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The game forgets all your previous preferences ∞

LOG OUT BEFORE EXITING THE GAME.

There is a vicious bug in Vista which will have WoW forget all of your changed preferences if you log out without exiting the game. Pathetic.

Cannot start the game ∞

Is your realm up? Check here:

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-gb/game/status/us [ 1 ]

Is it Tuesday? Maybe there is scheduled downtime.

Patching Issues ∞

See [ 2 ]

Failed to apply patch ∞

If using Vista, make sure you run WoW as the administrator. Right-click on the shortcut and select ‘run as administrator’ and type in its password.

Checks a download, finishes and then does nothing ∞

If using Vista, make sure you run WoW as the administrator. Right-click on the shortcut and select ‘run as administrator’ and type in its password.

While WoW is running, but not in WoW ∞

My computer runs slow when I switch out of WoW ∞

Make sure you’re not runnning WoW in “windowed mode”. While this mode is faster, it seems to EAT resources and although WoW may run fine, when out of WoW this mode will really bog down your computer.

It makes a WORLD if difference to not run in that mode, even though Windowed mode is lots faster when switching to another program.

Speed Improvements ∞

See World of Warcraft performance improvements

network connection ∞

(sources are dead) [ 3 ]

Network Card Settings

Blizzard has heard reports of network cards that seem to experience problems processing the World of Warcraft/Burning Crusade data. If you do not know what kind of network card you have, please follow these steps:

Click on Start.
Click on Control Panel.
Double click on the System icon (in Windows XP, you may need to click Switch to Classic View on the left hand side of the screen).
Select the Hardware tab.
Click on Device Manager.
Expand the section labeled Network Adapters.
The name of your network adapter will be listed there.

Once you have located the name of your network adapter, please verify you have the latest driver from the manufacturer. You can find a list of hardware manufacturers and their contact information on our Hardware Vendor List. However, some have only resolved it by using older drivers. You may need to experiment with your card and its settings to eliminate the problem.

The Duplex and Checksum Offload settings in the Network Card may need to be adjusted for better performance.

Locate your network card via the above steps.
Right click the network card and select Properties.
Click the Advanced tab.
If you have an option to set the Duplex setting set it to 100BaseTX Full Duplex.
If you have an option to set the Checksum Offload setting, may vary in specific naming, disable this setting.

Changing these options will normally cause your connection to reset temporarily. You may also have to restart your system after changing these options to connect to the internet once more. Some specific cards require additional settings, you can go to our Network Driver Update page. Since this particular issue is related to communication, there are some solutions relating to disconnections that may also contribute to this problem. You can find those suggestions on this page.

ping time ∞

Faster Ping [ 4 ] purportedly helps a lot. It’s just a program which does all the settings-changing for you. But you can do things manually.

(aource)

Another way to do this (if you are not too worried about anything other than wow lag).

To get low pings with 2 simple registry hacks do the following. You need to apply both registry changes to get the maximum effect.

1 – TcpAckFrequency

NOTE if you are running Windows Vista this setting may not have any effect – a hotfix is needed which i’m tracking down. This works fine under Windows XP

Type “regedit” in windows “run..” dialog to bring up registry menu

Then find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\

There will be multiple NIC interfaces listed in there, find the one you use to connect to the internet, there will be several interfaces listed (they have long names like {7DBA6DCA-FFE8-4002-A28F-4D2B57AE8383}. Click each one, the right one will have lots of settings in it and you will see your machines IP address listed there somewhere. Right-click in the right hand pane and add a new DWORD value, name it TcpAckFrequency, then right click the entry and click Modify and assign a value of 1.

You can change it back to 2 (default) at a later stage if it affects your other TCP application performance. it tells windows how many TCP packets to wait before sending ACK. if the value is 1, windows will send ACK every time it receives a TCP package.

2 – TCPNoDelay

This one is pretty simple

Discussed here

Type “regedit” in windows “run..” dialog to bring up registry menu

Then find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\Parameters

Right-click in the right hand pane and add a new DWORD value, name it TCPNoDelay, then right click the entry and click Modify and assign a value of 1.

Click Ok and close the registry editor, then reboot your PC.

I have found the performance to be at least as good as routing via a Linux box, possibly better.

Cannot join LFG ∞

/join lookingforgroup

Step One: Restoring Default Chat Settings

1. Log out of World of Warcraft to your desktop.

2. Navigate to the World of Warcraft folder, which is often found in the Program Files directory (the default path is C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft).

3. Once there, travel to the following folder: WTF\Account\ACCOUNTNAME\Realmname\Playername.

For example, if your account name is ILOVEWOW, and the character experiencing the issue is named Gamemaster on a fictional server called Blizzard, the file path would be: WTF > Account > ILOVEWOW > Blizzard > Gamemaster.

4. Find the file entitled chat-cache.txt and delete it. This shall ensure that your chat settings are restored to their defaults the next time you log in.

5. Log back into World of Warcraft and see what effect that has had on your issue. If it has not yet been resolved, fret not! We need only move on to…

Step Two: Leaving and Joining Channels

1. Travel to a major city Ironforge and Orgrimmar seem to be popular choices, but any of the six capital cities (the others are Stormwind, Darnassus, Thunder Bluff, and Undercity) will do.

2. Type the following scripts one by one into your chat window, ensuring that you follow the spacing, capitalization, and punctuation precisely as they appear below, and pressing Enter after each:

/script LeaveChannelByName("Trade - City");
/leave General
/leave LocalDefense

For private channels, use /leave channelname (no quotes), e.g. /leave guildmages

Note: If you receive an error message after entering one of these scripts, then it has not been entered properly; if that is the case, it may help to copy them straight from your browser window and paste them into the chat window in-game, to ensure that nothing is missed. Also, it is not necessarily a bad sign if nothing occurs after you put these in; so long as you do not receive an error message, youre in good shape.

3. Now for the easy part. Type the following into your chat window, pressing Enter after each:

/join General
/join Trade
/join LocalDefense

For private channels, use /join channelname (no quotes), e.g. /join guildmages

4. You should now be able to speak in these channels as you normally would. Huzzah! If not, however, theres still one more thing to try

Step Three: Resetting the UI

1. Log out of World of Warcraft to your desktop, thereby exiting the game completely.

2. Navigate to the World of Warcraft folder, which is often found in the Program Files directory (the default path is C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft).

3. Either rename (or delete) the WTF, Cache and Interface folders. (Note: If you do not wish to permanently lose any third-party addons you may have accrued, or macros you’ve written for your characters, you would be well-advised to merely rename the folders, rather than delete them entirely.)

4. Log back into the game by double-clicking WoW.exe, ensuring that you do not reinstall any addons before doing so.

And there you have it: The means of resolving an issue with one’s chat channels. If, after having performed the above steps, your chat channels still haven’t been restored to their former glory, then the issue you are having may be best handled through our Technical Support Department. Please visit our Technical Support page: [ 5 ] for common issue resolutions and information on how to contact them by phone or e-mail

Footnotes

was web.archive.org/web/20230130135314/https:worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/game/status/us
was us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/c/support/service-status/14
was https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/c/support/service-status/14
was us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/c/support/service-status [ ↩ ]
was us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21447 [ ↩ ]
was us.battle.net/support/en/article/npcs-or-players-show-as-unknown
was us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=21017
was originally us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21017 [ ↩ ]
was wow.curse.com/downloads/details/10599/ (archived) [ ↩ ]
was us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21049 [ ↩ ]

spiralofhope

World of Warcraft troubleshooting