Hmmm, this explain a problem I was having maybe a year or so ago, I'd periodically lag behind for three seconds or so, and then everything would catch up. It was annoying, but not gamebreaking and I learned to live with it. Then one day it stopped. Then I moved and I haven't noticed a problem with the new connection so far.

Funny, Comcast said the same thing about their throttling practices. TWC exposed as liars in 3...2...

I have a friend who would be quite angry over this. I don't know if the issue persists up here in Rochester, NY. I'll have to ask him tonight. Time Warner is probably creating a new "WoW Fee" or something ridiculous.

NNNOOOOOOOOO!

As soon as FIOS is available in my area I'm telling Time-Warner to kiss my hairy roadrunner.

I once had a huge problem with Comcast in Dallas (before Time Warner Cable took over and Comcast took Houston instead) because while I "technically" had a connection, it was about as fast as dialup.

I called the techs repeatedly, first trying to reason with them about my skills hooking up a router (I'm studying computer engineering), but that was to no avail. Eventually, it boiled down to them saying "okay reset the router" and I'd wait about 0.2 seconds and then say "ok done." And after a minute of that they'd realize (magically?) that it's NOT the router! Finally, after dealing with this a couple of times, they told me the truth: the backbone for our area was temporarily being routed down a VERY low bandwidth and VERY high ping pipe to the east coast.

Of course, residential contracts say nothing about a minimum guaranteed speed, only a connection. So while I had dialup speeds they were still actually fulfilling their contract.

1. I never have and never intend to play world of warcraft, it is just not my thing at all.

2. I know many people play the game RELENTLESSLY for hours a day.

3. I suspect TWC *IS* throttling WoW traffic

4. Outsourced tech support stinks

If a whole bunch of WoW players got together and threatened TWC with their +5 broadswords, I bet this whole problem would just disappear.

/secretly wishes he had a +5 broadsword

Optimum Online has this problem a few months ago, and it was determined to be something on AT&T's end.

I know, sounds dumb, but its the truth. Gotta love the inter tubes.

I have a similar problem playing Metal Gear Online on my PS3. Every time I play it tells me my connection is not good and I get disconnected so often.

And I can prove Comcast is throttling bandwidth because when I download a good amount of data in one day for the next few days my connection is on and off. And then a few days later its back to normal.

I seriously doubt that TWC is throttling WoW UDP packets. MMORPGs use relatively small amounts of bandwidth. They just require a certain Quality of Service.

This same thing happened with Everquest on Comcast AND Verizon DSL at various times in various areas. It almost always turned out to be related to them working on lines similar to Ein2005's story. The first time I encountered it was when Comcast bought out Adelphia and the internet went to shit.

I switched to DSL and for a year it was great and then IT went to shit. I switched back to Comcast and it was great from there on out.

Months after both times of crappiness, Comcast and Verizon announced increased speed in those areas where it was previously crappy. They just didn't want to advertise "Better speed/HD service coming soon (shitty service for now)!"

You'll never get anywhere talking to level 1 tech support - they just read scripts off a screen and then schedule a truck when the problem isn't fixed.

One time the gateway I was on was hosed. You could ping the gateway from either side, but couldn't ping through it. I told the level 1, level 2, and level 3 techs what was wrong and suggested they reboot it. They all insisted it was fine. Five hours later I get a phone call from a level 3 tech saying it had been fixed and that the problem was so difficult to figure out they had to call in extra techs to figure it out. The solution they came up with: reboot the gateway.

Yea, it may not be TWC, but a backbone the information is traveling through. Not to say that's much better, and yea, I'd drop them... just throwing it out there.

Yeah, I'm outing myself as a nerd here. I have issues with periodic disconnects on AT&T while I'm playing Tabula Rasa (an MMORPG). This doesn't happen during regular web surfing at all, and it only lasts a minute or two, so tech support isn't able to help me.

twc kept telling me it was my router's fault. bought a new router. $100 later, the internet is still terrible, giving me game-busting lag times. damn you twc!!!!

It really doesn't matter if it's TWC's fault or not. If I were them, I'd fix this problem QUICKLY. There is nothing more frightening than hoards of jonesing WoW gamers. Just think... their way to expend pent up frustration is to kill, KILL, KILL!!!! (other animated characters). What happens when there are no animated characters to kill, KILL, KILL!!!! ?

Complain to your game makers regarding their wanton throttling and manipulation of your bandwidth. After all, it IS their bottom line that is getting hurt when you kill your subscription and move on.

Post complaints and keep posting. This has GOT to be stopped, quick!

I had TWC up until two months ago. Four nights a week at 11pm like clockwork the service would start degrading to the point where any online gaming would be impossible.

