Wow Latency
Latency – Wowpedia – Your wiki guide to the World of Warcraft
Latency is the time it takes for your computer to communicate with the World of Warcraft server. A latency of 50ms means that it takes 50 milliseconds to send and receive a packet from the World of Warcraft server. For playing games online such as WoW, a low latency is desired as it means less communication time between control input and events happening on the player’s screen. A high latency can become a hindrance for proper gameplay. Things that could be experienced are delayed messaging, out of sync battles and difficulty of performing tasks in-game that are required to advance. The terms “Lag” and “Ping” are often used when players refer to their current latency status.
1 Latency Bar
2 What can affect latency
2. 1 Malware
2. 2 File-sharing software
3 4. 0. 6 Changes
4 References
Latency Bar
The Latency Bar measures the speed of your connection to the World of Warcraft server. A green bar means your connection is good. A yellow bar means you may experience intermittent delay, called lag. A red bar means your connection is poor and you will experience significant delay. [1]
The bar itself was eventually merged into the Game Menu button.
What can affect latency
World of Warcraft requires clients to connect to the Blizzard Servers to play the game. There are four possible breaking points in the transmission of the required communications, which are: the client’s computer, the client’s router, the client’s ISP and finally Blizzard’s Servers. In a network such as this, one faulty point causes the whole game experience to suffer. When trying to identify the cause of high latency, consider the following things:
The last time a piece of hardware was added to your computer.
The last time new software was installed on your computer.
The last time drivers have been updated on your computer.
The last time your router/modem has been reconfigured.
The last time a new patch has been installed for World of Warcraft.
The last time settings of the firewall were changed.
Any changes applied can cause devices to function slighly different than before, and as such, be the cause of elevated latency. Most likely, if problems ever do arise, something was done to alter the setup from how it worked before. The official World of Warcraft forums have a Technical Problem section where help can be found to more specifically pinpoint the cause and solve it.
Malware
Remember to keep the computer free from adware, spyware and other malware. These would fall under the category of new software. Since these are applied to a computer without notification or permission of the user, it is easy to overlook these as a possible cause of higher latency.
File-sharing software
Some ISPs punish users of file sharing software by lowering the quality of their connections, which can increase latency. However, this usually stops promptly once the software stops running. With Bell Canada at least, one can use the same connection for both a BitTorrent client and WoW, but not both at the same time.
4. 6 Changes
In 4. 6 Blizzard changed the way the latency is displayed. There is now a ‘home’ and a ‘world’ latency. The official explanation is the following.
Home/World latency (updated) – 4. 6 | 2011-02-11 00:00 | BrianI
We have been seeing a lot of confusion regarding some of our recent changes to the User Interface, specifically in regard to the new in-game latency meters. With 4. 6, we have split the two separate connections the client forms to our game servers into two different ratings, labeled ‘Home’ and ‘World’.
The speculation regarding what these ratings mean has been very interesting and some of the guesses as to what the numbers actually refer to have been pretty imaginative. Some have speculated that ‘Home’ referred to your personal latency and ‘World’ was Blizzard’s latency. This is incorrect.
In essence, ‘Home’ refers to your connection to your realm server. This connection sends chat data, auction house stuff, guild chat and info, some addon data, and various other data. It is a pretty slim connection in terms of bandwidth requirements.
‘World’ is a reference to the connection to our servers that transmits all the other data… combat, data from the people around you (specs, gear, enchants, etc. ), NPCs, mobs, casting, professions, etc. Going into a highly populated zone (like a capital city) will drastically increase the amount of data being sent over this connection and will raise the reported latency.
Prior to 4. 6, the in-game latency monitor only showed ‘World’ latency, which caused a lot of confusion for people who had no lag while chatting, but couldn’t cast or interact with NPCs and ended up getting kicked offline. We hoped that including the latency meters for both connections would assist in clarifying this for everyone.
