in fact submit a ticket through the in game portal. Waiting on a response from that now. When asking a friend to check his connection through a spectrum connection in the states, he also saw large packet losses reported between the nodes similar to the ones my report was presenting so I disregarded that as a major issue as he experiences no problems, and if I was truly losing 86% of packets like this says I am at the Nashville hop for example, I don’t think the game would be playable ever, instead of simply intermittent spikes.

[Elocin-mugthol]

Those things are true, but there is still 2% overall packet loss and high latency on several of the nodes. Not the same level as the 4700ms you’re reporting, but 108ms or so before reaching Blizzard (at the halfway point).