Ongoing World of Warcraft issues

[#1]

I replied a few mins ago and now it's not showing, so apologies if duplicate, but about the patch: my game client has fully downloaded it, and in any case it's only been available for a few days, while these problems have been ongoing for several weeks, so it seems unlikely to be the root cause.

[#2]

Just to completely rule it out, do you have the updater throttled so it can't max the download?

[#3]

Fyi, here is how to get your realm server ip address for any trace tests. http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_find_IP_addresses_of_realms

[#4]

Yes, I do have it throttled; and as I say, it isn't running anyway, and has not been for the vast majority of the time this issue has been happening.

Since my previous post still isn't showing, I'll try and repeat the observations I've made, in case it helps at all:

- There are two different symptoms/error messages, both related to changing/entering instances: one ("transfer aborted: instance not found") will happen once on changing zone and usually work fine the next time I try. The other is seen on logging in to a character ("World server is down") and will continue for several minutes, through repeated attempts; this one allows for a bit more experimentation, and is the only one I've gained any useful information from:

- When I get "world server down" error, it will affect all characters on a realm, no matter where in the world they are located (usually in WoW, a "world server" contains one continent in the game, and a world server being down means that continent is down but others should be accessible). But I can often log onto a completely different realm without trouble. I have experienced this problem on two different realms at different times.

- Last night I tried a different game account, and found that I was consistently getting "world server down" on one of my accounts but not the other, even when I tried characters located in the same city, on the same realm, using the same computer (and thus, same network connection). This seemed odd; so I restarted my client a few times; after a few minutes the problem cleared up, but for 5+ minutes I definitely had one account working and one consistently failing. However both accounts have experienced this problem at different times, so it's not specific to one game account only.

[#5]

@Tairbh, to narrow down where the problem lies, I've done that for you now.

Can you let us know how it goes please?

@skunknste, I've replied to you Here.

@mov, no worries, keep us posted!

@samwalton, no rush but let us know how your next gaming session goes.

[#6]

Is anyone willing to get us some wireshark captures of the problem?

We'd need smallish captures. I.e. Starting the capture for a minute or two around the error when you can replicate it. (They can get really massive and unwieldy) Then note the time the error occurred.

With that, we should be able to get an idea what was happening between your compete and the wow realm/instance when it failed.

[#7]

Is anyone willing to get us some wireshark captures of the problem?

Sure, if you can give me a rundown of how I do that

[#8]

@Gandalf Do you have a link to the wireshark guide? There used to be one on Community somewhere?

[#9]

Had an uninterupted sesh last night and managed to get my protection paladin mage tower done.

Hoping for more uninterrupted play tonight. I assume the static ip is still active?

[#10]

@mov, looking at your traces, your wi-fi is contributing to your problem. You have >100ms latency on occasion between your device and the router.

[#11]

@Kelly https://community.plus.net/t5/Library/About-Wireshark-and-how-to-use-it/ba-p/1322252

[#12]

@bobpullen what could be causing this?

And is this pattern replicated in others traces as I am experiencing the same type of issues as other posters. In particular issues around it affecting one account but not the other at a specific time window.

In other words, if it was solely a Wi-Fi issue would it not occur across all accounts at the specific time window?

[#13]

Can you hard wire into the router to eliminate the WiFi when you are seeing the problems?

[#14]

Haven't had the chance to play in the past couple of days, but will see about getting that Wireshark log soon.

For the record, I have a wired connection.

[#15]

Great.  The wireshark will create a log of all of the network traffic going in and out of the selected network interface at the time, so make sure you close as many applications down as possible when doing it and try and keep the capture neat to cover just before and just after the error.  It doesn't need to be super tight, but the less extra time around it the better as it makes the capture smaller to send and easier for us to read.

Thanks!

(How is WoW nowadays? I stopped playing just before Panda-land!)