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Troubleshooting and reporting WoW technical problems

2020-06-09

WoW is a dynamic game where new patches, driver updates or just hardware combinations can cause some problems or not perform as expected. In this article I want to showcase how to troubleshoot and fix problems and how to report those remaining.

Sources of technical problems

Lets start with some non-WoW related problems that may occur:

And some WoW specific ones:

And in the end there may be no problems just your hardware not able to put out the expected framerate in given scenario. WoW for the most part is CPU limited so if you don't have a recent good CPU you may get lower or quite low FPS. Some GPU performance is required also. Raid combat or mass actors scenarios will tax the CPU. Then only lower settings may help (or better hardware). Some laptops with integrated graphics can perform worse than expected if they are set to work with lower cTDP and or when they throttle which easily can happen nowadays.

In WoW System settings check the advanced tab - to see what GPU is used or what FPS limits are set.
In WoW System settings check the advanced tab - to see what GPU is used or what FPS limits are set.

Troubleshooting performance and stability problems

The first step would be to check wherever the problem is related to WoW only or does it happen with other games/apps as well. Some cases may be hard to distinguish but there are apps that can help.

Step one: try running WoW without any addons and with clean WTF and cache folders - you can move your addons and WTF folder out of the game to run it and then move them back. WTF folder holds various settings, including addons settings. If that doesn't help you can move the files back.

If you use a dedicated GPU but your CPU has an iGPU - check if WoW did not switch to iGPU instead of dGPU which can happen.

Step two: run Userbenchmark to get an overview of your PC: aside of dumb commentary has a handy feature of showing percentile performance of your PC components. If you have a specific GPU then it will tell you how it performs versus other PCs with exact same GPU. If the percentile is very low then it may indicate a problem with that component.

You can run userbenchmark before running WoW and then run the game, get to a moment when it starts making problems and alt-tab the game out of focus and run the benchmark again to have a second run with WoW in the background. If the first clean run doesn't reveal any problems then the second run may help. You are looking for things like:

High CPU load when game isn't running is a bad thing and may limit WoW performance
High CPU load when game isn't running is a bad thing and may limit WoW performance
Percentile results compare this i7-4790K to other i7-4790K which help quickly judge if it's performing within reasonable range
Percentile results compare this i7-4790K to other i7-4790K which help quickly judge if it's performing within reasonable range

Step three: checking for drivers conflicts via latency monitoring: You can use latencymon or DPC latency checker to check if during WoW play-through the latency won't increase to a high level. Just start the app, let it do the measurements. If it's relatively low then you can start the game, make the problem occur in the game and then alt-tab to the app. If the latency is high then likely some driver or something within Windows may be in conflict with one another. Latencymon can list drivers causing such high latency.

It happens from time to time that Nvidia drivers (but not limited to them) get in conflict with audio drivers - wherever due to random update or some other reason. To fix this you can remove the Nvidia driver with DDU, then update your motherboard drivers (like audio) and then do a clean install of the GPU driver. In some more convoluted cases a Windows reinstall could fix the problem (or testing on a clean Windows install made on another drive).

Latency check to see if there are no driver conflicts - all looks good here
Latency check to see if there are no driver conflicts - all looks good here

Step four: checking sensors for thermals and other metrics: Applications like hwinfo can track a lot of system sensors. You can check if during gaming CPU/GPU/Drives temperature doesn't get to high, how GPU/CPU clocks change, how much system memory or GPU memory is being used etc. CPU and GPUs will lower their clocks to prevent overheating and even if the temperature seems high but reasonable you should also check the clocks and compare it to clocks specified for the part (base/boost). Thermal throttling can occur due to air vents being blocked by dust, fan failure or just insufficient cooling solutions in the PC/laptop.

hwinfo can track a lot of parameters. You can double-click one to start drawing a timeline chart or you can start recording to a log file to view later.
hwinfo can track a lot of parameters. You can double-click one to start drawing a timeline chart or you can start recording to a log file to view later.
wow_bottleneck_cpu
When water pump is off CPU gets hot and drops the clock which is quickly visible on monitoring apps as well as userbenchmark run
wow_bottleneck
Thermally limited CPU pulls the GPU score down as well

A simpler way of checking sensors could be using MSI Afterburner overlay while playing the game. It can show various readings as well as log frametime benchmarks (average and 1%/0.1% low FPS).

Open Afterburner settings and set a shortcut for overlay toggle to enable it if it won't be there by default
Open Afterburner settings and set a shortcut for overlay toggle to enable it if it won't be there by default.
Select which parameters should be displayed. CPU/GPU load is best to set as graphs.
Select which parameters should be displayed. CPU/GPU load is best to set as graphs.
CapFrameX provides similar overlay and can create benchmark charts instead of just logging results to a text file.
CapFrameX provides similar overlay and can create benchmark charts instead of just logging results to a text file.

