Moon Guard disconnection issues compendium

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1

Starting a new thread to compile data (because the main thread discussing this issue was started by someone from Stormrage. oops).

A trend of disconnects is emerging on the server US-Moon Guard, reported from a wide variety of geos including multiple countries. In this trend, the following has been reported (one-off reports have been excluded):
All: Disconnecting when ingame, minimum interval 30sec, maximum interval 30min, median interval 5-15min. Punted to the login/“Reconnect” screen in WoW.
All: Disconnects have been occurring for multiple weeks.
7 reports: Pressing “Log Out” while ingame may direct to a black character screen with no characters listed before disconnecting shortly after
7 reports: Issue occurs when connected to address 137.221.97.120, and does not occur on 137.221.96.152
7 reports: Issue is specific to Moon Guard, and does not occur on other servers
6 reports: Disconnect occurs abruptly, with no running-in-place beforehand
5 reports (https://pastebin.com/q8DLUaKn): No network connectivity interruptions to 137.221.105.2 occur in WinMTR leading up to or during these disconnects

The per-thread count of the below section is inaccurate, but the absolute count is correct, as of 2023/6/21. This won’t be fixed as the issue’s relevance to Moon Guard is pretty apparent by now.

Posts from unique posters indicating this issue from the past week that either indicate the issue occurring on Moon Guard, or are from posters on/having an alt on Moon Guard:
1-30: Disconnecting every 15-20 minutes
31: DC every 30 seconds on Retail
32: Frequent DC last two weeks - Dragonflight
33: Constantly getting DC
34: Constant DCs - #6 by Pleasecar-moon-guard
35: Disconecting way to much
36: Constantly disconnecting
37: Random DC's Over Past 30 days or so
38-58: Moon Guard disconnection issues compendium
59-60: Random DCing since diablo 4 got released

Edit to note: The below link is not relevant! To properly test connection to Moon Guard, WinMTR needs to happen to 137.221.105.2

A pastebin containing WinMTRs to 24.105.62.129: https://pastebin.com/xRH9Cic7

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Thank you for this thread, the majority of my guild and friend’s list is facing this issue on Moon Guard. Multiple PC’s, ISP’s, and Time-zones. This is not some isolated incident, the DC’s all started around the same time 2 weeks ago.

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thank you. I had no idea it wasn’t just me at first

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Hey there Fropessor,

First, thanks so much for gathering this information. We’ve investigated these reports–and while there aren’t any problems we’re aware of that would be causing players to disconnect in this manner–we certainly want to gather as much data and evidence as we can to determine whether a server-side issue is the cause.

It’s important to note that the frequency of these reports does not necessarily indicate a server-side issue due to the many variables to consider when troubleshooting disconnects. The problem could be isolated to your local game client, a third-party program, legitimate network issues, server issues, etc. Additionally, the number of reports is quite small when considering the population of Moon Guard.

In the WinMTR tests you’ve provided, there is evidence of instability before the connection reaches our servers in 3/5 tests. The only tests showing no issues are yours and Lüneth’s.

We’ll also want to rule out addons as a potential common variable–a corrupted addon can cause a variety of strange client behavior including disconnects. Here are the instructions to reset your User Interface. Once you’ve completed the steps, load the game and play for awhile to see if the disconnects return.

Note: This process will return your game client to the default interface in order to rebuild core game files. If you wish to keep any addons you play with, I recommend moving the ‘Interface’ folder to your desktop temporarily (the Interface folder from Step 6). Once you have completed the UI reset, you can then go in and move your addons over to the new ‘Interface’ folder one at a time to see if it was causing the issue.

