Resolved: Feeling ill only from WoW (nausea, headache, eyestrain)

Support Bug Report
1

I’m not sure what changed, but something did. I’m also not sure that its a bug, but I don’t know where else to put this. I’ve been getting sick (nausea, headache, eyestrain) since the morning of 2/1, and only while playing WoW. I did m+ and world quests on the two days before that with no issues.

Today, I tried doing world quests at reset, got sick, logged off. Felt better, so I logged back in a few hours later, caught 13 fish, had to log off due to feeling horrible. I raided for three bosses in the evening, and felt ill the entire time. 4/15 raiders reported playing made them feel ill as well. All of them felt fine prior to raiding. (One reported feeling ill in Dazar’alor raid last week, and was fine in the rest of the game. This person reports that they now feel ill across the entire game, and not just in the raid.)

Typically, I only feel like this from depth effects, but it is off. (That was the first thing I checked.) I tried toggling it on to see what would happen, and it got significantly worse. Movement, especially on flight paths, makes it worse. But I did feel sick from standing still fishing.

I’m not having issues with other games, or visually intense videos. I feel better basically immediately after closing WoW.

A list of things I’ve tried:

  1. Turning off my addons. This actually made things worse, and it appears that my addons help reduce whatever it is that is making me sick. (Possibly by giving me more flat stationary things to focus on.)

  2. Toggling all graphics settings. I’ve tried turning my graphics all the way down, all the way up, and individually adjusting each setting. The “Depth Effects” setting is the only one that I can tell makes a difference, and I was already aware that I don’t respond well to it, so I always keep it off.

  3. Checked my graphics drivers. They are up to date.

I don’t really know what else I can possibly do to fix this, but it is severe enough to be a deal breaker if I can’t figure out what it is. Any ideas?

3 Likes
2

Motion sickness? Got a small fan on hand? Try using it and blowing some air around you. If this helps, talk with the doctor as it could be something hidden that is triggering motion sickness-like symptom

4

Please help, Blizz. Please help Best Drood. She puts up with the likes of me already. She doesn’t need more headaches.

Sincerely,

The DPS

1 Like
5

I’m sure some air couldn’t hurt. But given that four people in my guild are having issues (three are describing it as serious), its not very likely that we all suddenly sprouted medical conditions.

I’ll do a little more experimenting today with graphics settings since that’s the only thing I can think of.

6

I submitted a ticket on this matter. We’ll see what they say. Here’s the ticket I submitted:

This is more of a physical me problem than a computer issue, but I wasn’t sure where it should go. You don’t really have a category for “looking at our game makes you physically ill”, but here we are.

If you recall back to the Legion pre-patch, there was a fairly sizable group that had issues with a particular post effect, encapsulated somewhere in the “depth effects” setting. I was one of those people, and was one of probably several that independently discovered it was in “depth effects”. I promptly turned it off and continued playing.

Fast forward to Battle for Dazar’alor. I stepped into the new raid, and instantly my eyes hurt. As we killed bosses, I got a creeping, escalating headache, and nausea grew. Knowing there was a problem there (and that you guys like resetting graphics options with patches), I checked my “depth effects” several times during the raid. It was off. Just to be safe, I turned it on. That was way worse, so I turned it back off.

The raid night ended, my symptoms lessened a while after I logged off, and I was left with a very, very bad impression of Dazar’alor. The next day I logged in and started levelling my warlock, with no problems. That night was our second raid night, and we went into Dazar’alor. Instantly, I had the same issues. It was a miserable night.

Then our mythic+ nights rolled around, and I had a great time carrying my guildmates through m+. No issues whatsoever. Then it was Friday, the first of February. Something changed. Whatever the post effect in Dazar’alor was that was causing it, it was EVERYWHERE. I couldn’t get away from it except for logging off. I tried toggling every graphics option I could find, to no avail. It doesn’t seem to respect graphics options. Whereas before I could turn off “depth effects” and be fine, now I can’t.

Visually, I can’t tell a difference. But boy oh boy can I FEEL it. And it LASTS. I have to lie down for two hours after playing for half an hour, and the headache/eyestrain lasts for 24-36 hours after playing. So my question to you guys is: What did you do? What post effect existed in Dazar’alor that didn’t exist in the rest of the world, that you then added to the rest of the world on February 1? Because it makes the game unplayable for me. I’ve now missed two raid nights because it makes me physically sick to play your game. As a raid leader, that’s unacceptable. (Guild leadership is talking of suspending raids because I’m not the only one affected by this.)

I’d like some technical details on what the effect actually does, so that I can avoid it in the future. I’m a developer myself, so don’t hold back on the technical terms. I don’t notice any visual difference, it makes me sick, and it caused my PC to drop ~10-15 fps overall, so it doesn’t seem like it’s a good thing to me.

More than anything though, I just want to play your game (although I have my design quibbles, classes are awful, azerite is borked etc). My community will wither without a raid leader. So is there an option to turn this post effect off? If not, why on earth not?

I know it’s not a problem with games in general, or a medical issue with me. I can play ANY other game with no problem, be it shooters, mmos, strategy games, racing games, etc. Even StarCraft and Diablo are unaffected. It’s literally JUST WoW.

I get sick when looking at WoW, even when watching the world first race footage. I feel better when not looking at WoW. It’s pretty clear what the cause is, and this is new. Please tell me what you changed, and how to turn it off.

1 Like
7

I did experiment with limited success. Changing my graphics did not resolve the core issue, but I was successful at reducing the strain from “barf in 5 minutes” to “migraine in 2 hours.”

I did notice while staring at various floors, walls and roofs, that they are not flat when they should be flat. To my eyes, they appear weirdly 3D. I was unable to resolve the wierd 3D issue. The changes only reduced eye strain in other areas.

8

Still having issues. I’ve continued experimenting with various graphics settings with no success.

Plz revert whatever was changed. I want to play wow :sob:

9

May I suggest you guys post your OS and graphics cards? It might help track things down.

10

Nooooooooooooo
Blizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Heelllllllllllllllllllllllllp

12

Blizzard CS is saying “this doesn’t seem to be an issue specific to your computer, so there isn’t much else we can suggest. Hopefully whatever was added will be updated in the future to make raiding easier for you.”

Since logging into the game for ten seconds gives me a headache for 2 hours now, that’s not very useful, all things considered. Maybe it’s finally time to walk away from this game after a decade and a half. Doesn’t feel like they want me playing it.

13

Honestly, what a garbage response. I get that they’re just the frontline CS team and they don’t regularly receive those kind of updates from the devs — so it’s not really their fault — but it’s a crap answer for a real problem, and they need to escalate it. If multiple people are reporting it like this, it’s either unrelated simultaneous hysteria, or something changed in the code that they deemed “minor” enough to not warrant a patch note; I’m betting the latter.

I don’t often think or say this, but this issue really deserves a blue post, at least explaining what happened, even if they don’t yet have a proper timeframe on a fix or a toggle.

2 Likes
14

The update today (2/6) seems to have fixed whatever was wrong. Three of us that were having severe issues ran some dungeons tonight with no problems.

Thanks!

3 Likes
15

Whatever it was is definitely gone. Must have been an unintentional change?

1 Like