I now have FIOS. Thanks TWC. You made me see the light.

When I played Wow, I had TWC. Had a slight problem for about 2 months with constant lag. Did a trace route and saw some of their servers were really bad. Wasn't me or Blizzard. It eventually fixed itself but looks like it is back and worse than ever.

No blocking here, they're just "managing their network."

I blame Comcast. They're responsible for this, somehow...

Yay for customer service departments at every company. 1000 people could have the same problem, proving a trend that the company engineers should investigate, and the CSR's only goal is still to get every customer off the phone as fast as possible. I honestly don't know how companies ever learn about or solve wide-scale problems but I suspect that action stems entirely from rogue customers with insider connections because companies seem to intentionally disconnect themselves completely from normal support.

Why is it that most CSR systems don't send you an email confirmation of the call, and the notes? I know when I call some support systems, 2 minutes after I get off the phone, I get an email with notes on the call, the resolution, and a link to take a survey.

Seems that this would solve lots of problems, like CSR's saying "its fixed" when its not, or adding services you don't ask for, etc. Most companies, there is no way to know what they are "noting in your file".

My guess is the hops from the TWC customers to the Blizz server at one point go very bad. In which case its definately an TWC problem.

I had a problem with TWC a while back where my ping in WoW would go from 80 to 50,000. No joke that was my ping.

Turns out the cable modem my local TWC franchise had was so old that it wasn't capable of processing the data fast enough, specifically it was a problem where the modem thought it was being attacked and would deny packets. I went out and bought my own cable modem, a Motorola Surfboard and low and behold problem solved.

In this case though, if you have the option to switch to FiOS and you haven't... well I just wish I could switch.

/sniff

Here's a news flash...connection problems have plagued MMORPGs since pretty well the beginning of the genre. Anyone else remember the lawsuit against Origin for the poor, laggy performance in UO during peak hours back in the '90s?

The problem is that MMORPGs don't really need a lot of bandwidth (so that super fast "gamer" tier is a real waste of money). They do need a connection with consistently low latency. Spikes in ping rate show up as the problems described above.

This is why MMORPG companies will typically distribute their servers in several different physical locations—chances are you'll find a server that's relative nearby (in internet terms). Always pick a server to play on that has a low ping.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that's been around since the '90s and shows no signs of going away any time soon (at least not until there's some kind of Internet-wide version of QoS put in place that privileges gaming packets; in other words, never).

Yes, ISP practices and problems on the backbone can change the problem from a minor annoyance to making the game unplayable. Best thing to do is look for new WoW servers that are in a different location. I don't know what Blizzard's policies are on transferring characters from one server to another, but that might help.

On another note... an even earlier experience with SBC Yahoo! DSL (back about... 6 years ago in Houston) was VERY pleasant and VERY easy, and didn't actually involve any humans!

You see, my DSL modem wasn't connecting and I knew it wasn't my fault (I had tried everything). So I called up the number listed in the documentation they mailed the modem with from the phone connected to the DSL line, and the system asked why I was calling. I pressed the appropriate number (something about "to report a service problem, press 4"), the system automatically looked up my account information based on the phone number I called with, and then said that a problem for my area had already been reported and is being taken care of currently, and if the problem didn't go away within a few hours to call back. A few hours later, the problem was fixed.

I was very happy with their phone tree! (That's something you'll RARELY hear!)

Maybe you should unplug your router for a few moments to reset it. LOOKIT ME I'M A TIME WARNER CABLE CSR.

Did you try jiggling the cable?

I had something like this going on with verizon a couple years ago. If its a problem on the way to the servers, you could ask them to rebuild your virtual circuit.

I was being routed all over the friggen country to get to a server that was located across the street from my house. Verizon sent someone out when my speeds would drop at noon until midnight, from 1.5mbps to 4kbps. They re-connected my line at the house, and at their box, and ran tests and found the line to be ok. The tech was nice enough to re-do the wiring at my jack. The next day they called to ask if it was fixed and I said no, so they ran a test and found nothing, then I had them run another test where my router would actually respond to their pings (it was set to ignore them before, so they were pinging their own equipment). The phone tech saw the massive latency and actually gasped at it. He re-built the circuit and I went from 30+ hops to 5.

But that was back when you had competent techs who were based out of the United States rather than the techs from India who just read that script. I have actually gone off on one of them and told her to shut the *expletive* up and listen to me rather than read her script. Once she finally listened my problem was fixed in 2 minutes. I knew what was wrong because it had happened 3 weeks before.

In Tampa we actually have local people doing the support for Brighthouse and the few times I've had to call it's been truly shocking good service. They trusted me AND listened when I told them how I tried troubleshooting the issue. The last time I called after a lighting hit I was on hold less than a minute, through the phone call in less than 5 and had a tech out the next day to fix the issue.

