Blizzard: Comcast issues fixed
by Mike Schramm 
Dec 22nd 2008 at 1:00PM
Eyonix is now reporting, as an update to yesterday's update, that Blizzard has resolved the issues with Comcast. So to quote the late, great Douglas Adams, "anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem." Which is not quite true -- Blizzard tech support and Comcast are probably still happy to listen to your issues (assuming you can get through their phone system), but the major outages from this weekend are reportedly solved.There are still three stickied threads going in the technical support forums, so you can possibly find help or more information there if you're still having issues: Eyonix encourages anyone still having a problem to go there.
I'm on Comcast here in Chicago, but I didn't have any issues connecting this weekend (save for the fact that I was offline for half a day yesterday due to an unrelated computer error I had). Still, though we're not sure just how widespread the problem is, there were definitely some players suffering from lag and disconnects. Hopefully the problem is cleared up for good.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeni Dec 22nd 2008 1:09PM
The outage here (around the Philadelphia area) lasted from mid morning to mid afternoon and was cleared up before dinner time. The latency shot up to 5000 at one point. I was still able to play, but the heroic I did was...fun.
peagle Dec 22nd 2008 1:12PM
"Comcast are probably still happy to listen to your issues"
Odd I don't recall Comcast tech support being happy, more somewhat despondent and irritable. In fact I'll summarize the entire universe of Comcast's tech help for you:
Unplug modem. Didn't work? New modem needed. Good bye.
Ahoni Dec 22nd 2008 1:53PM
Please don't make universal statements. That is your experience, not mine. Where I live, Comcast provides better support than their main competition, Verizon. Better product, better availability, better uptime, better support. Its not even close.
peagle Dec 22nd 2008 2:49PM
@Ahoni
Whilst your experience has proven otherwise, I stand by my generalization, and would hazard a guess my experience represents the majority.
Besides which, this is the interwebs, gross stereotyping is mandatory. Speaking of which all people called Ahoni like bananas and dancing the "robot".
BONESAUCE Dec 22nd 2008 9:07PM
Not sure that many people actually read these comments, so this really amounts to nothing, but I thought I'd chime in here since I do tech support for Comcast.
Now I'm not here to be a Comcast appologist. They give me a paycheck, I do tech support. That's it. Some of our reputation is well deserved, but most of it is not. Specifically a post like this is why the wrong message is getting out.
In your situation, what, exactly, would you reasonably like to hear about your situation? Assuming the representative you spoke to doesn't value the ability to play this video game as highly as you do (ie, not a player) and assuming at the time that you had called no region-wide notification had been sent out to alert everyone at the time (and this can happen a LOT, specifically on such a huge and complicated network), what would you suggest s/he tell you?
You reset the modem and it's still not working, we send a signal to see if your box/modem is responsive, no outages reported, and you, the customer, don't want to hear "i don't know" so someone suggests the possibility that there is something wrong with your modem. I'm also guessing they offered you a technician but you declined as that is always the policy. By the logic of the situation, there's really not that much else they CAN do for you.
Please, if you're going to trash a company, even one as supposedly "evil" as Comcast, give all the information. I know the company-wide focus for years has been to improve customer experience, specifically including customer service and technical support. We're not all the way there yet, but there have been massive improvements and they will continue.
Frijona Dec 22nd 2008 1:15PM
No Comcast problems here (shockingly). I was having trouble with my entire internet connection last week, though!
Screwblade Dec 22nd 2008 1:18PM
Friday included dropping every 5-10 minutes.
Sunday was lag central with latencies in upwards of 6000's for me in NH connecting with the Argent Dawn realm.
At around 4:00pm et on Sunday, it smoothed out as the network device in NY between me and Blizz went from a 375ms lat between hops to < 25ms. Just in time for me to have to go shovel 2 feet of snow......
Hank Dec 22nd 2008 1:20PM
Another backbone problem; just like it was with Time Warner a few months ago. The problem isn't your provider or Blizzard's (AT&T) provider, it's the network(s) in between the two.
Jason Dec 22nd 2008 2:43PM
The network in between the two, the one shown to have issues via tracert's, is AT&T.
James Feb 17th 2009 6:04PM
I'm in Chicago as well, and i had problems most of friday night and sunday day. Instantly in the red on latency apon log in and eventually booted. I rinsed repeated about 8 times till it stabilized.
FYI: i use speakeasy speed test and comcast smokes it every time so connection speed is not the problem. I pay for 10m and we pull on average 27m
Summary: Just confirming problems in Chicago land area =)
Tinious Dec 22nd 2008 2:13PM
Glad to see resolution.
Now, hopefully, they can focus their attention to the 1000's of other bugs plaguing the game so that hopefully 3.0.8 is reasonably playable.
Mooghoul Dec 22nd 2008 2:38PM
Comcast's QoS in WA has been slowly going down for the past 2 months. First it was sites that are typically fine (Google, BBC) failing to load or getting stuck mid load. Then it was random disconnects during media streaming. Then it was the WoW disconnects and now WoW latency/outages. Add to that the threats to P2P, net neutrality and their recent changes to the ToS where they will no longer take responsibility to any damage they do to your property during maintenance; And they're walking a dangerous line pleading ignorance to these problems with Verizon's FIOS just as accessible, even if their customer support is better than Verizon's (at least if you live in WA, heard some tech support horror stories from other places).
As for the recent problems, I don't blame Blizzard. Comcast and their affiliates have been messing with bandwidth limitation and service blocking for the past 6 months. When torrents went down they denied it was their fault until weeks later when they said "Oh yes, we blocked P2P uploads".
Jason Dec 22nd 2008 2:43PM
There are still issues. And it NEVER was just a comcast issue.
Evi Dec 22nd 2008 3:36PM
I never thought I'd miss Comcast until I moved to an area where they're not available. I would take them over the terrible connection I have right now. My apartment complex has some kind of exclusive agreement with this provider called DirectPath. So I can't get Comcast or anyone else. It's awfully slow and not very stable. It's a shame, too, since it's one of the only issues I have with my otherwise awesome apartment.
When I lived in the Philadelphia area and used Comcast, my house was hit by lightning. The cable modem, among many other electronics in the house, was completely shot. It took over three days of phone calls to Comcast before we got someone on the phone who understood that restarting the modem wasn't going to fix the issue. By the end of the ordeal, my dad was practically shouting at them. "It's FRIED! What part of LIGHTNING STRIKE don't you people understand?! We need a tech out here! Restarting the modem is impossible since the RESTART BUTTON HAS MELTED!"
Hmm, maybe I don't miss them so much after all... ;)
Brian Dec 22nd 2008 3:50PM
as of last night I was still having major issues on comcast in Saint Paul, MN. Constant disconnects, when I was connected my latency was 400-4000, it's usually 50-150. I've got 3 open tickets with comcast trying to get it resolved.
Osi Dec 22nd 2008 4:35PM
Blizz is pointing fingers yet again. Everybody else that I have met on WOW is still having disconnect problems and lag up to 10 seconds. And they are not on comcast ... Pings and traces are normal, which leaves server software issues (still).
Zarfay Dec 22nd 2008 5:22PM
lol @ Americans complaining about 5000 ms
When my internet allowance is met in Australia mine jumps up to 14000 ms...
Skarlet Dec 23rd 2008 9:30AM
I had no problems last night after having problems all weekend. I use Comcast in the Detroit area. Just a few random lag spikes but almost all of them could be account for as server lag or to my own PC loading Dalaran :p