I am not tech savvy so i’ll try my best to explain.
I have two accounts, this issue is only affecting one. This issue only occurs through my wifi connection not mobile hotspot.
Throughout today WoW would get stuck on load screens, switching servers and connecting from the battlenet launcher. Initally started as a character load screen getting stuck entering dungeon. I have not been able to log onto that character since. I have tried the unstuck character help and it hasnt worked.
After failed attempts to connect/load etc. my wifi becomes unstable. Browser won’t load webpages, streaming quality goes down. This affects all devices (i.e. my family streaming netflix on their phone). Ping timed out on battlenet and my service provider but all other web sites ok.
When i try to reset the interface the game gets stuck on a black load screen and freezes up. If i leave it long enough the cineamatic runs and then infinite ‘connecting’ screen.
I have tried resetting router, resetting interface, flushing DNS, disabling add ons. Nothing worked so far. The only thing that helps is waiting but then the issue appears again randomly after some time i.e. i could be playing one or two toons fine then switch to another and it randomly starts having problems.
To recap, only affecting my main account when using wifi. Other account on wifi or my main using hotspot i have no issues. Only affecting some characters but may be infectious…started with one that i cant get back into and several others have the same starting symptoms appearing now.
To me it sounds more like whatever device that is running your wifi is simply periodically having issues. Too much of a bandwidth load is possible - multiple video streams while playing games. Could be that when it hits a certain load it starts to overheat and flakes out. Or it could just be having issues and every so often flakes out.
I contacted my ISP and we reset the connection on both ends. I have a strong connection speed according to speed test.
More updates
tried to reinstall but the download through the launcher is slow only getting to 4% in 4 hours
tried allowing battlenet and WoW as program exceptions through firewall
tried updating graphics card
tried connection without antivirus on
tried deleting/uninstalling all add ons
Problem is still persisting. What seems to work occasionally is letting it sit for 15 mins for it to calm down. I tend to get further through the connection process and even managed to log into a toon briefly last night. However if i load the original offending toon it seems to put me back at square one again.
Gave up and went to bed last night and when i logged on first thing this morning i couldnt even get the battlenet launcher to open.
I just want to reiterate i’m pretty ICT illiterate so I couldn’t answer your question. However I did run another speed test to check the jitter and i’m wondering if someone can help me interpret these results.
The test was run on cloudflare twice, the first test i did whilst the bnet launcher was re-downloading the game (at 5% btw), the second test was done with the launcher closed. There is no easy way to share the results so i’ll summarise.
Results of first test:
Network quality score
‘Video Streaming’ and ‘video chatting’ = both ‘average’
Online Gaming = poor
Second test:
Network quality score
Video Streaming and chatting = Good
Online Gaming = Average
Their website didn’t break down all the different metrics to say what was affecting these scores.
Comparing the difference:
UL, DL, latency and jitter DL, packet loss - negligible difference
Latency UL - 161 vs 33 ms
Jitter UL - 24 vs 3 ms
So clearly the issue is with UL, but what does that mean is happening practically?
Speedtests just see if you can download/upload quickly at one point in time. Connection quality is tested by running network tests that monitor the packets (info) sent to the server over a longer period of time.
You’ll need to run a WinMTR or PingPlotter to get real, actionable data for troubleshooting.
This issue tends to happen on some cheap consumer routers that can’t handle the traffic they’re being asked to handle. The only other thing it could be is something at the ISP’s end.
ISPs hate online video game traffic, due to them sending tons of small packets per second, so a lot of them put them in a lower queue than traffic for things like streaming(usually one of the top priorities). This puts you in danger of ping spikes, packet loss, abnormal jitter, etc.
The other angle is your router/modem or your line itself. If your line is going bad or you’ve got a splitter going bad, it can lower your SNR by a lot, which becomes much more apparent when you’re loading the signal with a lot of information. For example, on my DOCSIS 3.0 modem, all 8 downstream bonded channels are over 42 dB and all 4 upstream bonded channels are in the 48-50 dBmV range. My connection is always 100% rock solid on wired mode. If there’s something going wrong with a connection, it’s not from my end.
If those are good on your connection, then start checking router settings and maybe check to see if the unit itself is overheating. Check for firmware upgrades on the unit as well.
Just an update. I was on my fourth day of troubleshooting…almost certain it was my ISP or router as I hadnt attempted to open Wow for 24 hours and the issue was getting progressively worse and affecting video streaming.
I was on my phone for the third night in a row waiting in queue for tech support from my ISP and it just suddenly came good again. Nothing overtly fixed it…the service just started working the best i have ever seen.
So in conclusion since i see a lot of threads like this with no resolution. I think it was an issue with my ISP and something was fixed on their end unrelated to my complaining!
I see it was resolved, but did you try toggling either Network option in-game; IPv6 and optimizations?
I have IPv6 but WoW and only WoW as of this month doesn’t connect right if IPv6 is enabled in-game; I get long load times, and never saw IPv6 mentioned on the latency meter (only IPv4). If you had IPv6 enabled in-game I suspect some places in-game use it and others don’t, or that accounts are flagged in some way to prefer IPv6 or not.
The optimizations if I heard right disables TCP ACK in specific areas (dungeons, maybe etc?), but normally the ACKs are enabled; if this was an issue it would likely only show in dungeons/bgs and not in like Stormwind, but I’m not sure on the specifics.
My final suggestion would have been to factory-reset the cable modem so it for sure gets the latest config from your ISP. Mainly just nice to do every now and then.