The life of the laggy players

[darkbreaker]

I've been playing WoW since 2.4, and the lowest latency I ever got to was 700. I have in fact been playing for almost 3 years with the latency ranging from 1300 to 3000. For those of you wondering I live in Brazil, more specifically in Manaus city, capital of the Amazonas state. Unfortunatelly my city has the worst and most expensive internet connection in the whole country*. I've been trough 5 ISPs already and with none of them I was able to complete a 25-man raid or 40-man BG.

* according to a local newspaper.

-Quests at slow-motion
The Argent Tournament Grounds proved to be the worst place to quest ever if you have over 1200 latency, any mounted quest beyond the intial required to become a valliant is impossible to complete as the npcs pwns your head while you are stuck trying to charge a horse that is already out of range, same goes for the initial part of the Trial of Champion, but there you can just prentend you are doing something while being carried. :X
Same goes for bombardment quests, they are hard as hell to complete, and take 2 or more flies over to be able to finish, because when the bomb "spell" queue reaches the server the mobs are already out of range.

-Dungeons... because we too need epix :3
As long as you are not the healer or the tank dungeons are doable... unfortunatelly I leveled my pally all the way from 1 to 70 (and later 80) as protection, and dungeons were a big challenge, I had to guess what was going to happen before it happened in order to not wipe, like taunting mobs that in my screen were still attacking me or casting a interrupt somewhat before the boss/mob use a abillity (thnx God we have DBM) in order to interrupt at the right time. Because of that, multi-targetting tanking turned into something damn hard (while everyone bragged prot pallies were uber at this... I can't imagine me tanking as warrior then)

-Professions... what can go wrong here?
What can go wrong? I got one word for you... it starts with a F and ends with ISHING. Yeah... fishing, It is so annoyng when you click the bait a thosand times but the channeling continues to decrease and then "The fish got away" pops in the screen... /nerdrage

-Achievements, aspirine for your boredom
Achievements are one of the best thing to do while you're lagging, many of them just require time and patience. I frequently get myself doing some achievement like "Well Read", "World Explorer", "Loremaster" (cough.. parts of it.. I gave a break since cataclysm wiped all my progress in Kalimdor).

-Lawl, why you still play?
Well WoW is a very addictive game, and there are so many things to be done, quitting it is just not an option. While many things I listed here are from a negative perspective, a lot o funny things happened that I would never have the opportunity to see if I had a fast connection, I'll list some:

- If you are lagging when running from a mob/player and you die, your corpse continues walking as your computer is still sending your position to the server.
- When you have a huge lag spike you can dismount and still keep the speed bonus, even if you were flying you keep swimming in the air (i got lot of screenshots doing this). [Be aware, if your computer is not receving data but is sending, people around you may think you are using a Speed/Fly hack and report you]
- Lag spikes can also provide an opportunity to turn the camera find a good angle and take a screenshot during combat. (Which can create awesome images)

I should also thank my friends who logged in my account many times to take me out of crowded areas when I was getting chain-DC'd. (SW/Shat/Dal...)

tl;dr - I lag a lot, who else does? Share your stories.

[Heltoray]

I recently lag in raids during aoe(and aoe-healing)-heavy phases to the extend that it gives me 3 second-delays and sometimes it even disconnects me.
I've never had problems of that kind in wotlk, they definitely did a really bad job with traffic in cataclysm. So currently I'm not sure if I can continue raiding 25-mans like this. If it turns out to stay that way, I will definitely cancel my subscription as 10-man raiding is complete bullshit in my opinion and there is no way I could play WoW without hardcore raiding. Right now, the game does not have to offer very much anyway except of bad content and lot sof bugs.

I have 386k dsl with an effective upstream of only 9kb/s.

[Murderdoll]

Im in Australia and I play a US server (not that the Oceanic servers are actually located in Oceanic area's) and I play with on average 500-600 ms. As a shaman I am expected to be able to interupt majority of abilities and it can get very nerve racking when youre response time is so high. I agree that the ToC dailies were pretty difficult and the ToC 5 man with the Jousting was also a complete pain in the arse.

In Wrath I was my guilds main tank and fights with tank swap mechanics were also a little nerve wracking in places.

[ODDLAWL]

wow it looks like you really have a hard time :/ my boyfriend lags to sht during 25 mans but its just because his computer is a Triceratops (yep a dino), his connection is usually okay; if i had that amount of latency during a dungeon or raid I would probably destroy my computer and go cry in a corner, I get really pissed when my latency is over 300. I live in Mexico but connection here is great, (1000 better than comcast!!) and I always laugh at laggy players and say my Mexican internet is better Being a healer, landing my heals when I actually INTEND them to is good, but when they don't I rage internally, I can't even imagine HOW on earth you still play, props to you dude!

-I do love lagging during huge incoming aoe damage during a raid, casting a Prayer of Healing and standing there casting said prayer for about 10 seconds, when everything goes back to moving, I'm dead

[Rivin]

For a while my normal latency was in the 2500-3500ms range. I spent most of my time leveling new characters, and never did dungeons, because I knew how fail my performance would be.

[BoomChickn]

Used to run 70-80 ms, loved it, router went to shit, got a new one and it only runs at 200-300. I can not imagine how you cope with anything higher than 700...my hat is off to you.

