Rogers admitted throttling World of Warcraft players due to the Blizzard Downloader’s Peer-to-Peer (P2P) option. Rogers claims to be in contact with Blizzard Entertainment to find a solution, but the software update Rogers will issue out to fix a second problem spawned after trying to fix the lag problem won’t be available until … June. If you have lag issues with Rogers while playing World of Warcraft, a temporary fix is to disable the Blizzard Downloader’s P2P option and other P2P software running in the background while playing WoW.

Make sure to contact the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) for complaints, and post at the Rogers Forums to keep track of any further resolutions.

    RogersReggie: Thank you for your patience while we have been investigating issues related to World of Warcraft (WoW). What we know today is that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that is inadvertently slowing the game for some customers. While we have fixed some issues with a software modification, new problems have emerged that we expect will be addressed with a second software update in June.

    We believe the problem occurs when P2P is running while simultaneously playing the game. If you are experiencing problems we suggest you turn off the peer to peer setting within the WoW game and ensure no other P2P file sharing applications are running while playing WoW. WoW does use P2P for software updates, but with this setting changed you should continue to automatically receive software updates through other methods.

    This is only a temporary solution. We continue to work closely with the game manufacturer and our equipment supplier to help resolve this issue as soon as possible.

The Rogers Representative claims the company is in contact with Blizzard Entertainment to find a solution. However, the Blizzard employee in charge of such issues affirms in this World of Warcraft forum thread they have tried to reach Rogers for months, and Rogers hasn’t replied any of those emails. For this matter, Rogers users should keep posting complaints in their forum thread, and add pressure via the CRTC.

    BrianL (Blizzard Support Forum Agent): Sadly, that representative seems to be slightly misinformed. This issue has nothing to do with the type or content of WoW traffic, at all. We don’t use p2p in game, period. We also use the same registered ports we have been since November of 2009. It is definitely disheartening to see that type of uninformed response, as it indicates that there is a serious disconnect occurring at multiple levels.

    We still hold hope that your ISP will be willing to respond to our contact requests. We have sent numerous emails over the past few months, and I regret to inform you that I haven’t seen a reply come back yet. Our network engineers are still politely requesting an open dialog so that we can assist your ISP with information specific to our network traffic that may help them properly configure their traffic management systems and end this issue. I still hold hope that they may reply at some point in the future.

    Unfortunately, if they really are ‘talking to us’, they aren’t in contact with the department they need to be. I know I have made this offer many times in the past, but they can email us at forumtech@blizzard.com and a rep will put them in contact with the right people. I have been checking that email address many times a day for the past 3 months, but, alas, nothing ever arrived from them.

    Thankfully, I just received an update that your ISP should be in contact with our Network Operations Center on Monday. Unfortunately, I will not be available to post anymore updates, but I am sure another forum representative will keep things current.

    My fingers are crossed for you all. 🙂 — 3-18-11