The Patch From Hell
My computer, my beloved laptop, although getting on in years (it’s soon three years old!) and although it has been to the shop twice, has never had any problems dealing with the graphic settings of WoW.
When the special shadow effects were introduced some time ago I got seasick from them and turned them down to the barest minimum where you could still see shaped shadows and not just formless blobs.
I’ve ran all of 25-man Naxxramas (AoE heaven, remember?) without any problems at all, and although I mostly raided 10-mans after that up till just a few weeks ago I never ever had any problems with lag or disconnects during raids apart from the very rare power cut or similar total loss of net access. Never!
Now, enter patch 3.2.2.
The release of this patch coincided with me moving my shaman to another server and starting running 25-mans with her.
On these 25-man raids with her I have been disconnected from the game once or twice per raid night.
It may not sound much but it is one time (or two!) too many, especially since it seems to happen in every fekking raid!
If I am “lucky”, it happens during the startup phase, only making me miss portals to Theramore for Onyxia or the generously provided Fish Feast.
If I am not so lucky, it happens during an encounter. And in case you haven’t noticed or maybe it has slipped your mind, the encounters nowadays are pretty damn unforgiving of people standing still.
Standing still, you know, like someone who has just lost all her control over her toon by disconnecting but said toon is still in the game, still in the raid, and she is NOT MOVING when Kologarn looks at her nastily, and she is NOT MOVING when the blue sparkly roaches start trailing to Thorim and she is NOT MOVING when the lava around Sartharion and his three hench drakes starts churning.
And if the disconnect didn’t do enough damage, either collateral by me and my uncontrolled toon drawing hurt to my fellow raiders, or incidental by me not throwing my heals where I was supposed to, when I do manage to log back in the dc always, always, ALWAYS screws with my healing addons.
I lose all the raid frames, and even if I manage to do a /reload ui while back online, the reloading screen takes forever and ever to load through and all that time I am NOT MOVING.
And even if I do get through that prolonged hell of waiting and having to listen on Vent to what is happening and I actually do get the raid frames back, sometimes they are not sorted, sometimes they are not clickable, and sometimes the amount of health they show are frozen and unchanging!
The clickability comes back once either I or the boss is dead, but the randomness of the sorting linger on.
(Incidentally, this is why I had a brief session of Earth Shielding the druid tree instead of the druid bear last night, because my main tank setting was lost and the spot in my raid frames grid where the bear used to be was now taken by the tree – same orange color and their names are similar enough for me not to react immediately (hey! It’s not like I read all the names on the raid frames!))
Turning down all graphic settings to the absolute minimum does not seem to help at all, I was playing with that last night and I still got dc’d.
Sometimes I wonder if it is server-related – I find Dalaran on Stormrage way more laggy than I find Dalaran on Aerie Peak – but maybe that is just a matter of me being in Stormrage Dalaran during peak hours more often than on Aerie Peak where I am mostly out in the bush or the old world.
Sometimes I wonder if it is raid-related – I raid 25-mans on Stormrage and 10-mans on Aerie Peak, but then again I have done the odd 25-mans on Aerie Peak too after the patch and although my fps was very low at times I never got dc’d.
Sometimes I wonder if it is computer-related – my computer is not the most modern and fastest one, and is generally slow when tabbing in and out of WoW, but why have I not encountered these horrbible dc’s before patch 3.2.2 then? I seem to have had more dc’s after 3.2.2 than in my entire WoW history before that.
No, I firmly believe patch 3.2.2 is the root of all this evil – it is the patch from hell!
Well I’m sitting by my game rig
But the frame rate’s way too low
And it lags with every spell cast that I try out
And I’m standing still while running
In the raiding fireworks
Scared beyond belief to get the login screen
And this perverted fear of dc’s
Chokes the smile on my face
And common sense is ringing out the bells
This is a technological breakdown
Oh yes, this is the patch from hell
And all my addons got resetted
And there’s nothing I can do
It’s all just bits of pixels not controlled by me
Oh look out world, take a good look what comes down here
I must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
This ain’t no fresh exciting new content
Oh no, this is the patch
Said this is the patch
This is the patch from hell!
