As Manhammer has stated, I also think this has something to do with the profession window lag too.
Because, while it doesn’t fully resolve the issue, the load times get better after deleting DBCache.bin located in the Cache/ADB/enUS folder, which also resolves the profession window lag.
(You need to delete it AFTER completely closing WoW. Don’t try to delete it while WoW is open.)
This has been an issue for months for a variety of people in different countries from what ive seen. Personally, i’m on a canadian ISP (Shaw). In talking with a friend in Wisconsin, they then said they were having the same troubles on a different isp (for obvious reasons lol). This issue persists beyond all steps recommended so far AS WELL AS fresh reinstalls of windows, updating drivers both through windows update and manually going through all devices in the device manager to find any updates. I had this happen again with a 100% freshly downloaded install of wow, no addons, no addon managers, no security software installed using an m.2 which tested out just fine with the samsung management software and proper maintenance being performed.
I am running a 6850k with 32 gigs of ram, fully watercooled. Performance was tested with and without gsync, with and without sli enabled. Having taken all relevant gaming system steps to troubleshoot, this again leads back to a likely issue with the game client, possibly how it tries to pull data from your servers.
Why do i say this without actually having programmed wow? The way this issue manifests itself. It only occurs when there is a specific draw on data relating to account or character data, not outside world, other character or texture data, etc.
I have posted my DX12 data in a thread on the old forums that was not migrated over to the new, linked below. Again, the system this is occurring on was 100% fresh as far as the windows install and wow download, no addons, no addon management, no security software. There were no other games installed, nor were things like steam or origin installed.
I really hope this is able to be tracked down and corrected soon. Thank you for all your efforts in figuring out the various things you all handle daily, it’s much appreciated.
I created an anti-virus exception for both the Battle net folder and the World of Warcraft folder. The issue persists. No addons. When I delete the cache the game runs fine. Once. Then upon each realm change the problem of slow character screen becomes worse and worse. So does the profession window lag. Then, if I delete the cache the problem resolves until I switch realms. Nothing suggested helps in the long term.
Has a laptop user (or anyone I guess) tried replicating on a totally different network?
I’ve been having similar problems as well. But we shouldn’t be expecting Blizzard to do anything this is no work November for them. I know almost every month seems like no work November for them.
I live in Irvine, CA one mile from Blizzard HQ. If any Blizz tech wants to come over and see first hand what is happening I will offer cocktails and steaks… I am serious!!!
lol right. At this point, hell, ill ship them my damn computer. Not like I’m missing anything in BfA ![:sweat_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/sweat_smile.png?v=6" ":sweat_smile:")
Figure it out please! This is a real issue. I’m also getting the professions completely locking up my screen for 10 seconds every time I open them problem too. Even did a fresh new install with zero addons and updated every single driver. It’s not an addons issue.
Your issues are the same as everyone elses. Blizzard keeps telling us to do useless things and hope we will go away for a while…but after 3 months it is getting old. The latest is to cast blame on twitch for their addon manager.
" … but I imagine the fix is going to be on your end. … "
I think you must have a vivid imagination. You might be right, but consider:
Many of the client systems that are complaining of this issue are newer, well equipped systems - most of them working previously.
They haven’t changed. What has changed? WoW has. This issue has been repeatedly reported by a significant number of individuals.
That your folks cannot reproduce the problem on you local clients is immaterial. There are more and wildly different configurations out there - you’ve seen a number of DXdiag posts that show what they are. You can’t discount that just because “your clients” aren’t affected.
You suggest that our client systems are mucking up the cache. Really?
These systems that were working fine before the code update are, all of a sudden, misbehaving? It just couldn’t be the new code, could it. Inconceivable!
Then, you suggest that our systems might not be up to your new minimum requirements - numbers that look really impressive. But, remember: most of these systems were working fine previously.
You’ve just raised the bar and discount these clients based on an arbitrary standard. Which means you can feel free to ignore the issue - “… don’t think it’s a bug …”
We did the troubleshooting. Most of us have determined that deleting the Cache folder will allow us some play time. But, it shouldn’t be a regular part of getting WoW to run. Besides, the problem comes back.
And, who is it that tells our clients what to do to rebuild the Cache folder? You do. You tell us what to put on our disk. After it’s re-created, you tell us how to update it.
Is it so unbelievable that this creation/update process is what’s broken?
It seems much more believable than every one of our systems are suddenly “broken”.
We think you need to look a little closer - a little closer to home.
