Latency on WoW

[Modinstaller]

Hi guys.

I've been having this weird latency on WoW official servers - ever since I've switched from private servers. Thing is, private servers were just fine, and I tested a few days ago, they still are : I don't notice any delay. Also, my connection is and always has been just fine.

First things first, what kind of latency am I talking about : picture oscillations ... that's my ping. It just jumps all the time. I cast an ability, it's instant - perfect. I cast it again, 400 ms delay. I cast it, 300 ms delay. Cast, 200 ms delay. Cast, 400 ms. Cast, instant again. It appears to be random, and I've tested at different times of the day, it's always the same. And it isn't shown by the in-game ping display, which sits happily at 40 ms all the time.

After having contacted blizz about it, I ended up with a bunch of generic in-game solutions which didn't work, and a pathping (sorry, it's in french). Blizz said "your pathping stops at a proxad.net node, so it's proxad.net, which, funny enough, is your ISP, so contact them".

Afterwards, someone else told me that, actually, the last adress (amsterdam-9k-1-be1004.intf.routers.proxad.net) is not faulty, it's the jump after that which doesn't respond to the pathping, and that one's not my ISP, and it could even just not want to respond but work fine nonetheless. Is this true ?

But I didn't know better so I contacted my ISP and was left with nothing but "we can't do anything about it". Not even answers to my question, or some sort of assistance or advices on how I could fix this myself, they either didn't care enough, or weren't competent enough.

Since then I have also tried using a free VPN (TunnelBear) to check if it changed anything : it didn't. I've been tunnelvisioning on the pathping since it was the first issue that was brought up by the Blizz support, but doesn't the fact that using a VPN changes nothing tell us that the route my connection takes has nothing to do with my latency problem ?

Being a novice in network matters, I do not know where I stand. I seek your wisdom.
Is the fact that my pathping attempts fail an indicator of anything ?
Is my ISP to blame for anything, and whether it is or isn't, could it help in any kind of way ?
Could Blizzard do anything about it ?
Could I do anything about it myself without having to rely on another customer support ?
What does the fact that a VPN changes nothing tell us ?
Would switching ISP likely solve it ?
Would acquiring a fiber connection make this problem irrelevant ?

Hope you have a lot to tell me, because my ears are wide open.

Also thanks for your time

 

[Frick]

First things first, welcome and good first post. Second, where do you live? Because this can be crucial. It definitely looks like the issues arrise beyond your last ISP hop, and you might very well have to pass that hop even if you're connected to a VPN. BTW, you can do a pathping while connected to the VPN and see where the problems arise.

Anyway. Others with more experience than me might now more, but what I would do is run a traceroute repeat to 185.60.112.157. Download WinMTR and let it hang around in the background.

 

[Jetster]

How are you connected? Modem/router/wireless

 

[Modinstaller]

I live in France, my ISP's called Free. Here's the pathping with TunnelBear on : http://pastebin.com/U5Yw6ZAA

I'm connected to my modem/router (it's combined, it's called a "Freebox") by an ethernet cable.

I downloaded WinMTR and let it run for a few minutes behind the VPN. I'll do that for a while with no VPN.

http://i.imgur.com/47zaD37.png

 

[flmatter]

what servers are you trying to play on? how populated are is your world? what is the speed of you isp plan? Can you fill out your system specs for everyone to see and what resolution(quality) are you trying to run WoW on? It could be a network issue or a computer problem.

 

[Modinstaller]

I play on european servers. (the ip I'm trying to pathping is what was written on a blizzard support page regarding pathping, it's listed for most of their games' european servers https://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/718)

The realm I'm playing on has a low population, several of my friends on the same realm tell me they have 0 connection problems (and they were playing with me on the private server on which none of us had any problems before, so we have a sort of point of reference).
The lag happens anywhere, whether it's in instances or in crowded zones.

My isp's advertised speed is around 20 Mbps iirc, can't find any specifics. I linked a speedtest in my first post, but I'll link it again : http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5828443883
I'm fine with this speed, never needed more. Fiber would be amazing but this has always been enough.

I run WoW in high quality (everything set to ultra and 1920*1080) by default but since the game runs differently from one in-game zone to another I tend to change a few key settings to lower the load, especially in raids where I have everything set to lowest.
Note that I did try lowering everything and testing afterwards. Whether I'm watching a slideshow or I'm sitting at 120 fps, the lag is there ... sometimes. And sometimes it's not. Like I said, it oscillates rapidly.

My system specs : http://www.driverscloud.com/en/conf...ry-gigabyte-technology-co-ltd-ga-78lmt-s2p-xx
I did not find any specific place to put this on my profile - not sure if I'm supposed to make a profile post.

An update on WinMTR : it shows nothing special. 0 packet loss on any proxad.net node, and then nothing. So, it's what the pathping says : I get a response from every node up to a point where nothing gets sent back.
Also, I have attempted using this http://www.leatrix.com/leatrix-latency-fix, but it changed nothing.

