There is quite a thread going around with some ideas about how to fix raiding lag. Lag, like many cross-computer issues, is a pretty complicated thing -- there's all kinds of reasons it could be happening, from errors on your computer to errors on Blizzard's end, and all the little connections and switches in between. A certain amount of lag is unavoidable. But there are certainly some things you can do to make sure the link between your client and Blizzard's server is working at its best.
This thread, which
started on the EJ forums and then
moved on to Livejournal, has some good tips in it, including turning off most combat logs like
Recount and even Blizzard's official "Everything" log -- having to write down everything happening in game does cost some computer time as you play.
Blocking addon "spam" is another way to keep things simple and clear -- while lots of useful addons help you share information between raid members, sending that info back and forth can cause problems when you're down to milliseconds of lag.
The final suggestion is to run a third-party program that's supposed to keep your latency high, but I would be leery of doing that -- a better solution if you continue to have high latency constantly, even after making the changes above, would be to go to Blizzard (and/or your Internet Service Provider, or ISP) with your issues. They have a good guide to
smoothing out your connection, and
many times the problem can be with your router or firewall, which is usually a quick fix.
All of that said, sometimes it's just beyond your control -- it'll be a particularly busy night for both Blizzard and your ISP, and it'll cost you that extra half second that you needed to get out of that fire. In those situations, there's not much you can do except try to think a step ahead (I sometimes run up into the fire in front of me on Heigan just because I know my client is a split second late), or come back next time and hope things go better.
Tags: addon-spam, addons, elitist-jerks, errors, lag, latency, livejournal, raiding, recount, server, spam, spam-fu
Filed under: Guilds, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding, Hardware
Nov 13th 2009 at 5:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mulgarath Nov 13th 2009 5:19PM
getting the combat log to a minimum, disabling recount sync and messing with the resgistry a bit worked wonder for me. USed to average 200ms latency and droppped to a stable 70-80ms. Yes, even in Dalaran and TOGC25.
catharsis80 Nov 13th 2009 5:25PM
I switched to Skada when I heard about Recount's large memory and CPU usage.
Spiraea Nov 13th 2009 5:42PM
Ditto on the switch to Skada
nlv1977 Nov 13th 2009 6:25PM
Im only on a single core with 2 GIGS and a 8800 GTX Card, and ive never had issues I even have all the settings cranked up all the way, if its your computer a quad core wont help any thats only for the mathematical computations, its all in the memory and video.
I run Several addons at all times when im on including recount, dbm, Omen and QuestHelper.
Never had any load time issues or latency issues but being on a government leased fiberoptic line helps with that. ;O
Majority of the time it isnt the computer its the fail isp.
Marita Nov 13th 2009 8:28PM
lucky people, when my lag is "nice" I get 230 ms, normal 400 to 600 ms, and higher is usual too
Don't know how I could survive Heigan last time -_- latency was 340 ms that day
mike Nov 13th 2009 10:56PM
When you said "messing with the registry" what did you actually do?
Because I tried doing something along those lines once, but its effect seemed minimal at best.
Sunaseni Nov 14th 2009 2:22AM
"Messing with the Registry" means changing how your computer responds to TCP Packets using the TCPAckFrequency setting. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you just want to get to the fix.) The default TCP/IP protocol states that the reciever (you) is able to wait when a packet is recieved for more packets before sending an acknowledgment in order to acknowledge many packets at once. Unfortunately, this means that instead of an instant response to server queries, this means that your PC waits the default 200ms after recieving a packet to respond to the server.
You can fix this by checking the following page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328890
Basically, go to you registry editor (Run -> regedit), click through the folders until you find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\
Add two new DWORD (32-bit) entries into that folder, and any subfolders, and set their values to 1:
TcpAckFrequency
TCPNoDelay
I don't know if it's case sensitive, but it never hurts to be sure. Save, restart your PC, and see if that lowers your latency.
Mulgarath Nov 14th 2009 6:43AM
Yes, ty Sunaseni.
@ mike - what Sunaseni wrote. ;)
Here's the link with the detailed instructions I followed to get the latency values I wrote on the first comment of the article. The registry changes are both for Windows and MacOS X. It's from Elitist Jerks.
http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/cadfael/302-fixing_chain_disconnecting.html
One final note: I've never installed a third-party software to reduce latency.
Hope it helps!
mike Nov 14th 2009 3:01PM
I actually tried making the those dword files awhile back but they didn't seem to do anything, however, upon closer investigation I realized I put them in the wrong folder.
Thanks for the help.
Mark Nov 13th 2009 5:22PM
"The final suggestion is to run a third-party program that's supposed to keep your latency high"
- isn't high latency bad, or have I been using the word wrong this entire time?
BioHazard Nov 13th 2009 5:25PM
Sometimes if your latency spikes very erratically, it can be amost worse than it being bad all the time, so something that can keep it around the same level constantly can be good.
If you have a rotation that requires precise timing, not knowing if you'll actually cast something 50ms or 500ms after you press the button can mess all kinds of stuff up.
catharsis80 Nov 13th 2009 5:23PM
"The final suggestion is to run a third-party program that's supposed to keep your latency high"
I think you mean low. I certainly don't want high latency.
Spazmoose Nov 13th 2009 9:35PM
The disconnecting issue is being caused by erratic spikes in latency, not by the latency itself. Some people have issues where their normal latency is low, but once a pull occurs on a boss it spikes to a much higher value.
If you were to run something that purposefully kept your latency high even when it should be low, you would experience fewer latency spikes, and ultimately fewer disconnects. So, it would actually be beneficial to keep the latency high as opposed to low.
Nick S Nov 13th 2009 11:39PM
SmoothPing has been beneficial to my pings, which was absolutely necessary when I was on DSL.
It costs money, but if you're willing to pay a small amount for a fairly significant ping decrease, it's worth it. And you can try it for free to see if it helps before you pay.
Orforio Nov 13th 2009 5:25PM
With all my logging on, Omen and Recount open, and over 100MB of other addons, my ping is usually in the 40-50ms region.
So I'd say it's more of a case of having a good internet connection and not running torrents. :/
Scruffy Bob Nov 13th 2009 5:36PM
Lag is not just latency. You could have a 50ms network latency time, but when a huge pile of addons is processing and maybe graphics setting are turned up too high, it can make the client itself unusable. It's no good if your ping is 50ms but there are so many explosions going on that your cast timer or warnings can't update on your screen for you to react to them :)
mike Nov 13th 2009 5:38PM
Agreed because I run WoW with nearly everything set to minimun, use barely 10mb of addons ( when I remember to erase old recount data) while raiding, and still get a latency of 250-500ms.
Mulgarath Nov 13th 2009 5:34PM
Still using Recount though, didn't need to replace it but hey, whatever works to get that latency down. ;)
PS - Forgive my typos on the first comment.
Blake Nov 13th 2009 5:39PM
I know this is off topic, but I have been so bored with all of the wow.com articles today...
uncaringbear Nov 13th 2009 5:49PM
Thank you for contributing such a helpful comment in a post that was actually useful and interesting.