Here's how things worked in patch 2.2:
- I press a button to cast a spell or activate an ability.
- My computer says, "Hey! Realm server! David wants to cast Frostbolt!"
- The realm server says "Okay!" 300 milliseconds or so later (this round-trip communication time is your "latency").
- My computer then starts a 1.5 second global cooldown, and shows me the Frostbolt casting bar.
- I cannot use any other abilities from the time I press the button to the time my Frostbalt casting finishes, unless I manually cancel the spell (as with a /stopcasting macro), or unless the server tells my computer, "Okay the spell is finished already!" or "Whoops! That spell got interrupted!"
- Either way, without a manual interruption on my part, I'm waiting on the server to tell me the outcome of the first spell before I can tell it to start casting the second.
- I press a button to cast a spell or activate an ability.
- My computer says, "Hey! Realm server! David wants to cast Frostbolt!"
- My computer goes ahead and starts the global cooldown for me, assuming the Frostbolt will succeed.
- The realm says "Okay!" 300ms later, and the casting bar shows up.
- Alternately, if there's a problem, then the realm says "No way, silly! David isn't finished casting Fireball yet! Wait a moment to try again, and cancel that global cooldown while you're at it!"
- Either way, I can send my commands to the server whenever I want, as long as my global cooldown isn't currently active -- and if it gets activated too early, I just have to wait for the server to tell my computer to cancel it before casting another ability.
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