Problem
When the game has been idle for a bit (no mouse, keyboard input) – e.g. when auto-running or on a flight path – there will be visible stutter at random times and for random durations. It’s as if the entire scene gets stuck on super glue for a moment and then unsticks. Note that there is no corresponding audio stutter.
This is for Classic only, I do not and will not ever be playing retail and do not or ever will have the retail client installed.
Environment
2019 (May) MacBook Pro 15", all specs maxed except for storage (so, 32GB RAM, core i9 2.4GHz, Radeon Pro Vega 20, etc) – MacBookPro15,3
Mojave 10.14.6
We also use a Razer eGPU enclosure with a Radeon VII over Thunderbolt3, but this issue occurs on all graphics chips on this system internal and external.
Network is hard-wired for this computer. 400+ Mbps down and 40+ up from my cable provider.
Fun Facts
This is not specific to any realm or geolocation: reproducible on any realm. My main realm is Kurinnaxx which is lower-pop than many of the others.
Have been over the MacOS performance tuning guide, makes no difference.
Have resized my 1TB APFS Container to create a journaled HFS+ partition just for Blizzard stuff (WoW Classic and Diablo III), and subsequently deleted the WoW classic data to allow it to re-download – makes no difference.
I play a lot of Diablo III and this issue has never been seen in that game even when the the game was on APFS
Occurs on all graphics settings, both slider at 1 and slider at 10.
Occurs with or without the eGPU connected so we can rule that out entirely.
Occurs in Fullscreen, windowed fullscreen, or window mode – so we can rule that out entirely.
Occurs at any resolution but I play at monitor’s native 1440p
The stutter is random and for random durations. On rare occasions it causes a beachball.
Seriously, thanks for replying. I’ve been trying to debug this for a while now and I’m coming up empty as far as what the root-cause could be. Would be great if Blizz could chime in on this.
The Channeling Lag thread is basically this same problem. Who is your internet provider.
FWIW, I have two machines side by side, the Mac gets this stutter lag, I have to A/D just to keep it updating in combat or resource gathering, but the Win10 machine does not experience it at all; hence I doubt its provider related.
No change I can make within the client matters, I tried all resolutions, launching in low resolution, no addons, IPV6 support, no sound, etc. Heck I have to rely on sound to know when some events are happening because unless I am constantly giving it input I may not see the action occur on screen.
Thanks for the input, no pun intended haha. Yeah it’s not specific to channeling; this happens no matter what the character is doing. The only requirement seems to be that there is no input for a little while via keyboard or mouse. To me this looks like a scheduling anomaly (CPU scheduling) or similar along these lines; like MacOS is saying “OK the user hasn’t touched this program for a little bit, let’s reduce it’s priority a bit” or some stuff like this. I don’t think it’s graphics related at all with it being an old game and the Vega is more than capable. To reiterate, this happens on graphics level 1 and low resolutions. I’m pretty sure my watch has enough horsepower to run the game on those settings.
it is similar to the channeling lag thread, which started out with that title but expanded into others basically saying, unless they have their character do anything the game stutters, namely animations do not play.
now you are the first to state it might be the MacOS lowering the priority but what i want to find is a good network utility to see if the packets are even coming back from blizzard
Running Windows on a Macbook Pro, having the same exact issues, except for me, mine will just randomly start happening even when there is mouse and keyboard input happening. Nothing has worked so far to stop the stuttering/rubberbanding.
I have noticed it happens in certain areas the most, and it starts to happen as soon as I enter a new area. For example, it doesn’t happen in Astranaar, but as soon as I walk outside of Astranaar and I’m now in Ashenvale, i start to rubberband and lag. Ashenvale, Wetlands, and Dun Morogh are the areas where I’ve noticed it happens the worst.
I’ve noticed my FPS isn’t dropping either. Many friends have tried to help me with no luck. It’s getingg extremely frustrating, and this is literally the only thread I have found where someone is describing the same exact issue I’m having.
Just pinging this thread one more time, would be great if Blizz could chime in.
I’m actually the OP with the same toon but a different name (I had deleted the toon and restored it some weeks later, with a forced name change). Anyway my inquiry now at this point is a simple one: Is this behavior the same or different on Catalina? I’m still running Mojave (10.14.6). I’m intending to move to Catalina eventually, probably once 10.15.3 drops – but curious to know if folks are having better luck with it.
Hey, Paddles! I’m not aware of any known issues with Mac and stuttering in WoW Classic at the moment or with Mojave in particular. With Catalina, there were some reports of where disabling the graphics switching seemed to have helped with some input lag, which is still a little bit different than the issue you’re running into.
The channelling thread did end up being the MTU size being the issue, where changing the MTU size from 1500 to 1420 seemed to have helped a few users. While the issue definitely sounds different, it’s worth a try with this issue happening for some time now.
I’m also a bit curious to this call out.
Have resized my 1TB APFS Container to create a journaled HFS+ partition.
If you install it to the APFS, does this help at all? World of WarCraft has been a bit sensitive to journaled/HFS partitions after some time since APFS was released.