As is probably obvious based upon this information, the two connections are not used equally. There is a much larger amount of data being sent over the World connection, which is a good reason you may see disparities between the two times. If there is a large chunk of data ‘queued’ up on the server and waiting to be sent to your client, that ‘ping’ to the server is going to have to wait its turn in line, and the actual number returned will be much higher than the ‘Home’ connection.
“Well, great, ” you may say, “but what does that mean to me?! ”
Not much, maybe, but I wanted to focus on how local (or network) factors can (and will! ) affect these numbers.
Here are the most common causes of high pings/latency (on both Home and World):
Wireless
Packet loss
Almost-but-not-quite-broadband*
Addons (yes, those wonderful UI modifications)
Firewalls (some firewalls do interesting things to latency… try playing without it to see if it helps! )
Mis-configured or defective home routers (please temporarily bypass before anything else)
Quality of Service and Traffic Management Systems performing packet queuing of some sort.
Net link saturation (not necessarily your ISP, but somewhere between you and Blizzard)
*As of July 2010, the ‘official’ definition of Broadband Internet (per the FCC) is ‘4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream’. Anything lower than this is not ‘officially’ broadband.
Lowering video settings (especially view distance) has the added benefit of lowering the amount of data your connection is asked to convey, as well, so even that can be a valid troubleshooting step.
If your ‘Home’ connection latency is low and your ‘World’ connection latency is high, that frequently indicates that there is some sort of QoS congestion controls being applied to your internet connection, at either the micro (LAN) or macro (WAN) level. A common symptom would be that you would be able to chat, but not to cast.
If both connections report high latency, that means your connection to our servers, in general, is almost completely saturated, or ‘overflowing’. Without making any claims where that saturation lies, that seems to have been the most common case to date.
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References
^ Blizzard Entertainment. “Chapter 3”, World of Warcraft: Game Manual, 19.
World of Warcraft Latency Problems – Blizzard Support
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Fix: WOW World of Warcraft High Latency – Appuals.com
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed, release and distributed by Blizzard Entertainment (the same people behind classics such as Diablo and Starcraft and last year-s huge hit Overwatch). World of Warcraft is the fourth game of its kind, being set in the same fantasy Warcraft universe as its three predecessors. WoW, as it is commonly referred to, was released to the world back in 2004 and to this day remains one of the most successful online multiplayer games in existence, having gone through tons of changes since its an online game that requires a constant and stable connection to the internet, World of Warcraft is plagued by the same problems as other games of its kind, chief among them being high latency issues and frequent disconnections from WoW servers. In some cases, high latency and disconnects are server-side issues, meaning that they can only be fixed by WoW’s development team. To see whether or not WoW servers are running and fully operational, simply check this ever, high latency and frequent disconnect issues have client-side causes in most cases, and there’s a lot a player can do to get rid of these issues. The following are some of the most effective solutions and troubleshooting steps you can use to try and resolve high latency and frequent disconnection issues in World of Warcraft:Solution 1: Disable or uninstall any and all third-party security programsThird-party antivirus, antimalware and firewall applications can sometimes interfere with World of Warcraft’s connection to the internet, leading to problems such as high latency or frequent disconnections from the game’s servers. If a third-party security program is the cause of your sorrows, simply disable (or better yet, uninstall) any and all third-party security programs installed on your computer. Once that’s done, check to see whether or not the fix worked. If you would like to uninstall a third-party security program installed on your computer but don’t know how to do so, use this lution 2: Reset World of Warcraft’s User InterfaceIf World of Warcraft is currently running, close the desktop app, navigate to Options and select Show in vigate to the World of Warcraft folder in Explorer, and rename the Cache, Interface, and WTF folders to CacheOld, InterfaceOld, and WTFOldClose Explorer and launch World of Warcraft to have the changes take effect. Uninstall any and all add-on managers you have since they may be interfering with WoW, and then close the nfigure Windows to show hidden files and folders, and navigate to the following directory:C:\Users\(YOUR USERNAME)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Locate and right-click on the