(And fear not, I am not going to sing out. Well, not loudly at least. Well, maybe loudly but in the shower only where no one can hear me.)
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I’m sooo glad to have a new computer. I know exactly what you’re going through. This patch hasn’t been so hard on me – still I’ve experienced some instability too. Could be an addon issue as well… I just hate the process to try to figure out which one is causing the trouble.
Larísa´s last blog ..Is the solo-friendly trend threatening the MMO idea?
I’m having a similar problem after a server switch, and I think I blame the sever. Ironically, I also left Aerie Peak, where I never had any problems in Dalaran. Now on Kel’Thuzad, I have terrible graphic issues in Dal… it takes forever to load, and when I hearth to the inn I can see the food on the tables, but not the tables themselves! No players, no innkeeper, no flight master. If I mount, I can’t even see me! Usually if I leave it alone for five minutes or so things start loading, but other times I’ve had to log and reload from scratch to be able to fly out. Very frustrating.
You could be right though, I never was in Dal on KT until after patch 3.2.2. I suppose they could be related. Or maybe it’s an addon… I just started using clique. Hmm. You’ve made me curious to try and figure it out.
Rhii´s last blog ..A Matter of Trust
I had a lot of issues DCing before patch 3.2.2 on my old PC and I found it was because of the built in combat log spamming me with every single buff and debuff tic that the entire raid is taking. Check out this article for some helpful tips:
http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/cadfael/302-fixing_chain_disconnecting.html
Once I turned off my combat log I had no more problems at all. I can’t look back and see exactly why I died anymore but since I don’t DC, I don’t die. There has been a large DC issue floating around in the recent patches though, but mainly on 25 man Gormok and whelp spams on Onyxia. It has something to do with the amount of information being sent to you via the encounter (and possibly guildies) that will eventually flood your connection and drop you.
If you are interested in traffic that your Guildies may be sending you, check out SpamFU addon for FUbar. You will see all the packets of information sent to you from others. For example: Carbonitequest is horrible, it sends out a packet(and a fairly large packet at that) every 5 seconds or so to everyone in your Guild if you have the social aspects turned on. We had about 10 Guild members running this at once and when they all turned it off, some people had a noticeable improvement in their connection.
You see – I could easily say “I’ve never had this problem” but this problem is the whole groups problem- so I’ll have to rephrase-
I know lots of people who have this problem :P
And its frustrating for everybody, You know its not the fault of the person, so theres no help you can give, no guideance or motivation except “kick the computer harder”.
There are a long list of speical things you can do, but theres sites dedicated out there already to telling you ideas, like shiftyimp kindly commented.
Tess
Its a pain! now for Onyxia I have to put down all my video settings on my decent desktop or as soon as the AOE music starts WHAM DC and then like you when I get back in its killed all my raid frames.
It seems to be happening a lot since the last patch.
Zetter
Zetter´s last blog ..Healing in 25 mans
Thanks for the tips all, I’m trying things out and sometimes it seems better, sometimes not.
The randomness of the dc’s makes it hard to pinpoint what is causing them, I can live through a whelp nuking on Ony25 and then dc on an Ignius fight in Ulduar10, or even in Dalaran when I am not even in a raid group.
And Kromus, you are right, it really is the entire groups problem, especially in the heroic version of ToC where a dc most likely mean a failed attempt.
I hope it get it solved soon.
I do feel your pain. I raid with healing shammy sometimes (enh mainspec), and i always had a macros for all my heals like “/cast [target=mouseover] whatever”. I use them with grid – no target switching, no clicks, just hover a square and press hotkey. So when i got dc, and my Grid diappears – i just move my mouse to tank or melee group on my screen and spam chain heals without any frames.
You can’t heal tank like this, but you can do your part of raid healing for sure. And you can recast ES on MT, as he’s easy to find and mouseover :)
Hmm I do have that mouseover line in all my healing macros to make them work with Healbot, and they work just as good when simply mouseovering a player.
And of course I had totally forgotten about this!
Thanks for reminding me Miauly! *goes off to keybind a lot fo macros to my mousekeys* :-)