If it does continue, could you contact our Technical Support team directly so that we can check on the system logs and work with you on this? Thanks for the report and hopefully, working with us directly will yield a quick resolution to the issue
Oh, really? Thanks for bringing this up, Omegal! About a year ago, we did have some chaos with HFS+/APFS, which was strictly with fusion drives. Some cases were able to workaround this with SET worldPreloadNonCritical "0" in the config.wtf file, but from my knowledge, it should have been resolved some time ago on Mojave. Hopefully, it isn’t the situation, but it’s worth calling out in case it may be related to the partition in some way
I don’t remember where I saw the bit about APFS vs HFS+ partitions. I’m pretty sure it was among these forums but I can say that, for this issue, it didn’t make a difference.
I will try the MTU change also but it doesn’t look like a network thing to me either. If it were network I would expect to see the symptoms all the time, regardless of what’s going on in the game word. This problem manifest when there’s not a lot going on in the game and no input. It “feels” like a CPU scheduling quirk.
I play the game exclusively on an eGPU (this issue happens both with and without the eGPU connected as mentioned in OP). I have nonetheless disabled graphics switching on this laptop.
If none of these measures seem to affect the issue in a positive manner, I will likely be moving to Catalina over the next day or two. I’m still interested however if anyone has any remarks about WoW Classic behavior under Catalina specifically. Do you see any of these weird laggy/glitchy issues there?
EDIT: MTU change and graphics switching disablement made no difference.
At this point I’d be curious how your Catalina experiment goes. Catalina will have more recent drivers which may help resolve the issue, but it doesn’t seem like we have a lot of reports of this at the moment which is making this somewhat difficult to nail down to a core cause. It definitely could have something to do with how the game is using your hardware, though the big question is whether mac os or the game is driving this behavior since it appears to be due to the presumption that you’ve gone ‘idle.’
I’m experiencing this as well on a really well configured 15” MacBook Pro, nearly fully loaded.
If I am not using movement keys and just sitting to drink/eat/craft/gather — anything of the sort the game essentially gets frozen in time or seemingly deprioritized
That sounds like something I’ve been getting, something that doesn’t seem to lead to the freeze, or warn of it, or prevent it… When I’m moving around through the world I frequently stutter through it and sometimes I freeze and have to close out WoW. Now that I have a backup drive system set up I’m going to partition into Boot Camp and abandon the Mac client.
I let my subscription lapse due to RL agro but I re-subbed today. Franly, the behavior seems worse now than it did on my last update here. This is on a nearly-fully-loaded 15" 2019 MBP (around 4-grand USD) and the behavior has been there since day one. If Blizzard hasn’t gotten many reports of this then it may be simply folks are tolerant. The effect subtle and generally benign.
I’m inclined to think it is MacOS’ fault here. Of all the folks that replied to this thread, who’s running Classic on Catalina?
I just recently acquired another Mac (an MBA) that came pre-loaded with Catalina. I’m going to slap Classic on that thing and run it with my external GPU(*) and see how she fairs.
Blizzard, man – you guys could try to reproduce this in-house. Should be straightforward. One system with Mojave. Another with Catalina. Just log in, throw yourself on a long flight path. Don’t touch the keyboard, and see if the scene stutters randomly like it got stuck on superglue for a brief period lol.
** Yes my main system is on Mojave still. I primarily play on a eGPU over a TB3 connection but this happens even with the onboard MBP graphics as noted in the OP.
Classic seems more well-behaved for me on Catalina. Granted I’m on a different machine for this test – it’s a wimpy 2019 mid-tier MacBook Air that I acquired about 2 weeks ago. Small potatoes compared to my nearly-maxed-out MBP that, on Mojave, runs this game noticeably (literally) worse. I can’t say I’ve noticed any stuttering issues on this MBA machine outside of zoning into stuff and having stuff still loading into memory or whatever. Expected in a slow, weak-sauce machine like this (it’s a pathetic dual-core i5 with 8GB RAM which is undeniably pitiful specs for 2020). Reminder that I do use an eGPU (Radeon VII) to play the game and I am using the same config I use on my MBP (I installed the game fresh on the MBA but copied my configs, mods, etc over).
So, is everyone is this thread that is seeing this issue using Mojave? Anyone seeing the issue on Catalina? I’m inclined to do a clean install of Catalina on my MBP but I’m holding off on that for the time being because of work and logistics etc. thanks
Bumping this. Same issues. I have to constantly press A & D back and forth to keep my character moving at all times or the game just completely stops and lags out until I input something again.
We were trying to get some more info on operating systems this problem is on - which build of Mac OSX are you on right now? We’re not Quality Assurance ourselves so we lack all the hardware we’d need to test this on our end. All the macs I have direct access to ATM are on Mojave. If we need to send this to the bug report forums, we’d likely want to do that only after we’re sure it’s all happening on a single OS. That all said, there’s not a ton of reports of this. This thread is nearly 6 months old with only 19 posts, so I’m wondering if there’s anything else in common which might cause it.
