Blizzard: We're working on the Comcast problem
by Mike Schramm 
Dec 21st 2008 at 4:00PM
Snowman Eyonix posted an update to the ongoing Comcast issues on the forums today: he says that Blizzard is talking to Comcast about the problem, and that they may have identified the problem in a third-party network between the affected folks and Comcast themselves. He says work on the issue is ongoing, and that while they don't have an ETA, he'll let us know when there is more to know.We don't know if the "third-party network" includes those Los Angeles datacenters that were being blamed earlier, and to be honest, we don't even know how widespread the problem actually is. A few of our writers are on Comcast -- most of us haven't had any problems at all, though one of our writers in LA is experiencing lag and the occasional disconnect.
We'll keep an eye on Eyonix's thread and let you know if anything changes. At this point, it seems the problems are known and Blizzard is doing what they can to solve things.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status, Blizzard, Hardware
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ChironAE Dec 21st 2008 4:07PM
Sitting here in Indianapolis, I've been knocked off more times than I've seen wackjobs in an entire season of the Sopranos! It's annoying. The lag is in the 2000's & 3000's, the d/c's come in a flurry, and I've actually had to vacuum to get my mind off of it! Well, it's an every Sunday thing but still. I want a non-combat pet out of this!
Choci Dec 21st 2008 5:23PM
ATT Uverse is your answer!
ChironAE Dec 21st 2008 4:08PM
oh.. and it's my first first! Yay!
jason Dec 21st 2008 4:47PM
This almost certainly has to be some traffic shaping causing this. When are the ISPs going to learn?
Jason Dec 21st 2008 4:56PM
This has absolutely nothing to do with traffic shaping.
This affects many ISP's. The issue is the internet backbones between your ISP and blizzard. If you connect to a blizzard server located in an affected city you have problems. Those cities are Seattle, LA and Dallas. The 4th blizzard datacenter is in Boston and is unaffected.
xenothaulus Dec 21st 2008 4:17PM
I hadn't experienced any serious problems until just a few minutes ago, when for no reason my ping to wow servers jumped up to over 800ms. Everything else that I've checked is just fine, seems to only be affecting wow.
RanaBlood Dec 21st 2008 4:19PM
Living in Sacramento CA, I was able to play normally with lag until this morning. When I logged on I played for about an hour and was booted, since I can't even log in.
Fuseitana Dec 21st 2008 4:22PM
I was having problems with Comcast too, but I switched to AT&T uVerse and haven't seen anything since.
I didn't switch because of WoW problems, I switched because I was tired of Comcast taking me for granted. I'd been with them for 20+ years and was paying upwards of $180 for services, at the same time they were running ads to switch for $99 a month for the first year. Well hell, two can play that game, AT&T promised me the $100 rate and I said 'screw you Comcast'.
Snipa Dec 21st 2008 4:26PM
I have been having this problem for a few days now, except I'm on Verizon FioS and it's happening. I have the same exact problems reported, and I've checked my internet on everything else: Internet, torrents, speedtest. It's it only affecting WoW. I hope Blizzard knows its not just comcast, but Verizon, as well. I have a few friends who have FioS and are experiencing the same problems.
Jason Dec 21st 2008 4:25PM
It's not just comcast. I don't know why blizzard keeps saying that when the tracert data collected and posted on their forums show that many ISP's are affected as they all use that 3rd party AT&T backbone.
Mep Dec 21st 2008 4:25PM
Over here in Mass, we first thought it was due to the weather, but after calling Comcast a few times and letting them know i knew what was going on they basically told me what this post says.
Either way, thank you wowinsider for the scoop :)
khaeli Dec 21st 2008 4:28PM
I suffered from the disconnects-every-15-minutes on Friday, was fine on Saturday, and logged in this morning to 1000-4000 ms. It appears only certain servers were impacted, but regardless it seems to be better now. . . for me on Maelstrom at least.
Orestes Dec 21st 2008 4:32PM
Atlanta was terrible Friday. Disconnects every 10-15 minutes all day long. Seems fixed now though
Lyncis Dec 21st 2008 4:36PM
I wasn't getting random disconnects out of nowhere today, but it was _really_ laggy. Not so much that it prevented me from retaking Undercity, though. Thank goodness that turned out to be soloable...