Edit : take that back, Leatrix Latency Fix did make it better. It's far from perfect, but definitely better.

 

[erocker]

I've encountered this kind of issue before with a bad "node". Only thing I could do was contact my ISP and let them know where the bad hop is through a traceroute. Then I just had to wait.

Sorry if its been mentioned, but in the mean-time try a different DNS (google for example) and if possible try a different server. Not much you can really do on your end unfortunately.

 

[Modinstaller]

I have been using Google's DNS for a while now, since some adresses were blocked by my country. I'll try switching back.

When I contacted my ISP, the three persons I talked to just basically told me they couldn't do anything. They didn't even want to hear what I had to say, they listened cause they had to and kept repeating "everything is fine on our end, there's nothing we can do". I'm going to try again soon.

 

[erocker]

Does your modem/router assign two different IP's? If so, the first hop would be the modem portion and the second would be the router. Which is where the trouble seems to be originating.

If not, then it's still out of your control. :/

 

[flmatter]

it looks to be an adsl line. problem could be in house/building with the phone line or as @erocker pointed out as well

 

[Modinstaller]

I tried switching back to the default DNS, it didn't change anything.

Does your modem/router assign two different IP's? If so, the first hop would be the modem portion and the second would be the router. Which is where the trouble seems to be originating.

If not, then it's still out of your control. :/

What do you mean two different IPs ? I never noticed having two different IP adresses. I do have a dhcp adress (192.168...) and can also change it through my router's interface, but this just concerns my local network doesn't it ?

What it says here on my ISP's website is that my line is connected to an ADSL2+ compatible DSLAM. Not sure if that's any help to you.

Edit :
Just tested WTFast. Much amaze. It makes my ping go from 30 ms to 8 ms (from the in-game ping display).

BUT ... my ping is still jittery, and I'm still suffering from the exact same latency problems.

 

[flmatter]

Is WoW the only game you play? Does it do it on other games? Download World of Tanks or Path of Exile and try it on those. Both are free and have ping displayed while playing. Your box looks to be an all in 1 type, one side for internet and the other for tv/cable so there may be 2 ip's(quick google of freebox). Also if you have old or questionable phone lines in your house/building that could be another. A bad crimp somewhere on a line or a bad cable, bad wall connector...... Ask if your isp to get a new box. Here in Alaska I change out my modem every year just because they don't ask questions when I bring it in and swap out.

have you tried updating your motherboard lan drivers?

 

[JL87]

I can't offer any advice on the network side, but from reading your first post you don't mention if you are running any addons in game.

Some addons can cause major latency issues in WoW, especially if they aren't updated for the latest patches. Even so some may still cause issues. A simple test would be to disable all of them and try the game to see if that helps.

If it does, then try adding them back one by one until the problem presents itself again.

Just something to try that is easy enough to do while you try to figure out if it's a routing issue or not!

Good luck!

 

[Modinstaller]

@flmatter This is not a general problem, like stated in my first post my connection has always been fine, this is one the biggest connection issues I've ever had with my ISP. The only other one as big as this was with youtube, during a period when apparently my ISP had disagreements with Google, and youtube was loading slowly for all of us subscribers (it's since been fixed).

I have played all kinds of online games and never had any problems. I was playing on private servers before, and when switching back to retail I was astonished by how slow everything was (partly because of changes that happened in the game, partly because of this latency problem). Ironic anecdote : I remembered retail from my early WoW days as the holy grail regarding latency - I never could find the same feeling of everything being so responsive in private servers ... how ironic that the situation is now reversed. To be sure, I logged back on my old private server a few days ago, and the difference was just day and night, it really was. Just to make sure, I played a game just an hour ago on League of Legends and it showed 27 ms all game. Beyond what was displayed, I did not observe any kind of latency spikes like the ones I have on WoW's official servers. The surprising thing is that while I have these latency spikes, the ping indicator displays a constant 30 ms (8 ms with WTFast).

Judging from all this, I'm not convinced that the problem could be coming from my cables / equipment, or then it'd be really weird (and I know it can be sometimes). As a last resort solution, I'll make sure to get a new router, if I can.

Regarding lan drivers, I visited gigabyte's website and only found older drivers than the ones I have. I nonetheless installed them, thinking that if there was any trouble I could always switch back. But after installing them, nothing changed.

@JL87 Yes, that's something the Blizzard support asked me to do, and it didn't help. I double checked right now and the issue was still present. I also tried fiddling with options with no result.

 

[Papahyooie]

I remember, at least in the old days of WoW private servers that you had to actually block some part of blizzard's communication in your firewall. I have no idea if that is the case now because I haven't played WoW (private servers or official) for several years. However, it might be worthwhile to look into.

To put it more broadly: What modifications did you have to make to get WoW on private server working? And as a follow on, are you sure they are ALL undone?