Cache, Interface, and WTF folders, click on Delete and confirm the action in the resulting Explorer and restart your the computer boots up, launch World of Warcraft. WoW’s UI will have now been reset, and you should no longer be experiencing any high latency or frequent disconnection lution 3: Make sure that your computer is up to dateAn outdated Operating System can often lead to connectivity issues in World of Warcraft, which is why you should make sure that your computer is up to date if you are suffering from high latency or frequent disconnection issues. To use this solution, you need to:Open the Start on on Update & the left pane of the window, click on Windows the right pane of the window, click on Check for Windows to check for updates, and it will proceed to automatically download and install any and all available updates for your lution 4: Optimize your internet connectionWireless connections can be pretty unstable, especially in terms of speed, which is why they are not at all recommended for playing online games. If you are using a wireless connection, see if you can switch to a wired there are any programs that consistently access the internet running in the background while you are playing WoW, the program(s) may be interfering with the game’s connection to the internet and its servers. When playing WoW, close any and all other programs that require a connection to the and power cycle your internet router/modem – simply unplug it from its power source, wait for 1-2 minutes, plug it back in and turn it on. Power cycling your router/modem can fix most connectivity issues, especially packet loss during data your DNS – open the Start Menu, search for “cmd”, right-click on the search result titled cmd and click on Run as administrator, type ipconfig /flushdns into the elevated Command Prompt and press Enter. You might be experiencing connectivity issues in WoW because your DNS is not configured correctly, and flushing it should fix your in-game network settings to see if that resolves the problem – while playing World of Warcraft, press ESC, click on System > Network, and check the Optimize Network for Speed option if you are using a high-speed internet connection, or uncheck it if you are using a low-speed internet you are using a satellite or cellular phone internet connection to play WoW, consider switching to a more stable lution 5: Update your network adapter’s driver softwarePress the Windows Logo key + R to open a Run Type into the Run dialog and press Enter to launch the Device the Device Manager, double-click on the Network adapters section to expand your computer’s network adapter under the Network adapters section, right-click on it and click on Update Driver Software… on Search automatically for updated driver software, and wait for Windows to conduct the Windows finds updated driver software for your computer’s network card, it will automatically download and install it. If that happens, launch WoW and check to see whether or not the problems have been resolved once the network adapter’s driver software has been lution 6: Uninstall (and then reinstall) your computer’s network adapterPress the Windows Logo key + R to open a Run Type into the Run dialog and press Enter to launch the Device the Device Manager, double-click on the Network adapters section to expand your computer’s network adapter under the Network adapters section, right-click on it and click on the Delete the driver software for this device option by checking the checkbox beside it, and then click on for the network adapter and its driver software to be completely the network adapter has been uninstalled, click on Action > Scan for hardware changes. When you do so, Windows will automatically detect and reinstall the network adapter and its for the network adapter and its drivers to be reinstalled, and then restart the computer. Check whether or not the problem has been fixed when the computer boots up.
Kevin is a dynamic and self-motivated information technology professional, with a Thorough knowledge of all facets pertaining to network infrastructure design, implementation and administration. Superior record of delivering simultaneous large-scale mission critical projects on time and under budget.
Frequently Asked Questions about wow latency
How do I fix my latency in WoW?
World of Warcraft Latency ProblemsReset your user interface to make sure your files and addons are not corrupted.Reset your network devices to make sure your router hasn’t become flooded with data.Release and renew your IP and flush your DNS to resolve any network conflicts.More items…
Why is WoW latency so high?
Third-party antivirus, antimalware and firewall applications can sometimes interfere with World of Warcraft’s connection to the internet, leading to problems such as high latency or frequent disconnections from the game’s servers.Jul 15, 2021
Is 112 ms latency good?
Typically, anything at 100ms is acceptable for gaming. However, the 20ms to 40ms range is considered optimal. So simply put, low latency is good for online gamers while high latency can present obstacles. How does your internet connection affect latency?Feb 24, 2020
