Update: The Director of Digital Communications at Time Warner Cable has responded.
We don’t play World of Warcraft, but if we did, it looks like we’d have to cancel Time Warner Cable and install FIOS in order to guarantee a connection to Blizzard’s servers. That’s what some East Coast WoW players are saying—they’ve been suffering disconnections and game-killing lags for months now, and Time Warner Cable seems unable to solve the problem. They swear they’re not doing anything to disrupt or throttle gamers, and say that “customers who are having problems on the local level should contact customer service.” Based on the 24-page thread on Blizzard’s forums, TWC’s customer service has yet to resolve the issue.
Everyone here is extremely frustrated because we want to play but can’t get a connection to do so. Blizzard does what they can to help but the problem is the path to the servers not the servers themselves so we are sent to TWC. I’m sure everyone that has called has been asked to check thier connection, their router, their modem and their underwear color. The “techs” are outsourced and don’t listen or don’t understand English very well. How many of you have told the “tech” that you have tried their suggestions 100 times only to have them send you to http://speedtest.nyc.rr.com/ and say “See .. no problem with your connection”?
Maybe you should unplug your router for a few moments to reset it. LOOKIT ME I’M A TIME WARNER CABLE CSR.
Update: An alleged Time Warner Cable employee wrote to us this morning:
Without going into detail, I am an employee of Time Warner Cable. At this time, we are not aware of any issues with this. If possible, please urge anyone having this issue to contact us immediately using an online form. If we have account information, we can investigate the issue, but we do not block packets/servers/etc. that should be causing the issue. If anything, a recent system upgrade should be delivering faster speeds. Please, if possible, direct those with the issue here:
“TWC Blamed for Internet Interference” [New York Post]
(Photo: thms.nl)
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TWC is worthless. The only techs that actually are honest with me are Tier3.
When you have a dedicated machine, not a dinky router. For your routing needs. They tell you it is the router… So .. You walk over to the router, while on the phone. They still insist is is on your end. Even when you have a next door neighbor come on the phone and say they suck. They TWC says reboot the hardware.
Since I have only the option of TWC, dialup(no phone line) or nothing. I just tell them I am paying for something. I am going to waste your time. Yeah a tool move, but if they do not care about my money. I can give a crap if they get yelled at.
The one time I spent 8 hours…. YES, 8 hours when my cable was out. I got punted around the phone network. Hung up on and all sorts of goodness. Lucky for them. I took the deal they offered the next day.
I do remind them. Sometimes it is not not worth even free if it does not work good.
The trucks they roll out. I have only had one compliant. The one guy was a jerk, but professional.I just let him do his thing and get out of my home. Everyone else was good or superb.
TWC = The Worst Cable
Some people I play WoW with will lose their connection 3 or 4 times an hour, and don’t ever get it fixed. They almost always have cable. It really stinks when they’re healing and we have a boss down to 5%. One person kills the whole raid.
I used to have Comcast, and lost my internet every night, long before I played WoW. I then got DSL and haven’t had problems. I almost never get disconnected, and my ping is often below 100ms.
@NeutronDecker:
Sorry I was really making a suggestion to people that maybe didn’t know to do it.
I’ve personally had issues with TWC in the past where the internet would shut down on me periodically for days at a time. Eventually I switched to DSL but that turned out to be just as painful. Between TWC and Verizon, I’ve probably spent a good 20 hours or more talking to outsourced CSRs that couldn’t break script and waiting for guys that have no idea what they’re doing replace parts that didn’t need replacing.
But, that was about 4 years ago. Now I’m on FIOS and haven’t had a major outage in quite a while. Not to say it’s perfect. But, if I were forced into going back to either one of those things I think I might just start stealing internet. I just can’t deal with the incompetence nor should anyone have to.
Thing 1) When they say TWC are they Refering to the RoadRunner internet service provided by TWC and their subs? If so their level 1 techs are in Canada.