I am thinking that it IS affecting everyone, but some people don’t expect WoW to boot into a realm quickly, nor profession windows to appear instantly. I think a lot of people are still using HDD instead of SSD. This is why people with newer more capable machines are noticing it. Could be wrong. I don’t really know.
The realm loading today was quite a bit faster so maybe they are working on it?
Agree. The issue seems to be with Blizz, not with the users. It’s something new in the client, or it’s something server side. There’s just too much same symptom despite a wide variety of configurations customer side.
I’m also having many of the same issues that started approximately a few weeks ago or so.
Screen freezes for several seconds after opening professions and freezing when switching realms, as well as slow zone loading times.
Deleting cache seems to fix the problem initially, but problem returns shortly thereafter. I’ve gone through removing mods and add on managers (twitch) with no change. Completely removed anti virus and put exceptions into Windows Defender as well as disabled firewall. All overlays disabled including Steam, Nvidia, and Discord.
Everything else runs fine on my system including other games. And for the most part, everything else in WoW is fine (raids/dungeons/etc)
Also one last thing, occasionally I can open a profession and it will pop open as expected without a freeze, but then the problem returns on subsequent openings.
Additional note to this, noticed while levelling alts in the last couple of months, any time I dinged, the light effect was delayed and the game freezes 2 or 3 seconds. you dont actually get to see the lighting effect. Afterwards, the game goes back to normal. Again, another example of specific character data being accessed.
Hey everybody,
Thanks for providing those files. I’m not able to reproduce this on my machine - but I did get a similar issue for one load in when I switched my graphics to DirectX 12 mode. I noticed all of you who posted files in this thread are on NVidia cards.
What happens if you go into the System>Advanced settings and use the Graphics API option to choose DirectX 11 mode? You’ll need to restart the game after applying these changes. If that doesn’t give you any love, let’s try reinstalling your drivers.
Last up, reset your game settings using these steps. Let me know if that improves things or if you get any different behavior with any of these steps.
I was already running in DX11. Completed these steps, no difference. Tried DX12 for kicks as well, nothing.
I have a Windows 10 computer with the OS and WoW running on SSDs. Everything was smooth and fast.
I had no loading issues in BFA until a couple weeks ago. The loading problem has been getting worse and worse. Now, I’m looking at a black screen for a while before the game finally loads my toons on the character select screen.
e.g.
It also takes a while to load my toons on the character select screen after changing to a different realm.
The game freezes for a few seconds when I open a tradeskill window (mouse cursor can still move).
Furthermore, I’m staring at a 100% loading bar for ~15 seconds when I’m trying to enter the game or change instances. That’s not good when I’m doing rated arenas because I get noticeably less preparation time (to change talents, etc.) before the doors open.
Keep in mind that everything used to be smooth and fast during the first two months of BFA.
I have a GeForce GTX 970 and WoW’s System>Advanced>Graphics has already been set to DirectX 11. I haven’t changed that setting at all.
I was on dx12 prior to reinstalling everything, currently on dx 11, same issues
I really don’t think y’all understand the issue. It has nothing to do with our machines. It is your software, and/or your servers. Completely erasing our display drivers, just to reinstall the one that we already have is not going to change anything. I am not going to do that until someone else has, and has achieved long term success in ending the obvious bug. Honestly, I don’t think it will make a difference, and sounds like it would take around an hour out of my day.
As everyone has mentioned it started happening about 3 or 4 weeks ago. The very fact that we are running that game with no addons, no Twitch app, and erasing the cache fixes the problem immediately says that it is a software issue.
I am just going to put up with it as it is not completely game breaking. I just hope you will finally realize it is an issue on your end, and you fix it.
Just started getting this issue this week after to reading everything I can tell the following .I have win 10 set to dx 11, a Radeon graphic card, Wow is also on a SSD. Drivers are all to update as well. I did however do a clean install of my graphic drive this week , Which is the only thing that changed recently.
I’ve tried everything that was suggested to date and to no avail. What does work (and what has worked for a few others at least) is the temporary fix of deleting the cache. Maybe we can zone in on that more? There is a big discrepancy between the old cache and the new that is fixing the issue which is likely related to one of the database files that haven’t re-manifested itself. One (or many) of those database files could be causing conflict with a driver too? From what I’ve gathered at least some of us have SSDs and I’m not sure how many of us are running nVidia cards, but I’m just trying to make some sort of connection here.
^This is just all my uneducated speculation of course, but obviously everything we’ve tried so far isn’t working.