Steps to Reproduce:
- Easiest to do with a Druid Flight Form
- Switch to Flight Form and hit Space Bar over and over.
- Land, swap out of Flight Form.
- Repeat steps 2 - 3 indefinitely.
I have about a 1 - 5% repro chance for this disconnecting me. I’m playing in the US while traveling in Europe so I think Latency increases the chance to hit this issue.
My Hypothesis of what is going on:
- WoW trusts the Client for positional simulation and sends updates to the server via Unreliable Channel
- WoW sends ability button presses/requests via a separate reliable channel
- WoW has rudimentary verification of Client-simulated positions on the server that disconnect players if they do something sketchy like move too fast
- WoW expects a “I started Flying” request to arrive on the server before it starts accepting your flying movements/increased speed.
- If something happens and the packet for “I started flying” request gets delayed, WoW kicks you thinking you started doing something naughty.
A possible solution would be to not trust the Client’s position for a few frames to see if the “I Started Flying” request comes in late and if it does start accepting or if it doesn’t kick like you intended. This won’t solve every case because having a temporal dependency between two independent channel is bad software design, but it should mitigate about 99.9% of cases while you work out a proper solution.
I’m about 60% certain this is the issue, but I don’t work with you guys so I don’t know.
6 Likes
Would be wonderful if this was fixed.
im in agreement with this, we have known for years that landing wrong with a glider can cause you to DC. the idea has always been that the server didn’t get the message your character landed and thinks its going below the ground and boots you. essentially anytime there is a mismatch between the client and server on player location the player is booted.
This happens a ton with pet battling too, when the camera swings around really fast. Not sure if it could be the same issue, but it does DC the exact same way, freezes on a frame right before a DC back to main screen.
My druid is forever in steady flight because of how often I DC taking off.
Yeah this affects me multiple times a day. But what finally got me to make this post was when it disconnected me right after accepted a Rated Battleground, which gave me a Deserter Debuff and an Automatic Loss all because I dared to fly after accepting.
Jeez that really sucks. I feel like there needs to be a grace period after DCing to get back in before you get punished for things like that.
Yeah I stopped using skyriding because it just DCed me constantly. Or god forbid I accidentally hit water, going from the water travel form to the flying form also insta DCs.
I did the fishing derby in steady because I did it in skyriding once and lost the buff when I DC’d woo fun.
Its been so frustrating that skyriding has been pushed as the best way to fly but all I see is the loading screen whenever I try it 
And there have been dozens and dozens of threads about it but nothing has changed. I just get told that its “working as intended” to stop cheaters and my internet is too fast or something. Its very very frustrating.
Are you playing with high latency from your server?
This has been affecting me more than before while I play on US-West servers from central Europe (there for vacation).
My MS is usually around 50-60
Hmmm, thats pretty low. I wonder if your connection has high packet loss. Are you on Wifi or have you ever tested your connection for packet loss?
flying backwards while skyriding also causes a DC
I’ve never been disconnected on my druid while taking off in flight form, but I also use the actual ability Skyward Ascent’s hotkey (2, in my case) instead of space bar. The issue has to be tied to the act of jumping, since it is ultimately the trigger for Skyward Ascent if on any skyriding mount or form. Those experiencing the issue will probably see it vanish by using the hotkey instead until a fix is made. This is actually supported by your hypothesis in the OP, since the server doesn’t have to wait for any trusted client information to cast Skyward Ascent by itself, but it does have to expect the jump actions that convert to it if those are used instead.
Naturally this won’t solve the “I landed weird in terrain” disconnects, which I’ve sometimes had happen when landing too quickly after a takeoff.