Thing 2) Please learn about da internet. TWC and subs do not own primary back bones such as the level 3 network brighthpuse here localy dumps theiir network into in the end.
The problemis not so much twc but the people providing service to them and in such a case, twc WILL have a hard time getting the level3/other network backbone provider to fix it.
Without seeing their failed tracert I can not defenitaly say its not TWC fault, but hey the internet is a big place it always dosent work.
Oh yeah, these guys are terrible. Their map for “solving” problems is kinda like:
Do you have a router? Yes====> That’s your problem right there. Bye.
No======>Ok, let me check the signal.======> Signal is good, you have no problem. Bye.
I guess I know now to never subscribe to Time Warner. I do love WoW.
@zibby: I was once told the problem was my router AFTER I’d already replaced the prior router. (guess what – they both worked fine.)
@masterage: You said it yourself – you don’t even play the game. Honestly, $200 or so a year is pretty cheap to provide so many hours of entertainment.
Well, maybe this is a good thing. WoW is a pretty all consuming game. I have friends who literally disappeared for months when they got into the game. They’d not go online or take phone calls.
@mmstk101: Hey, quit biding my style. (TGS reference)
Damn geeks and their two handed plus three broadswords to keep the ladies and Valkeries off.
Substitute “Vonage” for “WoW”, and you have the reason I fired TWC a year and a half ago. For all those people who say Vonage sucks, it only sucks because your cable internet service sucks. It’s the reason I decided not to participate in their IPO back in the days which was, in retrospect, a really good decision. When you’re dependent upon somebody else with whom you do not have a business relationship, that’s bad news. Keep your money FAR away.
In general, it’s really sad that I am hundreds of times more satisfied with Verizon DSL than I ever was with TWC’s so-called internet “service.”
@dragonfire81:
5. Ninja’s are mammals.
Any WoW player effected by this should start trolling the TW forums and customer support line ASAP. They won’t be able to handle to retarded that comes from that.
@dragonfire81: What did points 1 & 2 have to do with points 3 & 4, or the article for that matter?
Just asking.
I’m totally going to GY camp them IRL.
Here’s an example of the problem right here, steps 12 and 13 (of 19) of my trace to my home realm:
12 13 ms 11 ms 15 ms att-level3-oc192.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.127.150]
13 175 ms 179 ms 192 ms tbr1.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.106]
Every hop up to 12 is fine; 13-19 are slow and slower.
To me, it doesn’t look like it’s TWC directly.
Wait until you get a TWC rep that sounds like they are from the ghetto (and I mean seriously ghetto.. “hunny chile whachu need me to help you fixin?” and I swear I could hear the headset move like she was moving her head) telling you that the signal from your router is fine, even though you’re standing there holding both pieces of the cable outside of your apartment, and it’s clearly *not* connected…
I’ve been working with people on the wow technical support forums to resolve this problem and I just can’t figure it out. Everything you can possibly do from the cmd prompt is normal, yet they still experience lag.
Where is it coming from!? >_<
btw, I don’t think everyone on the east coast and it most likely is a generalized excaggeration because this problem is actually all over the place, particularly in Brazil and the Phillipines though.
I wow it up all night long baby, but I’m in Texas. YEEHAAAA
Thought: Doesn’t time warner “lag out” bittorrent?
Blizzard updates run using bittorrent or a bittorrent-alike system… So do they “throttle” connection to the server farm that runs the bittorrent server, and, additionally the rest of the WOW server clusters?
Solution: Realize that shaping packets is a huge pain in the rear for anyone who actually *DOES* something using their computer. Granted, we’re not their target audience (you know, people who use what they pay for.)
Why would Time Warner want customers that use lots of bandwidth?
It sounds like their way of telling you to get another service so they can focus on more profitable customers.
@Andonisus, Reaper of Souls on them!
