WoW dropouts over a 3G wireless connection
Customer asks me to try to find the cause of World of Warcraft (WoW) dropouts.
The last time I saw him (about 2 years ago), I installed a video card, as the built-in video wasn’t compatible with WoW.
He thinks that the video card might need an upgrade.
Once on site, I see he gets to the internet using a telstra nextG 7.2 USB wireless dongle.
I’m suspecting network dropouts, but I install a more modern video card so I can rule it out.
He still notices some dropouts (less often than before), but they still happen.
I also get to see what he means by dropout: his WoW character will continue to move about, but all other characters stop moving. if he leaves the session and then re-connects, then his character restarts from where the “dropout” happened.
I still suspect that the nextG network is at fault… he gets good signal strength, but I tell him that I have no way of knowing what happens at the wireless network level… it is possible that the occasional WoW network packet is “invisibly” delayed long enough (by the wireless network) to cause a dropout from the WoW server.
I try a ping test (although ping is not a great test), but the pings seem to work perfectly for at least 1 minute.
In the end he is happy to keep the newer video card, and I suggest he take the PC to a friend or relative that has ADSL… This should confirm or deny if the network type is causing the dropouts.
Latency is a big issue with wireless 3G which makes it barely acceptable for playing games is general. Another thing is that at certain times of the day you may experience higher or lower latencies depending on network load. Average is somewhere between 400-600ms but Ive heard players complain that it can reach almost 1000ms at times. “suspect that the nextG network is at fault” seems like a reasonable diagnosis to me.
The problem almost certainly lies with the NextG wireless network. WoW is an old game… if his video card is 2 years old, it should work fine. Most people who use the NextG network to play WoW do it out of necessity (it would be madness to use it if you could get ADSL). Many report erratic disconnections and pings depending on distance from tower, network load, etc. In actual fact I know people who get a better ping from wireless, but it very much depends on your location in regards to the tower etc. A compounding factor is that WoW seems to have fallen victim to greater world lag over time… a situation that Blizzard seems unwilling or unable to fix. So if ADSL is unavailable then NextG is about as good as this customer will get (certainly better than satellite ping-wise).