If you are still experiencing persistent disconnects on Moon Guard and resetting your User Interface doesn’t help, we’ll need WinMTR tests that are run to the US West server (that’s where Moon Guard is hosted) while a disconnect occurs in-game: 137.221.105.2

Here are the full instructions for the WinMTR test for anyone just finding the thread:

WinMTR Test Instructions
  1. Download the tool from this page
  2. Enter the appropriate IP into the “Host” field: 137.221.105.2
  3. Start the test and play the game for at least 15 minutes. Make sure that a disconnect occurs while the WinMTR test is running.
  4. After recording data for minimum 5 minutes and a disconnect occurred, click Stop then click “export text” and save the WinMTR file in an easy to find location.
  5. Once you have that made, open the file. You’ll need to copy and paste the contents of the Text document into the post, and put four Tilde (~) marks above the WinMTR. It’ll look like this:
WinMTR goes here

If you have issues pasting here, please use Pastebin and post the link (ex: Pastebin (dot) com/123456).

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I hope it’s related to them turning sharding off on the RP servers again so the entire servers community can get back to playing the game as they originally intended when they joined the RP server in the first place.

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I have done this exact method last week and it didn’t solve anything, I’m on the Dalaran Server and now I’m seeing that this issue is spreading each week, and I have no clue how its an ISP issue when Warcraft Retail is the only application I have experiencing this issue, and I’ve downloaded and updated other apps 4 times each.

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Skelgarer,

I don’t want to be argumentative here, but compiling the WinMTRs run to 137.221.105.2 shows better results, not worse (unless we’re considering packet loss of 0.0011%-0.0018% as an automatic fail, which surely we’re not doing?): https://pastebin.com/UbkuJ0c3

The forums are not a commonly used medium. I’m not sure what n is expected before a systemic issue is considered, but would like to approach from a different angle. I’ve compiled all of the issue reports that indicate identical symptoms and do not have a character associated with Moon Guard in any way:

1-2: Disconnected 2 to 5 times an hour
3: Constant DCs
4: Disconnecting every 15-20 minutes (post 1)

This gives 28 reports from Moon Guard and 5 from off-server, for 85% of the issue reports coming from this server.

Update: 40 reports from MG and 4 from off-server (one reported resolved by a battle.net patch), for 91% of issue reports coming from this server.

In the most charitable read, an RP-related addon could be considered to cause this issue. However, of the 5 off-server reporting the issue, they are: US-Kel’thuzad, US-Terenas, US-Frostmourne, US-Stormrage, and an unknown WoW Classic server, none of which are RP servers. Additionally, the disconnects have been observed by both myself and others to occur at the character select screen (4 reports), before addons are loaded.

I have run multiple pcaps (available upon request but will not be uploaded to this forum for obvious reasons) and can reliably identify TCP retransmits occurring from local to 137.221.97.120 immediately before each disconnect. However, connectionless protocols such as ICMP (local → 137.221.97.120) or UDP (137.221.97.120 → local) continue working at this time. This explains why this issue is not reliably reproduced in WinMTR, and suggests that a TCP socket is shutting. This IP is not implicated in connecting to any other server that I have tested.

Marcrel: Your thread was excluded from scope as your issue symptoms are completely different.

Edit for clarity: 137.221.97.120 is denying ICMP. However, the route to 137.221.97.120 remains strong when this issue occurs. As stated before, UDP traffic to and from 137.221.97.120 continues functioning when this issue occurs.

Second edit: Corrected a miscount in issue reports.

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Checking in as another Moon Guard player with disconnection issues, not sure if it’s specific to that server but that’s where I’m at. Specifically my characters don’t seem to connect to the server properly and disconnect about 30 seconds after logging in. Usually fix it by logging in across several characters until one of them sticks and stays logged in. Then I can stay logged in without disconnects on any character. Not getting disconnects once I’m properly in the game.

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Problem seems to occur in US, EU, around different servers. I’m just curious of those who get random disconnects, does by any chance your electricity stopped at some point in your neighbourhood in the last 2 weeks?

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I posted my WinMTR on my thread Constantly getting DC. I have gone through your troubleshooting lists for this issue TWICE. Also, I been trying to ticket this for 2 days now but get an error “You can’t submit this ticket.
An error has occurred. This may be a temporary error, so please try again later.”

