Reduce lag in WoW and increase FPS

[Schlup]

PLEASE NOTE: EDITING THE REGISTRY CAN CAUSE SERIOUS SYSTEM PROBLEMS!

Due to some "brilliant" choices by Blizzard's coders, latency can be artificially high, but this is a way around such. Please note this involves the registry and as such, you should be very careful to do exactly what's listed. This works for XP and Vista, haven't had a chance to test for 7.

1) Open a command prompt and type "ipconfig" to determine your IP address. Keep it in mind for later.

2) Run "regedit".

3) Navigate to this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\

4) There will be a few subkeys, each representing a network device. You need to locate the one that contains a key value that has your IP address. This one will be your active network card.

5) In that folder, create a new DWORD value named TcpAckFrequency. Modify the newly created value, changing the Value data field to "1" (without the quotation marks).

6) Close regedit, and you can either restart Windows, or go to your Network Connections, select the active connection (typically Local Area Connection), and disable, then re-enable it. The goal is to reload the network card.

Another write up of this is...

International lag fix
WoW lags, it's not something new if you're playing on servers a bit far away from your country, but don't worry people are fixing it ! Out of all the methods offered to fix the lag on your machine, one of them posted on Elitistjerks forums seems to work very well.

<> <> <> Read this first <> <> <>
1 - It might have side effects, like slowing down your download speed or affecting your performance on other softwares. (In my case, it didn't change anything)
2 - If you're not sure about what you're doing, just don't do it. I don't want to be responsible because you crashed your computer in some way because you wasted your registry.
2.1 - Seriously, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. It will be fixed in one or two weeks anyway. (and the official fix won't have any impact on other softwares)
3 - If you don't have the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\ directory, you can download and apply this file to your registry.
4 - Windows Vista users might want to check this post too.

Source - Elitistjerks.com

"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."

Basically, this fix is deactivating the Nagle algorithm to improve your ping. If you don't want to do it you can just wait for the 2.3.2 patch as it's supposed to deactivate it too, but I don't think you can test it on PTRs right now because the updated patch notes from the latest PTR Build (7705) are actually for the upcoming build (7710).

Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/new-spell-ranks-on-ptr-lag-fix-comics/?PHPSESSID=go30aa7g6unb595fffkj8qm0u7

[tehfunk101]

i can back up the TCPAckfrequency mod, ive used it many times on different machines and saw brilliant results every time.  The server i played on was in California while i live in nebraska, so my average ping was always above 160.  After this mod my ping would never go into triple digits, always <90 even while raiding.  GJ schlup!

[CoCoCountyKiller]

i can back up the TCPAckfrequency mod, ive used it many times on different machines and saw brilliant results every time.  The server i played on was in California while i live in nebraska, so my average ping was always above 160.  After this mod my ping would never go into triple digits, always <90 even while raiding.  GJ schlup!

wow that is a big reduction in ping

co.co.

[corytate]

Thanks Schlup i'm going to try it. And thanks Tehfunk101 for confirming this i was a little weary...to be honest.

[Schlup]

Thanks Schlup i'm going to try it. And thanks Tehfunk101 for confirming this i was a little weary...to be honest.

I don't blame you, I mean it would be like you telling me how to reduce my ping in Call of Duty 6 without even ever played it before...I wouldn't trust you for that.  Especially for those types of edits.  But I found that stuff on the internet from good sources and verified the source was good and at least 3 other sources confirmed it to be good before I put it up.

[corytate]

Thanks man , I played a little to day and wow is WoW faster. Thank you so much for this.

[CoCoCountyKiller]

I don't blame you, I mean it would be like you telling me how to reduce my ping in Call of Duty 6 without even ever played it before...I wouldn't trust you for that.  Especially for those types of edits.  But I found that stuff on the internet from good sources and verified the source was good and at least 3 other sources confirmed it to be good before I put it up.

sounds like he did his homework before posting up his link for the family (BPN)
good job schlup

co.co.

[Schlup]

Thank you, yeah, when I go out on a limb on stuff like this that I can't test myself then I do my homework first.

[FALLEN]

helped a ton

[Arethius]

If you guys are curious as to what this is doing then learn computers!

On a more serious note, this registry edit will tell the network device to check the active connection more frequently. This will create more "pings" to the server in basic english. The reason that this helps WoW perform better is that it forces the realm server to keep a more active connection to your computer and not forget about you.

The negative effects of this arise from servers having activity caps that will intentionally slow/disconnect you from trying to talk to them too much (an attempt to thwart brute-force hacking techniques) or because the server's upload is already being maxed out and these extra communications take up more space. The prior is the more likely cause for it slowing down downloads or web pages loading.

[Schlup]

So are you saying that by doing this it will speed up ping but lower download speeds?  What kinds of numbers are we talking about?  Is this just in WoW or across the internet?

[Arethius]

It won't speed up your ping. It will create more pings to active connections. It won't help/hinder downloads unless your already maxing out your download/their upload OR they put throttles on their server to slow down people who try to be too active to their site. This should in theory only benefit WoW and other games that require an active connection and not really mess with your day to day web browsing.

[Schlup]

Well I guess I'll hold off on doing it for now, mine works fine as it is and I always say if it ain't broke don't fix it!