Lag Monster Respawns Again
by Mike D'Anna 
Jul 11th 2006 at 10:00AM
As you have all probably noticed, and as we've been reporting, there has been a mysterious increase in the amount of server downtime lately, with official "maintenances": being scheduled with little notice & players becoming incresingly more disgruntled as visions of outages from months past creep back into their brains like carrion worms...I guess it was only a matter of time before the ubiquitous "SERVER OUTAGES CAUSE MASS CHAOS" news posts started to creep up, and Gamespot is one of the first major sites to renew the scrutiny.
Apparently, the official story from Blizzard is that server upgrades in June, undertaken to increase stability, have in fact done the exact opposite, and let loose some more ghosts in the machine. There is an official thread on the subject over at the Blizzard forums as well, with plenty of rabid responses to the boys in blue.
Have you all noticed the recent increase in downtime? Has it affected your playtime? Does it seem as bad as it was before? Chime in...
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Roguedeadguy Jul 11th 2006 10:54AM
Lately, our server has been crashing during peak hours. It happened Wednesday during an Onyxia run and last night during Molten Core and has happened countless other times in that past few weeks. I'm starting to wonder if it is technically a server crash, because we seem to be able to log on almost immediately after. Once re-connected, the raid spends random amounts of time on the "Waiting for Character List" screen and then more time once the loading bar has reached 100% (sometimes as long as 15 minutes). Some members get back on within 5 minutes while others (sometimes in the same physical location) get through 30 minutes later. Last night (as was the case last Wednesday) we waited for most of the raid to get back on (approx 30 min) and then the same thing happened again. 5 crashes in a row Wednesday night before we all gave up, 3 in a row last night. It's been very frustrating to say the least. I'm sure others have it just as bad if not worse, but its hard enough to get 40 people organized and pulling without dealing with this crap.
cava Jul 11th 2006 11:52AM
This all went stupid on the "connectivity quick patch" they did recently..soon as that went in....Lag sling shot yo yo effect started for everyone I play with.
cava Jul 11th 2006 2:50PM
That so called connectitivity fix mid last week...that was to help the Minority with log in issues...just put a thorn in the ass of the majority. Great patch blizz /golfclap
40 man raid yah I can understand the problem.
How about all those people doing 45 min strat like I was...buying Flask of Titans,Spell pwer etc...those are some VERY expensive potions....nothing like losing 200 gold on pots cause you crashed in 45 min strat and your team wiped from the lag.
45 min strat needs to be removed and put something more attainable durring lag.
Cliksingles.com Jul 11th 2006 3:40PM
Seems like its all European servers. Any real lag problems in the US?
Molnek Jul 11th 2006 4:25PM
I play on Dark Iron and i havent had any problems at all.
LC_ Jul 11th 2006 4:26PM
Looks like there are dressing room issues after applying new patch.
Nanatsusaya Jul 11th 2006 4:45PM
Yep, I'm on Quel'Thalas-EU and I've been having 17k latency followed my a swift disconnect all weekend. Today has been better, but the server is almost empty. Some of my guildies aren't having problems at all but most have. :(
PsyClerk Jul 11th 2006 7:45PM
That mini-patch to fix soft locks (game crashes, not particularly vulnerable warlocks) seemed to do me in a lot. I started getting a lot of hard lockups at random times, requiring me to hit the reset button on my machine. Lag was also bad and just trying to log in was a chore. I've grown to hate the words "Retrieving character list..."
dj Jul 11th 2006 9:40PM
Oceanic realms have had problems, including a regular lag spike around 8:30-10:30 server time.