Ashivor Dec 21st 2008 4:38PM
I have comcast in Reading, PA and have off and on issues since Friday. Friday was unplayable since I got disconnected every 5-10 minutes. Yesterday was playable, but with high pings. And today is random disconnected and going from 200ish to 3200. I died when the ping shot up as the monster I thought I was fighting wasn't there or behind me, etc. I died a few more times recovering my body since my position was actually off my 3 seconds. What lovely fun.
Maybe we shouldn't all rely on At&t having a large portion of the backbone in the US. Has anyone ever seen their customer service for cell phone service? And they keep growing thanks to their cell phone market.
As for Comcast they are on their way to become the next Microsoft whether we want it or not. By that I mean they provided fantastic service a few years ago as the market continued to grow. Now they offer so-so service at huge prices, but there is no one else to get service from in many areas. I live in a fairly large city, (4th largest in PA I believe) and Comcast is the only broadband provider in my neighborhood. There is no other cable company that I can get, and dsl coverage is spotty at best in this area.
Everyone bow to the new monopolies of At&T and Comcast. Man my behind hurts...
rocnroll Dec 21st 2008 4:49PM
As an IT professional, I get totally amazed when Blizzard has ISP problems. I live in Michigan and have fortunately only had minor lag issues. Since my realm is in the LA Datacenter and so is the PTR (and wasn't the Beta realm also?), that means extra usage of the bandwidth, unless there is a separate pipe for them.
Also, hasn't there been patches that have had issues with certain kinds of home routers? Why is Blizzard even writing code that is sensitive to a router? Internet connections are simply the road on which the application travels. There should be no code written that is sensitive to the router. If they want to reduce lag and increase performance, reanalyze the code.
My .02 (highly deflated these days).
Kaphik Dec 21st 2008 6:28PM
I am always amazed at how many IT professionals really don't understand how they get their signals. I work for an ISP/Cable TV/VOIP provider. The most likely scenario in this case is damaged fiber optic cable somewhere. With all the recent winter weather, especially in places that aren't used top such weather like Las Vegas, something happened somewhere. A lot of companies don't have in-house fiber technicians, they contract out. Some of the restoration times for these companies can become ridiculously long. Some of the traffic has probably been rerouted while repairs are going on, and some of the problems are likely due to poor repair. It all depends on the priority the ISP places, sometimes commercial services are pushed to the back, especially on weekends. That, sadly, is the way things are some places. The company I work for has been having no major issues at all during this weather, nor have we been having any sort of problem with a connection to eh WoW servers.
As far as your comment about Blizzard writing code sensitive to the router, that's just silly. Do you really expect every single software developer to take into account every single piece of hardware and it's firmware version when writing their code? Nothing would get written! The problem isn't Blizzard's code, it's the router firmware. Microsoft updates their code, i.e. things like DirectX, as advances in software require. You are correct in assuming that internet connections carry the data, but the data has to be put on that road to begin with. Take your computer and remove half of your RAM. You will see an immediate change in performance. There are many, many factors in system performance, and each has to be taken into account. I would hope that an "IT professional" would have a better grasp of that.
Shoomy Dec 22nd 2008 12:29PM
Hi,
I am a Comcast employee. Please stop being mean to the company that puts a roof over my head and food in fridge. Just pay your overpriced bill for lackluster performance/mediocre customer service and keep your comments to yourself.
Love,
Kaphik
LatinViruz Dec 21st 2008 4:49PM
ouch
Jason Dec 21st 2008 5:08PM
I absolutely despise Comcast. They have the worst service and the worst customer service ever. They don't give a flip about their customers. If ATT's DSL/DirectTV prices competed with Comcast's then I would switch in a heartbeat. However, the extra may be worth not having to deal with Comcast's horrid service. Someone at the FTC needs to realize that allowing cable companies to have virtual monopolies is unethical and needs to be stopped. As long as companies like Comcast are unopposed, you will continue to run into service problems like this one and the only way they will be fixed is if other companies force them to.