Yesterday when I logged out, my ping was around 155ms as per usual. I’m in Sydney Australia, playing on US realm Uther, it was always a West Coast realm. I’ve been playing on it since day 1.
After last nights maintenance, of which my server I do not believe was on the list of connected realm transfers, well the ping is now through the roof. MTR/Tracert pings no longer match US West Realms, however they do match the Chicago datacenter.
Once the traffic hits Blizzards network too, it all goes to hell. The game is unplayable, Ping is fluctuating wildly. It looks as if the server was moved with no warning?
All my toons are on this server, to move them would cost me a tonne of money. Am I wrong about this, or has my ISP just stuffed up routing again? If I am correct is this really how Blizzard is now treating long term customers?
Not very impressed, kind of need some answers please. Thanks
Oh I know, I’m a network admin myself, I’m just trying to determine if my ISP and routing is at fault or if something was changed during last nights maintenance window. Friends are seeing different results. Just trying to determine what the hell is actually going on before I post in the Tech support forum.
Blizzard does not own the internet, but when someone has decent ping times when doing solo content, joins a queue for dungeons or battle grounds and suddenly their latency spikes, it is likely how Blizzard is putting the group together.
As an example I normally sit at ~27ms, during random dungeons I regularly see latency spikes in the 300-400ms range and sit at ~200ms. If I run the same dungeon comprised of a group entirely from my realm the latency stays around ~27ms.
What is likely happening is that you are being shunted to another data center for the dungeon or battleground. Now I do not know how Blizzard has their servers setup or how they have their interconnections configured. I imagine with the wild latency fluctuations they likely have some type of VPN mesh between their data centers that puts you at the mercy of the internet. A better but far more expensive solution would be to pay for dedicated Point to Point links between their data centers.
Fully aware of this. Wasn’t in another group. Just connected to my realm. It’s apparently happening to other Australians right now when joining US groups, so it’s most likely an International route, seems to be has finally settled back down in the last 30 minutes, haven’t been in a group once.