Moments of extreme input lag

So, this has been going on since 10.0, but has been worse since 11.0.

Sometimes it feels fantastic, very smooth, snappy and responsive to play and fire off abilities. Then there are moments of maybe 10-30 seconds where the inputs are super unresponsive and slow where it takes 1-2 additional seconds to fire off an ability.

One thing that IMMEDIATELY fixes the slow down moments is to alt-tab out of the game for just a few seconds, then when you tab back everything feels perfect for some time. It’s like there is some buildup or something that gets reset when you do this.

100% certain this is on the client and not an issue on my end. It only happens in WoW and I’m on a good rig.

There were posts about input problems when DF released too, but they never got addressed. It’s such a shame that the game now suffers from this when it has always been known for being such a responsive and smooth game to play…

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I have been dealing with this BS since Dragonflight, and I am really close to quitting over it. I will have 25ms home/world and nothing open in the background, no addons, and sometimes it will play like it used to but the majority of the time I will hit a spell, the CD animation will get almost halfway through before the character goes to do the actual spell. Trying to maintain any kind of rotation like this is just impossible.

I replaced my whole entire PC recently over this, I bought a 7800x3d and ONLY installed windows and wow, and not a single part came from my old PC, nor any software, so thew ticket response of “clear your cache, remove your addons” which is the only thing you ever seem to get from support is moot.

I had my internet service provider remap me into a static route supporting my specific server’s subnet, and he showed me a perfect connection. I got a new fiber ONT (modem) and a whole new router, and I even bought a new network cable. This is a Blizzard issue 10000000%

It comes and goes, and it feels like server lag, like when you were trying to do your rotation at the feast or something.

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Exactly.

Similarly got a new PC hoping it would get better, nothing changed.

Something is fundamentallly broken with the client since 9.0/10.0.

Crazy to me how this is getting ignored and is just accepted gameplay now. You can see the issue everywhere, in official videos, on RWF streams etc.

Fix your game Blizzard.

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Yeah, on some characters (like my guardian druid) it is more pronounced than on others. I swear I can hit my thrash button, and the CD swipe will get almost done before the actual ability triggers. Forget trying to do a rotation at all.

I just cannot believe all I ever get back from tickets is “reset your UI”, like I haven’t tried that a hundred thousand times. I bought a $3,000 computer because they made me think it was the fault of my (not that old) i9-12900kf with 32gb ram and a 3070ti on it, so NOW I have a 7800x3d with a 4070ti and STILL the issue persists.

The lengths my isp has gone to in order to help me out with this are gigantic. They helped me a thousand times more than blizzard and they have 50,000 customers to deal with.

4 Likes

I second every word; the only difference is the processor, as I went for the 5800X3D. There was a massive post about stuttering since the release of DF that I think is related to this issue. I tried every solution I could find and create, from BIOS updates and settings to spell queue commands to different OS versions—nothing worked. The funny part is that I still remember logging in for the first time in the 10.0 pre-patch and instantly noticing that something was very wrong. I thought, “It’s just the pre-patch; they will fix it.” Oh boy, I was very wrong. I really miss playing WoW smoothly.

3 Likes

Yepp, could feel it instantly as well the 10.0 dropped with the same sentiment.

The competent people working at Blizzard have all left, this is the game now. Fantastic.

Same issue, made a similar topic. Blizzard doesn’t seem to have made an announcement on this. Maybe the only way to get attention is to get some big WoW content creator to mention it

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Same especially on the dummies. I get what feels like a 2 second(2000ms) delay at random intervals. Noticed since november of 22 after DF.

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Exactly this.
The new engine updates have killed the game.

The world/home latency readings are not instantaneous values. They are running averages taken over some time period like 10-20 seconds. What’s likely happening is ping jitter, packet loss or buffer bloat between your PC and the WoW server. Sometimes, it’s the actual server being bogged down.

Most major ISPs and backbones hate gaming traffic(small+frequent packets) and put the traffic in a lower priority queue (similar to QoS on a router). They also dislike VPN traffic and tend to shove it in lower priority queues as well, if they sense it’s game related traffic due to the small but frequent packet rates.

If the camera is still moving, meaning the game client is still rendering and functioning normally, it’s likely not the “engine updates.”

This has nothing to do with network latency at all.
It can specifically be tracked down to when Dragonflight launched. Please don’t downplay the issue.

Yep, but it’s actually like one to three minutes.

Big disagree. I have a lower end system than you and I’m not running into this at all.

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There is nothing to disagree with. People got used to it, which is a shame.

There was a big thread on reddit when DF launched about it as well.

It is clearly visible in official clips on youtube, on streams etc.

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Link the clips you’re referring to, going to look at them on a few different systems with various CPU and GPU combinations.

Check literally any clip with a lot of combat involved since 10.0

Could also try it yourself and see the difference if you find an older version of the client somewhere.

So you want me to click every single WoW video online since 10.0 instead of just linking me ones where you verified it’s happening? Nah.

My team has been releasing WoW content on YouTube since 2012 and we don’t have an example of what you’re talking about. And yes, we have tons of gameplay footage.

This has been driving me nuts the last few days. Everything else on my network is perfectly fine. Zero issues streaming or doing anything else. I can even be running ping tests while playing, and ping never jumps. However, wow lags out and stalls. If i alt f4 and relaunch, its right back working again like nothing happened.

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1 1 ms 1 ms 2 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 16 ms 112 ms 16 ms int-0-4-0-2.dtr01fntnmi.netops.chartercom [96.34.43.29]
4 83 ms 17 ms 48 ms lag-333.dtr02fntnmi.netops.chartercom [96.34.41.33]
5 54 ms 20 ms 66 ms lag-278.crr02aldlmi.netops.chartercom [96.34.32.138]
6 21 ms 25 ms 23 ms lag-21.crr01aldlmi.netops.chartercom [96.34.32.34]
7 27 ms 31 ms 22 ms lag-807-10.bbr01aldlmi.netops.chartercom [96.34.2.8]
8 26 ms 29 ms 29 ms lag-805.bbr01chcgil.netops.chartercom [96.34.0.139]
9 29 ms 26 ms 29 ms lag-803.prr02chcgil.netops.chartercom [96.34.3.114]
10 25 ms 73 ms 28 ms syn-096-034-152-043.inf.spectrumcom [96.34.152.43]
11 2527 ms 2199 ms 1538 ms ae1-br02-eqch2.as57976net [137.221.69.35]
12 30 ms 22 ms 26 ms et-0-0-1-pe02-evch1.as57976net [137.221.69.85]
13 28 ms 27 ms 30 ms 137.221.67.65
14 29 ms 24 ms 27 ms 24.105.62.129

heres a tracert to the chicago server… looks great till its hits blizzards side… then 3 second delay.

If there was a full three-second delay, you wouldn’t be able to login. But since the latency disappears on every node after that, we know the node in question is ignoring this test (ICMP).

Every video? How about you just look around on some with an eye for detail if you are interested at all.

Cool, every person I know who plays are experiencing the same so. Lucky you guys…