Gamers on the Street: Oceanic players persist despite performance issues

Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

Oceanic players continue to snarl this week at continued server performance issues that cramp their play. Oceanic subscribers playing from the other side of the world have dedicated servers, yes – but the servers are physically located in North America, and no consideration seems to have been given to shifting maintenance and resource-intensive background processes to non-peak local hours.

Needless to say, a good number of Oceanic players are up in arms over spiraling post-2.4 performance issues. Blue reps continue to take the heat from red-hot flames, reflecting a continued determination to work through the problems. We decided to pop in on a couple of Oceanic servers themselves, away from the heat of the forums, to see what the player temperature seemed to be.

Slavrix, Level 70 Undead Warlock <Kaizen>

We first chatted with Slavrix on Jubei'Thos. Because of Jubei'Thos' status as the only Oceanic realms not grouped with other Oceanic realms in the Bloodlust battlegroup (Jubei'Thos is in the Vengeance battlegroup), players here seem especially sensitive to being pitted against players who live much closer geographically to their servers.

Gamers on the Street: So what's going on with performance here? Are you guys feeling a lot of problems on this server?
Slavrix: We've had server dropouts and insane lag issues from about 6:30 until around 10:30.

Where are you playing from, geographically?
Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.

How long have you noticed these particular performance issues? Since 2.4, or since before that?
Before 2.4, there would be a lag spike that lasted about 15 minutes at about 9:00 p.m., but that was because of the honour updates that happened daily. Since 2.4, it has been lasting about three to four hours.

We've heard there are new problems created by yet another new background process that's running.
Yeah, I've read that on the forums also. But you'd think that they could simply change the times for these processes, wouldn't you?

Do the performance issues change your guild's schedule?
Because of my guild's being made up of people from all over the world (one of the reasons we know [the problems are] server-side), we are unable to just change the schedule, so we miss out on entire days and weeks of raiding.

Do you normally raid during the laggy hours?
Yeah, because it is prime time for the server and is the only time suited to the majority of our guild members, because of other commitments.

Do you think Blizzard should be doing or offering customers more than they are, or do you think it's just an inevitable waiting game until they can change processes or fix the problem?
I think that yes, they could do more than they are. Even if it was just a simple account credit because of the missed times, or as large as new server hardware and the servers being moved to the Oceanic region, as this server is designated for. Either/or.

Think you'll simply give up at some point, unless the problem improves very soon?
Doubtful. they will get a handle on it eventually, especially when people like yourself start to get this information more public.

We suspect Blizzard is working hard to figure out the best way to fix things -- but I know this is frustrating for all the players on these servers. Anything else you'd want to add?
Not that I can think of ATM -- but I thank ye for looking into this, mate. :)

Loughue, Level 70 Dwarf Warrior <THE OUTCASTS>

After speaking with Slavrix, we hopped over to Aman'Thul to chat with Loughue.

Loughue: Only beef I have is that lag spikes seem to occur completely randomly, even when there are few people on. And when you're in a raid like Kara or Gruul's, you don't need the entire group/half the group/ANY of the group being DCed for apparently no reason. MT DCs, everyone dies; main heals DCs, either everyone dies or almost everyone dies.

It was our impression that the big lag problems were hitting at predictable times, such as when battleground calculations were being made.
Those calculations no longer occur, as honor is now awarded immediately upon acquisition. It was true that lag used to spike on honor roll, but with honor roll now gone, it shouldn't be such an issue.

We've heard, though, that there are new background processes that are contributing to the new performance issues. Have you noticed a change in the lag since 2.4?
For the first two days, lag was impossible. Doing battlegrounds (AV in particular) meant basically hoping that you were moving/fighting, because you couldn't tell what was happening on screen. Most people DCed for no reason or found themselves dead after fighting vastly inferior opponents.

Has that improved since the first days after the patch?
Only mildly. Battlegrounds are now playable, but even in off times, entire raids are DCed.

So has your guild rescheduled around times you think the lag is worse? Or do you find it unavoidable?
At times, it is unavoidable. Generally, most of our top ends are on at unusual times on the weekend or during the week, so it makes it hard to get organized around lag spikes. Typically we can get away without being booted between 10:30 p.m. ST and 12:30 a.m. ST -- and even then, someone quite often has to relog due to lag.

Where are you geographically located?
I'm in central Australia.

Have you always played on this server?
Originally, I played on the U.S. Illidan server (so I was used to large lag) but had to change due to time issues.

Since you've said you PvP, would you prefer Oceanic-only battlegroups, where you were not put up against players who don't have the same distance to their servers? Or if they fix the new issues, do you think that is a non-issue?
If we were given dedicateds, it's an non-issue. But as it stands, it's hard to compete in the battlegroups. It's not been unheard of that an Oceanic side (either Horde or Alliance) is booted, while the side with dedicated (servers) fights through a battleground with no or few opponents.

We appreciate your time chatting. Hope things get better for you soon!
Thank you.

Gamers on the Street goes out to talk to players live on the realms every Monday, finding out what's hot on players' minds. The Sunwell hot on yours? Visit our Sunwell page, with nearly everything we've ever posted about patch 2.4.