Media Player boosts WoW performance
by V'Ming Chew 
Dec 19th 2007 at 11:00AM
Many players have experienced faster WoW loading times with Windows Media Player (WMP) running in the background. Some players are also reporting lower latency and higher frames per second.
This tip surfaced in the Europe forums late November and was picked up by the US forums two weeks ago. Many players are reporting shortened loading times, some by more than 50%.
I did a quick test and found that by running WMP in the background, minimized and not playing anything, the login screen popped up about 20 seconds quicker than usual. The world loading time (time between clicking Enter World button and character appearing on screen) was also faster by about 15 seconds. However I did not see any significant improvements in latency or framerate. To eliminate performance boosts due to caching or preloading, I rebooted my machine between each set of timings.
Some players have also suggested adding:
SET timingMethod "1" or SET timingMethod "2"
to the config.wtf file to achieve the same effect without running WMP. For me, this shortened the time for the login screen to appear by 20 seconds as well, but only shortened world loading time by 5 seconds. Combining WMP and the config.wtf tweak resulted in the same timings with just running WMP alone.
There's been no official Blizzard response to this yet, although a likely explanation is that WMP modifies how your computer handles background applications. With WMP open, all available CPU resources apparently become allocated to WoW, leading to better performance.
Does this quirk work for you? Do you see any improvements in framerate and latency?
Filed under: Tips, Tricks, How-tos, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
alex Dec 19th 2007 1:06PM
i added the SET timingMethod "1" as the next line in the config.wtf file and my latency dropped to 0ms at logon. WoW is all can say (pun intended)
Swarfy Dec 19th 2007 1:08PM
I used Media Player *LONG* before this 'tip' came out. Not only did it DROP my FPS but it increased my loading times, and upped my latency.
With out WMP my FPS were at 20-25 peaking at 30 on a good day. With it I'm lucky if i hit 10. My load time were twice as long and my latency went from about 65 upwards to 2k.
hpavc Dec 19th 2007 1:20PM
Use wowloader, kill the unneeded services windows runs automatically and ramp the process of wow to a higher priority during the duration.
eroch Dec 19th 2007 1:38PM
Make a wow version that runs natively on linux!
Bunkai Dec 19th 2007 4:29PM
AMEN!
Dass Dec 19th 2007 5:59PM
Does everyone forget one thing or is it just me.... secs it take to open windows media player.... and does it work for windows vista also?
Brdley Dec 20th 2007 3:57AM
There's another thread on the US forums (complete with Blue responses) that more-or-less confirms this, and says the setTimingMethod command should do the same thing. See here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3168405043&sid=1
Chris A Dec 19th 2007 4:45PM
What about mac users? Does this work too? Btw, no stupid "fuck mac users" comments please. That's so lame.
Theserene Dec 19th 2007 5:03PM
Just tried it on one of our Macs with little noticeable effect.
Marduk Dec 19th 2007 5:47PM
So, wowinsider, this begs the question of; how much is microsoft paying you for all this advertising?
Slayblaze Dec 19th 2007 6:14PM
Ironically enough, there is a World of Warcraft SKIN for WMP you can download right through the player itself, or go to
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/skins5.aspx#uz
and check it out. Very fitting indeed!
Rene Dec 19th 2007 7:57PM
For me, giving the foreground application (WoW in this case) full priority is a bad idea. When I farm, fish or do extremely boring quests (especially when leveling my alts, quests that I've done ten times) I always have WoWVid with VLC running and watch movies or TV shows. Even though I have a decent computer, giving the WoW full CPU priority would probably make it impossible.
Jack Dec 19th 2007 9:01PM
I just tried this with no apparent success. I have windows XP and a pretty old laptop with a Pentium IV, so I was looking forward to it, but oh well.
keoni Dec 20th 2007 1:40AM
well without wmp i loaded wow in 8seconds, and with it i loaded it in 7. not much difference, and well ingame the ping remains the same and my fps is maxed at 60 still... pretty useless imo
arkhell Dec 20th 2007 3:00AM
is kinda useless for me since i got a fast computer for one and i usually just start loggin and walk downstairs to smoke a sigaret cause i just got home so if it would take 15 or 10 sec wouldn't matter since i'm not near my computer anyway when it loggs :P
Bug Dec 20th 2007 8:54AM
I have a mac and it doesn't even take 20 seconds to load the login screen! take like 3, maybe 4.
you poor poor pc people...
Fred Murphy Dec 20th 2007 9:41AM
Going to have to give this a try. Thanks.
shadowwolf007 Dec 20th 2007 10:40AM
This tweak works because Windows Media Player calls timeBeginPeriod (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms713413.aspx) when it's launched. People in Half-Life have been using a similar tweak to improve its performance for a long time - especially on dedicated servers.
Larry Osterman blogged on this quite a long time ago:
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/09/08/462477.aspx
Also, you can test it yourself. I personally tested this on Vista and found that it took 1:04 to get from clicking the "Launch" button on the launcher dialog to when models fully appeared on my screen in shattrath. It took 1:12 for the same thing to happen. This was my test:
1) Reboot the machine down
2) Launch Notepad and type my password.
3) Copy the password and exit notepad.
4) Start Launcher
5) Start my HighRezTimer.exe application
6) Click "Launch" and start the timer on my iPhone
7) Stop the iPhone when my model was visible.
I subsequently went through and re-tested it with approximately the same numbers. Also, I tested launching WoW again after doing the above and found that it saved 10 seconds on both (so the improvement remained 6 seconds after doing this).
While launching WMP might save you a couple of seconds because it's loading DLLs, the truth is that it's setting the timer really high, which is advantageous for an application like WoW.
Bellestor Dec 20th 2007 4:47PM
Very strange. I'll have to try this myself when I get home!
per Mar 19th 2008 12:25PM
Not sure if it has anything to do with Vista, but on my computer when I run WMP at the same time, without playing anything or showing anything, my fps drops considerably. It even stays down for a good 20 or so seconds after i shut it off. I'm not gonna use that trick fo sho.