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I haven’t experienced any power disruptions recently, and this disconnection issue has followed me across two geos/two separate computers.

Given that your issue followed an electricity disruption and you mentioned in another thread that you’ve already ruled out router and cabling, you might want to try unplugging your ethernet cable then seeing if the same issue occurs on wifi, as well as testing if the same issue occurs while on VPN - it’s possible you’re actually experiencing a different issue than that described in this thread.

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Posted my Moon Guard MTR in another thread but do not use any RP related addons and still disconnect with addons disabled so I think that can be ruled out.

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When electricity is down, well, everything is down. When there is a low current then my graphics card gives me the middle finger, so that rules out electrical issue for me. Asking this because the disconnects happen in EU and US servers so thought maybe some solar flare erruptions or something (because the power grid in my whole neighbourhood and other ones in the city go crazy suddenly). At the end I guess it’s blizz being cheap, instead of buying more servers, let’s take some from other games and set them for Diablo IV. By the threads for Moon Guard realm can see from which rack they took the most. :smiley: Running m+ and people in the groups are disconnected constantly at random times, including me, so go tell me later it’s a client side issue.

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Me too! I’ve been getting disconnected 10x a day at least.

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Its still happening almost two weeks later, and lately it seems to be getting worse. I will be on a loading screen to get into the game and get booted back to log in, or I will be on character select and get booted. Worst is I will log off a character, get a black character connect screen, and then get booted.

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I ask about the wifi because when the power comes online after a power outage, there’s a power surge, which NICs are particularly susceptible to. The issue experienced here in this thread is going to look similar to network monitoring to a player-side issue, otherwise it would have already set off alarms on Blizzard equipment. The fact that you’re on a different server (and yes, confirmation bias is fully on my side) makes me want to ensure that you aren’t encountering a different issue with similar symptoms.

This is why it’s important to report and follow up on trends such as here, with 85% (now 86% due to the reports in this thread) of disconnection reports coming from the same realm. Trends can identify issues that slip past logs/monitoring.

I do believe that the timing of the release of Diablo 4 is coincidental to this issue, as Diablo is hosted via GCP while WoW is onprem.

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Ever since diablo 4 came out and the goblins effected sharding, the issue started. Only happens on moonguard.

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18

It happens on Wifi and cable. My issue isn’t as bad as yours in Moon Guard, I just get a soft disconnect to login screen and then reconnect from the button. Completely random, 2, 3 times in 5 hours, not severe as yours every 5, 10 minutes or directly from entering the world. Just throws me at random.

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My entire guild has also been dealing with this. In some cases, users would disconnect five to six times in under five minutes when their internet connection is otherwise quite stable. During roleplay events that took around 5 hours, we would have at LEAST five disconnects per hour.

Our connections are otherwise stable, and nothing has changed with our systems since prior to the update that began causing these issues. Between the severe upticks of disconnects and the sharding in major cities, it ain’t a good month to be a roleplayer.

Too many people are experiencing the issue for it to not be caused by the last update.

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I can’t complete quest chains. I can’t go more than 2-3 quests before I can’t interact with NPC’s anymore. I have to exit the game and relaunch. 90% of the time if I try to simply log out and back in to try and fix it, character select screen is mostly black. I can see the borders and dragonflight logo, but no characters. I can do world quests fine, as long as I don’t have to interact with NPCs. Also can’t type in any chat channels for long before it stops showing up.

I had a windows update I hadn’t done because it was optional. After I did it, I thought it fixed it but it really didn’t. I didn’t give it long enough to test out. My drivers are up to date and yesterday I finally broke down and uninstalled the game and the launcher. Made sure all files related to WoW were gone and rebooted before reinstalling. I tried the game with 0 addons installed, same issue still.

I am convinced this is a WoW side issue as my issue started a couple weeks ago, like everyone else here. Thank you for putting this together, guess we’ll just have to deal with it until someone gets around to rolling up their sleeves and figuring it out.

1 Like