[JShepherd87]

My connection speed is awesome. Usually just under 100ms. However, since 4.0.1, I disconnect about every 30mins average; sometimes not for 2 hours, sometimes twice back to back. Didn't used to disconnect at all. I keep thinking it's gonna get better for me in the next patch, but I think I'm just kidding myself by now.

Anyone else get this?

[Rivin]

My connection speed is awesome. Usually just under 100ms. However, since 4.0.1, I disconnect about every 30mins average; sometimes not for 2 hours, sometimes twice back to back. Didn't used to disconnect at all. I keep thinking it's gonna get better for me in the next patch, but I think I'm just kidding myself by now.

Anyone else get this?

Are you getting disconnected from all internet services (browser, messenger, etc.) or just WoW? Personally I've never used an internet service that didn't disconnect frequently, so I'd always blame my ISP first, but if it's only WoW you might contact Blizzard Support and see what they say.

[Chiphoof]

My girl and I recently moved to the country, and with that came a drastic change in our internet service. We used to have as-fast-as-you-can-buy cable internet, and now we're using this strange 'portable internet' service that most companies seem to pretend doesn't even exist. No, it's not 3G. No, it's not satellite. It's wireless and requires a special modem and the ability to get line of sight to the signal tower - it's also the only internet we could get out here, aside from 3G or dial-up.

The most frustrating part about this particular internet service is the variability. When it's good, it's good - usually between 50-80ms, no problem in 10 or 25-mans. But when it's bad... well, it spikes up to 2k+ and things get interesting. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any discernible pattern to these changes, and our service provider has no idea either. During Wrath it was just an annoyance, but I'm sure you can imagine just how inconvenient it is to have my lag spike up right after my 30min heroic queue has finally popped. I'd love to get back into tanking or try out healing, but there's no point taking on that much in-game responsibility when I could lag out on a moment's notice. :/

[Rivin]

My girl and I recently moved to the country, and with that came a drastic change in our internet service. We used to have as-fast-as-you-can-buy cable internet, and now we're using this strange 'portable internet' service that most companies seem to pretend doesn't even exist. No, it's not 3G. No, it's not satellite. It's wireless and requires a special modem and the ability to get line of sight to the signal tower - it's also the only internet we could get out here, aside from 3G or dial-up.

The most frustrating part about this particular internet service is the variability. When it's good, it's good - usually between 50-80ms, no problem in 10 or 25-mans. But when it's bad... well, it spikes up to 2k+ and things get interesting. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any discernible pattern to these changes, and our service provider has no idea either. During Wrath it was just an annoyance, but I'm sure you can imagine just how inconvenient it is to have my lag spike up right after my 30min heroic queue has finally popped. I'd love to get back into tanking or try out healing, but there's no point taking on that much in-game responsibility when I could lag out on a moment's notice. :/

Are you using Clear/Clearwire? Sounds like the same thing I use. I feel your pain.

[Canaa]

Clear is at least not limited by things like LoS - but it is terribly aggravating to play with, at least for games like WoW or CoD. I abhor sending a check to Comcast every month, but sadly their service is lightyears better than what Clear can provide for me at the moment, so I swallow that hateful piece of me that would rather send Comcast a bomb in the mail, and give them my money instead. I will not compromise on my ISP's performance, even if it requires compromising on my general moral principles.

[darkbreaker]

(...)
Personally I've never used an internet service that didn't disconnect frequently, so I'd always blame my ISP first, but if it's only WoW you might contact Blizzard Support and see what they say.

I guess we are on the same boat :P

--
As my city is going to host some games in the 2014 FIFA World Cup (soccer) they will be required to provide an affordable high speed internet connection, this month one ISP finished upgrading their equipment and and are "ready for 2014", they got 1 Mbit connection for R$69,90 (U$41) wich is a great advance and will force other companies to reduce their prices. (the current ones cost almost U$200 and are very unstable). That said I believe I'll be able to play BGs very soon.. yay.

[Bumbaclot]

I have an average latency of 400 - 800ms with frequent peaks of 1.2k ms. During the first weeks of Cata I had a lot of fun raiding with my guild, having beaten Baradin Hold, the Wind Enclave, 2 boss in BoT and 4 in BWD, but now that my guild has more raid ready people and started doing 25 mans instead of 10mans I had to stop raiding because my net can't handle all the flashy spells cast by 25 people at the same time.

[Wildstaff]

part of the reason i don't play a healer anymore because my internet is unreliable. i still try healing every once in a while, and it's gotten better(when my connection doesn't drop randomly, i have low latency)

[Lanthanum]

I play on the EU servers but am based in the US, so my latency was always in the region of 250-350ms.

During the past two weeks though, my latency has gone through the roof during peak times. Last Sunday, it would cycle between 400-2Kms constantly, throughout the day. The only time it settles down is after midnight server time (which is 1800 here in the US).

As both of my level 85 are healers, it has seriously dented my dungeon ambitions. Trying to heal the tank during heavy incoming damage is not conducive to 5sec lag spikes.

[Deleted]

So much? my latency is around 50....

[Myah]

You've never tried using a proxy/tunneling?

[darkbreaker]

You've never tried using a proxy/tunneling?

I never tried, but according to my friends it wouldn't work because my connection is too unstable. :P

[Maeleena]

Usually have about 12-18ms latency. God I love being on a server in Chicago when I live in Madison. <3

[loveshack]

I live in Dubai UAE, play on a US realm Mok'Nathal. Never go above 300ms, its usually 150-250.