wine users - Dec 2009 - Strange WoW behavior - unresponsive -> disconnect

I'm encountering a strange new behavior from WoW.  I'm able to start the
game, login, and enter the game world.  Then, either immediately or after hours
of play, the environment suddenly becomes unresponsive.  My toon is able to move
around, but NPCs do nothing when clicked, chat traffic vanishes, the Logout and
Exit Game buttons do nothing, etc.  If I wait long enough, I get a
"Disconnected from server" error.  Happens on all toons and on all
realms where I have characters.  There isn't a network issue, and rebooting
my Ubuntu system has no effect.

First time I saw this was the day of the 3.3 patch, which also happens to be
when I upgraded wine.  I couldn't get back in all day, then came back the
following day and was able to get in.  Second time was yesterday; I came back
after the maintenance outage today and the problem was gone.  Third time is now.

Anyone else seeing similar behavior?


Code:
$ uname -a
Linux don-desktop 2.6.31-16-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 04:02:15 UTC 2009
x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ wine --version
wine-1.1.34

This does sound like a network error to me. What have you done to eliminate that
possibility?  Remember to keep in mind that just because you loose your
connection to the game server doesn't mean you have lost your internet
connection all-together.  Try tracking your latency, maybe there is a lot of lag
somewhere between you and the game server.  There's an addon called Titan
Panel that has a performance monitor that constantly shows your FPS, latency,
and memory usage.  Keep an eye on that and see if you notice a large amount of
latency each time before this happens.  This used to happen to me all the time
and I always noticed my ping rising slowly but dramatically a few minutes before
it happened to when it happened, always ending with the ping (latency) being
above 17000ms, or 17 seconds.  I went to pingtest.net and found that my line
quality was "Grade D".

Eventually I fixed the issue by calling my ISP's customer support line and
politely explaining the issue and asking them to run a full network diagnostic.
In my case, they did and they found that some of their equipment was operating
sub-nominal and had to be replaced. They actually called me back and thanked me.
lol

Granted, if it is a network issue, it might not even be on your or the ISP's
end, but on Blizz's end, or somewhere between.  And it is quite a
coincidence that you started having this issue the day of the 3.3 patch, so it
is conceivable that it's some other issue, but let's definitively make
sure that it's not the network first.

One other quick note, this issue is also VERY common if the realm you're
playing on goes down unexpectedly.

Hope this helps,
LupusNoctu

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 2:11 AM, doumakes <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> I'm encountering a strange new behavior from WoW. ?I'm able to
start the game, login, and enter the game world. ?Then, either immediately or
after hours of play, the environment suddenly becomes unresponsive. ?My toon is
able to move around, but NPCs do nothing when clicked, chat traffic vanishes,
the Logout and Exit Game buttons do nothing, etc. ?If I wait long enough, I get
a "Disconnected from server" error. ?Happens on all toons and on all
realms where I have characters. ?There isn't a network issue, and rebooting
my Ubuntu system has no effect.
>
> First time I saw this was the day of the 3.3 patch, which also happens to
be when I upgraded wine. ?I couldn't get back in all day, then came back the
following day and was able to get in. ?Second time was yesterday; I came back
after the maintenance outage today and the problem was gone. ?Third time is now.
>
> Anyone else seeing similar behavior?

This happens ALL THE TIME, and it is a network issue... but I believe
it is on blizzards part, We have Several WoW installs a Few on wine in
FreeBSD 8
and 1 on a macbook pro (running native OSX Warcraft) and one on
Windows xp. sometimes one these installs will drop connection with
blizzards servers at what seems like random. all the other machines
will be on and active no trouble.


in summary, I believe this is not a wine issue I have seen it on OSX
and Windows and wine.


Sam Fourman Jr.
Fourman Networks

On Wednesday 16 December 2009 5:42:05 pm Sam Fourman Jr.
wrote:
> in summary, I believe this is not a wine issue I have seen it on OSX
> and Windows and wine.
We have been having it happen on WinXP, Vista, and Fedora12/wine - I 
agree, the problem is at the Blizzard end.