WoW Error 132

The game can crash and report such error code due to various hardware/system reasons. Quite often it can be related to memory problems - either due to high overclock. If it's RAM related then it can have one of the following sources:

RAM stability testing often can take many hours with memtest to be certain it works correctly. WoW seems to be quite picky about it too. Places like Legion Dalaran looks like a good place to test if RAM related crash occurs. Just fly around the main street in circles few times. You can try changing RAM setting in the BIOS to eliminate or confirm it as the source of the problem.

Running R3 2200G with 3200CL14 XMP profile caused BSoD in Classic
Running R3 2200G with 3200CL14 XMP profile caused BSoD in Classic
Or crashed with error 132 on retail
Or crashed with error 132 on retail. Some synthetic benchmarks also failed with such configuration.

Low FPS in very specific spots in the game

It can happen that some places in the game can cause major FPS drops. At the time of writing this article one of such cases was Rustbolt where FPS would halve versus what you would get in a high traffic complex area like The Great Seal in Dazar'alor. Radeon GPU Profiler reported that Rustbolt during that time had bit over double the amount of shaded pixels per frame. Later on it was fixed, or at least to some, as others noticed even higher FPS drops...

...where as semi-transparency effects and alike can heavily decrease FPS the slower your GPU memory is (pixel fill rate getting capped likely). The more semi-transparent fog or similar effects like waterfalls in some old caves you put in your field of view the greater the impact may be. Vega graphics cards with HBM memory may not even notice it while old GDDR5 or integrated graphics will be hit hardest. You can play around changing some settings to limit impact of such effects.

Solving performance problems

Thermal problems are obvious - check if dust isn't blocking radiators and fans, check if fans are spinning and if all of that didn't helped then either you need a thermal paste repaste of the CPU (or GPU sometime) or a better cooling solution. Seek advice before doing anything if you don't have experience with this, especially for the GPU.

SSD storage related problems can be solved by freeing up some space or by moving WoW to a different drive. Note that WoW can create some temporary files, extract some assets so when it's running it may use bit more space.

Driver/Windows conflicts detected by latency monitoring can be solved by doing a clean re-install of the drivers or in an edge case scenario - fresh Windows install.

132 Errors can be impossible to solve unless it's clearly an unstable memory configuration. If lowering the RAM clocks doesn't help the only thing that is left is to report it on the technical support forums after doing some synthetic stability tests.

System/game stability problems should be tested to determine if they appear only in WoW. You can run multiple synthetic benchmarks few times or memtest if it can be memory related. You can try Unigine Superposition and Valley as well as 3DMark TimeSpy and FireStrike variants. If the system will run fine but repeatedly crashes or has issues in WoW then you will have kind of a solid proof it's WoW related.

Unigine Superposition or Valley can run continuously which is handy for stability testing.
Unigine Superposition or Valley can run continuously which is handy for stability testing.

Before reporting unsolved problem you should check if the usually recommended check if no addons / cleared cache helps. Also keep your addons and drivers up to date.

Reporting problems on WoW Technical Support forums

It's good to make a good report to avoid getting a generic response remove addons, update drivers, link files or even no response at all if the problem isn't laid out clearly.

If you have a network problem you should do some WinMTR network analysis and report as advised by Blizzard.

For other problems you ought to provide links to two log files - DxDiag and MSInfo. As you can't attach files on Blizzard forum you should open those log files (they are text files) and copy paste the contents into pastes on pastebin.com and then provide links in your post. As forums don't allow most links you can mark your links as preformatted text for them to pass.

To quick-launch apps needed to generate logs requested by Blizzard support use the Windows+R shortcut (or try typing the app name in search menu)
To quick-launch apps needed to generate logs requested by Blizzard support use the Windows+R shortcut (or try typing the app name in search menu)
MSInfo32 lists components in your PC. Use the top menu to save a text file with this data.
MSInfo32 lists components in your PC. Use the top menu to save a text file with this data.
DxDiag contains DirectX info and logs. Save everything as a text file using the button from the bottom right menu
DxDiag contains DirectX info and logs. Save everything as a text file using the button from the bottom right menu
Both files are plain text and can be copy-pasted to pastebin.
Both files are plain text and can be copy-pasted to pastebin.
Links can be posted, just use the preformatted text option on them.
Links can be posted, just use the preformatted text option on them.

Also describe all your other actions taken like checking thermals, storage, latency and whatnot. Plus the standard no-addons/drivers updates check. The more precise the better.

And in the end check if others reported similar problem. Multiple people reporting same problem can escalate it much quicker.

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