I like articles like this on the Consumerist because it forces transparency on policies and practices that directly affect the consumer. In my world, a company can sell an transparent, crappy product all it wants. Think fast food or Wal-Mart shoes. However, when a company saying one thing and delivering another, that's bullshit and I hope they get wrecked.

Now, can we get something on Blizzard and the awful way they handled Blizzcon tickets?

Time Warner sucks. What sucks even more is in my area their contractor is Utili-Comm South, Which I'm pretty sure is owned by Satan himself.

I had SBC dsl and it worked wonderfully until AT&T took over. Then it went to sh%T.

I would never buy anything from Time Warner Cable. I think they are on the way out.

@SpearXXI: I'm kinda stuck with it, I've tried 5 times to get DSL from AT&T and Verizon says my address doesn't exist.

my service provider is Sympatico

i get lags and disconnects when i'm playing my PS3 online - doesn't matter what game - and its totally random

@dragonfire81:

Throttling WoW traffic would be pretty stupid. It doesn't use much bandwidth at all. (And if you doubt that, consider that the 1000 to 3000 players that might be on a server at one given time add up to an amount of bandwidth that the server can cope with, and then divide THAT amount by the 1000 to 3000 concurrently-connected players, and you'll realize that... no, it really can't be too much bandwidth for a single pipe.

Also, WoW has something like over five or six million monthly paying subscribers in the US alone - doing anything to cause Blizzard to say "We recommend not using TWC as they are directly interfering with traffic to our servers" would not be a healthy business choice.

There is probably some other reason for this that boils down to incompetence or ill-thought-out repercussions for a network change.

Maybe their wives and girlfriends work at Time Warner... wait never mind.

I wonder what my roommate would do if this happened. I mean...he already swears at the top of his lungs when playing WoW (He's nearly 30 btw). How would a crappy connection affect him? Would he get angrier? Would he break the addiction and discover sunlight?

No matter, I think he's getting evicted.

Forward your ports.

I have TWC Road Runner in Rochester, NY, and haven't noticed any significant latency playing WoW.

Crappy FPS due to my POS computer, yes, but no real lag due to my connection. Road Runner has been pretty much stellar across the board.

Here in So. Cal my TWC works like shit. Every day around midnight my service takes a nose dive, or i start surfing at AOL speeds. I've called TWC and was told i need a new router which is bull... I've unplugged my router for ten seconds, made sure the cable is plugged in, all my lights are green...I'm about to loose it.... and i play WOW for hours at a time. I did forward my ports...for wow and bittorent..

We need to do something about this....I hate losing my connection while in my favorite realm...

Well I have been seeing random crashes but nothing major.

I'll tell ya how it goes tonight once I get past the 330+ queue to log in. :/

I'll forgive the local branch of TWC since they're busy absorbing Adelphia. The techs for Adelphia went on strike for a long period of time before it was finally sold (6-12+ months), so they've got their hands full trying to fix a mess. I'm also not a WoW player, so I can't comment on that regard. I do fall into one of the FiOS competition zones that gets "10/1" service, though.

I'm not a numbers freak, and I know how cable roughly works. I'm not always going to get what I'm paying for. As long as the connection is fairly consistent and fast enough, I won't complain. But for kicks, I ran the speed test on TimeWarner's site, knowing that it's not an honest test and they probably played with the routing to skew the data. 1.5 mbit down, 0.5 mbit up. The ONE PLACE they could have faked the data to give them an arguement...

Results from myvoipspeed.visualware.com, which I prefer for the reliability data: 3.28 mb down, 981 kb up.

I find it funny that by leaving TWC's network cloud I get better results.

luckily, Time Warner doesn't have anything close to access here. If they did they'd be dragged out of town...

Now a WoW player, though. I can't fathom spending hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on a single game that will all go away if I stop paying. And wouldn't that eventually seem like work, anyhow?

At least I can pop in to Guild Wars once a month or so just to see what was updated/keep it updated/request from another player to pop in.

@masterage: Now = not
My life for an edit button.

Oh, and a good amount of MMORPGs (especially any main before 2006) can actually be played on 56k...you'll lag a bit but it won't be gamebreaking.

@masterage: Thank you for such an interesting addition to this article that's about throttling internet service and poor customer service, NOT ABOUT YOUR LIKE OR DISLIKE OF WORLD OF WARCRAFT.

My friend doesn't have a problem at home or in his GC, for any FPS or MMO...

I don't know, may just be EC right now.

Live only 45 miles from irvine, and I get monthly bad service on the 8th hop. Still within their network, and its been three years for them to not find the problem

This explains why my friend couldn't play when he was visiting his family the other week.