Time Warner Vows to Fix World of Warcraft Problems, Denies Blizzard's Claims

Connection problems plaguing New York City-area World of Warcraft subscribers using Time Warner Cable's Road Runner Internet service will be resolved "as soon as possible," Time Warner spokesperson Alex Dudley told Shacknews. Many NYC-area subscribers on the Road Runner internet service have experienced severe connection difficulties on World of Warcraft servers since July, as detailed in a 25-page thread in the World of Warcraft forums. Blizzard administrators attempting to resolve the issue placed the blame squarely on an alleged change in Time Warner's network management policy. "The cause of these other issues seems to be being blamed on the packet shaping protocols that Time Warner/Road Runner has recently implemented," a Blizzard employee said in the forum. "Our network administrators are continuing to examine what the cause may be, but at this time the cause does seem to be this packet shaping software." However, Dudley refuted this statement, saying that Time Warner has not implemented a change like this to its service, though it holds the right to do so. "We don't have a network management policy called packet shaping," he said. "None of our network management policies are designed to impact a customer's ability to play World of Warcraft." Dudley also denied the legitimacy of a news release detailing Time Warner's nationwide rollout of packet shaping technology, which would potentially cause the same connection difficulties for Time Warner subscribers everywhere. The text of the release had been revealed on forums at DSLreports.com, and posters said Road Runner customer service representatives had e-mailed the information to them in response to service complaints. "We don't issue releases that outline our network management policies or changes to that policy," Dudley said. "Customer service reps don't send that stuff to folks." Dudley said connection issues affecting NYC-area customers playing other games--like Valve's Counter Strike--also would be resolved.