# World of Warcraft latency issues



## thain1982

I´m a technician for a gaming PC company, and I´m trying to help a customer with some lag trouble he´s been having with World of Warcraft on his new laptop.

Keep in mind, he has a similar-spec PC with a lower-grade video card that does not lag at all.

The customer has a system with a Pentium M 2.0 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, onboard Intel sound, and a GeForce GO 7800 GTX (256 MB), and he connects (through both his laptop and his PC) wirelessly to his broadband connection.

I had him follow the advice in thread 417378 (world of warcraft-lag (non-latency issues)), which said:
+++Have you deleted the:
C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF
C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WDB

file folders yet?

and emptied

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns?+++

He said that his connection improved noticeably, but that it still lags. Not being an MMORPG player myself, I didn´t think to ask him _when_ it lags, but it was lagging before out in the open play-area when casting a spell, for example. I´m sure it probably lagged in the cities, as well, but he didn´t mention cities specifically.

The system is brand new, and our factory ensures that all the drivers are the very latest, and they use several games, including Doom 3 on high-spec, to test the system´s gaming performance before shipment. Anyone have any other ideas I could suggest to this customer?


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## BannerGuy

Depending upon the location (in game) of the player.... lag is an issue just because the sheer amount of data being sent to the PC. Places like Iron Forge in front of the Auction House is one of the worst with latency ranging anywhere from 1K to over 12Kms... I have a feeling that this may also be partial to server load at this one point.

If the WTF and WDB folders have already been emptied and the add on folders have been reset then this corrects any coding issues, and usually are reset upon the first logon to WoW. There is an application out there called WoWtoc.exe that updates the addons version number so that any conflicts that result as a result of an update are minimized. 

WoW is a HOG for RAM.. 512MB of RAM is adequate.. most people say that having 1024MB or more is the best option for smooth game play in most areas. I play with 1024MB and a 128MB radeon 9700pro and rarely experience any lag outside of a large raid instance (20 to 40 players in one area casting...etc) or Ironforge or Omigar Auction Houses... 

Assuming your customer has a full blow cable or dsl line with over 1.5 MB of bandwidth... they should not have a data bottleneck at the LAN connection, though the game can play on dial up... I believe that this would be a very interesting issue indeed.

Only other thing that I can think of would be to make sure that neither the processor or the gfx card is playing in a 'low power consumption' mode that would 'throttle down' the preformance due to the 'importance' of saving battery vs. preformance. 

Only other thing that I can think of is minimizing the amount of background application activity is running during the game. virus scan and firewalls can be checked to see if there is any active scanning occuring that would off balance the preformance load of the PC so that WoW suffers as a result. I run Zone Alarm for a firewall and leave my Anti-Virus software in standby when playing to minimize any load to the PC. 

Video settings... triple or bilinear filtering can cause a bit of an issue with the card... but being a 256MB 7800gtx card this should not be an issue... though mobile chips are not as effecient as thier big brothers... this card is a beast and should not have any issues.

Hope some of this helps.. 

As an afterthought... WoW does have a program the works in the background called warden that checks for malicious programs (viruses, hacks, and cheats) it may be possible that it is causing a conflict... but not very likely.


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## Gonzo1970

Very thorough reply up above me here.. great post!

Only thing I can see that I would try is not going wireless.. if the Laptop has an ethernet port, see if you can get him to hard-wire into the broadband connection, then ask him if its the same, better, or worse.

My thought was RF Interference. Heck, for all we know, the guy has a 50,000watt power station next to his house, and failed to mention that.. ya know? =)

If he gets frustrated with the laptop, Ill buy it at a scratch-n-dent price if he returns it!  

-Gonz


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## thain1982

Yeah, the first time he called, about a week ago, I asked him if he had tried going hard-wired, but he wouldn´t hear of it. He insisted that, since his desktop connected just fine, even though it was farther away from the wireless router, it shouldn´t be the wireless connection. I agreed with him that it SHOULDN´T be the connection, but that it still might be, but he wouldn´t hear of it.

It´s one of the first things I asked him, because I do a lot of work with wireless connections, but his reply was the typical Luddite neeping: ¨But my DESKTOP works with no lag, so my laptop should, too! I bought this laptop so I could play World of Warcraft from my living room, and my wife already things I wasted my money on it. She´ll just be that much more upset if I get a cable run to the living room.¨

I´m going to have him try the connection, just to see. He´s got a Gigabyte PCMCIA wireless card (which he´s scared of, as well, as one of his other Luddite friends warned him that said friend knew someone who had a PCMCIA card that got broken off. My thought was: ¨Who let that person near a computer?¨), which should be picking up any signals pretty well, but there could easily be some RF or EM interference in his house.

Thanks to both of you for your replies!


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## Gonzo1970

Wow... refused to hard-wire it huh?

I would just say something like "Im only asking you to hard-wire it for diagnostic purposes, to see if we can narrow down the problem area".

If he doesnt want to do it after that, Id just say that hes not willing to help diagnose the problem, and until he is, theres really not alot you can do for him.

-Gonz


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## dcallaway

Have him use a cico card. Best on the market. I have had this same problem, It was the wireless card and the cisco fixed it. At lest on a IBM t43.


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