@GamblesAC2: I meant to say If TWC doesnt fix this “problem” I will pull out my Andonisus, Reaper of Souls on them!
okay lets see if this works [url=http://thottbot.com/i22736]Andonisus, Reaper of Souls[/url]
@othertim: i had something similar happen. after two tech visits and a ton of Internet research I found out that the standard cable modem Comcast gave me didn’t respond well to “noise” on the line. After going out and buying my own cable modem I haven’t had a problem since.
I’m not in NY/NJ, but here in Ohio I’ve had no problems with bittorrent or playing games both on xbox live and on the pc. While I don’t play WoW, I do play some other mmo’s and haven’t had any problems. /anecdote
Guild Wars blow WOW away anyway. Better graphics, less lag, no monthly fees.
Guild Wars was the original!
it might be because most of the wow players also bittorrent a lot and now that they are testing to charge more fees if people use their internet too much, TWC might just slow these people’s internet connection down because of the downloading and these people happened to be all wow players. lol
on a bit of a side note i have actually once had a good experience with outsourced tech support. the guy i spoke to with linksys was infact not a native english speaker but he very clearly undestood me and quickly caught on that i wasnt just some random person i did know quite a bit but was just having a few a problems.
I have this problem now… insane ping during peak hours.. slow connection… 500 kbps DL at the worst… 1500 DL at the best… first time i spent 3 hours with more then 8 different people in their company from customer service, csr, tech, to the affiliates at earthlink to the makers of the modem… each idiot passing me along to the next as fast as they could with out solving a thing.. not to mention me having to repeat my account information to every single one of them (man is like they live in the dark ages… dont they have computers to bring all this up? ) and theyre all trained to ask you to try the same problem solving solutions even though you tell them you tried those solutions a billion times. Then finally one non-outsourced techy suggested changing the modem to the newer model… this helped for a month or so but ultimately the connection still failed epically..
2nd attempt to fix this problem a few months later had spent an hour to get the outsourced idiot to get some one to come and fix my connection… got an appointment with confirmation and all even repeated it to him and had him repeat the info to me… Low and behold he got the dates wrong and i had to call back to reschedule… which by the way took half an hour cus it took the guy 10 mins to take down my account information.. and stupid me i had asked him a simple question (whats the average download speed of a average TWC user?) to prompt him to put me on hold for 15 mins to find out… which by the way he got wrong… cus he gave me the maximum downloadable speed…
all in all im kinda sick of time warner cable… the technician when he finally came was able to get my connection from 500 kbps to 9800 kbps where it should be really… he said the problem was that the wires in the building were like 20 years old.. and needed to be replaced…
so… now i twittle my thumbs and wait to see if this really helps my wow lag… good luck all…
my connection/lag was not fixed as i had mentioned above, it just went back to the old laggy, slow speed internet that is Timewarner… I pondered to call them to send another technician to my house or just cancel the service…
I opted to cancel the service all together..Boy was that an epic journey…From the main menu i pressed 2 for billing then 4 for cancelling service, instead i got customer service…from there I began my odyssey with 12 different people, from Customer service to sales to billing to special dept (thats suppose to handle cancellations) then back to customer service to billing to spec dept.. in one giant circle….By this time I was tired of being bounced around and having to provide my phone number/personal info a dozen times not to mention being transferred to the main line so many times…
I swear if i had to listen to that damn voice recording one more time…………. finally i had enough and told the lady at billing that im tired… get some one from special dept to come down and cancel this damn acct(which she did)… because it should not be this hard and take this long to cancel an account. I went on to rip into how bad their service and products were… I would have yelled even more but the lady was too nice….and it wasnt her fault, its time warner and their policys/company structure and their shitty product…
did i mention to this day my reoccurring payment feature at time warner never worked? no matter how many times i set it up and called them to fix it…
so now i…
signed up for verizon today… 10 mins to get my account up and running …pain free so far… first 6 months free!!
hope you all have better luck then i did cancelling time warner cable….