Lag lag lag lag.. is there something being done?

[Jayad]

<p>Lag has been horrible on raiding for us lately, especially with some of the top items with procs.  It's been bad enough that raiding is starting to get more frustrating than fun.  I know this has been a common thing, and some guilds have banned certain items on raids due to their making it worse.  Has anybody else been experiencing this consistently?  I don't mean lag now and then, but almost every zone you do, even with nobody else in it.</p><p>It's obviously server side lag because my client is free to continue moving or trying to cast things - it just is delayed.  Usually 80% of the time, everything i try to do is lagged by at least 1-2 seconds.  About 20-25% of the time, things are delayed by 4-5 seconds or more.  </p><p>I think it's at least somewhat proportional to the amount of end-game gear you have (like avatar robes).  I switched guilds recently, with the newer one having all this proc gear, and the lag was 20x worse even on the same zones.</p><p>This is as bad as it was a few LUs ago before they fixed a few things, maybe even worse because it happens all the time instead of just on certain mobs.</p><p>Help?  pretty please?</p>

[Lektar]

Well, I went checking the forums today finally to see if anyone else has noticed this issue.It seems that lag has gotten worse over the past few weeks but has been going downhill since the release of Unrest. The spell/CA lag you are getting is very common, especially among raiders. My guild is no exception to this so I will be posting on their behalf.It seems that the servers are either in need of software or hardware patching. I know that this lag is not client side due to a few different factors:1. I am well versed in computer setup (I do this for a living) and have all the proper software updates and a system with enough muscle to play any game on the market with medium to high settings. I run anti-virus and firewall software that I tightly monitor but I have ALL ports forwarded on my router and within my security software. I will not post my system specs because I know that this issue is being caused server side and will not even begin to entertain devs to that idea.2. Most, if not all of the members in the raid experience this lag and at the same time. This is a cause of packet loss from the server and the time that it takes for everything to "resynch" is the time that you see 2-3 or 3-4 seconds of spell/CA freezing. Having most if not everyone in the raid having this issue at the same time rules out 2 things.... (a.) That the issue is client side due to improper software or hardware settings and (b.) It is a local ISP issue.3. Many changes to the game have seemed to create more lag and zone or client crashes. The addition of Unrest seemed to create a few more problems but.... the new card game and subsequent patches (I dont care [I cannot control my vocabulary] it is called) have seemed to cause the greatest problems. There have also been various combat and spell changes where tons of content has either been changed or updated. I can't make any direct connections between these patches and the lag but I'm not sure I have to. It seems to me that with all these changes, and the coinciding lag, that this is more that coincidence. I'm surprised that more people haven't spoken out about these issues and they really do effect gameplay. Being a swash, I need to time CAs in between my auto attacks to be viable dps. This simple task becomes nearly impossible with the increasing problems with server lag and I can't even imagine how healers must be pulling out their hair =/ This is actually my first post to point out any flaws in this great game. I haven't been happy with some of the combat changes recently or in the past but I understood them as necessary to save the integrity of the game. I have been playing EQ2 since release and am proud to say that I played EQ1 when it was in its glory days. All that I ask from SOE as a devoted fan and paying customer since November 2004, is to look into the issue. You don't have to reply to my post or release updates within the forums on a separate post (although me asking you to do so wouldn't be out of the question as a dedicated, paying customer). All that I ask is to get this game back to running the way that it was and the way that it should be. I don't want to log in one day to find that all of your resources have been focused at creating new content just to make more money from us. This game needs to keep its status as one of the top MMOs in the industry and I fear that if changes are not made soon... it will go the way of Vanguard when other, better, and newer MMOs hit the shelves in the future.

[Lektar]

Funny how this got shuffled away from the top so fast without any responses....***BUMP***

[Wilde_Night]

Be careful.  Bumping threads can get them locked.  It is in the forum rules.

[DragonMaster2385]

hmm, I am not experiencing any increase in lag.  No one from my guild has complained either.

[Amalthea]

Yes indeed, bumps are no-nos according to the <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=176" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">forum rules</a>.  Please refrain from posting just to bump a thread to the top of the forum.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Lana]

I have noticed it occasionally, but it isn't a consistent problem for me. Is it really fair to expect the servers/internet/network to be running at 110% everyday?I could be really off here, I haven't really noticed it that often. I usually just attributed it to latency either on my side, or server side. Are you talking about Video latency, or Network latency? Most people just lump the two together and call it lag, when it really isn't anything the servers are doing, its just your computer catching up.

[Quda]

<p>Myself and a few others in my guild are experiancing(sp?) lag.</p><p>Was in loping plains when I noticed it first, soloing heroics as a brig require perfect timing, and would get an occainsanl 2-3 second lag during fights.  Then the raid entered FTH and members would comment in vent they would be getting lag.  A few people tried to log out and come back to ease the lag.</p><p>One thing I have noticed is that LON has a memory leak, it will eat up memory even if you don't play the game, so reboots are required more often.</p>

[Gladiia]

<cite>Quda wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Myself and a few others in my guild are experiancing(sp?) lag.</p><p>Was in loping plains when I noticed it first, soloing heroics as a brig require perfect timing, and would get an occainsanl 2-3 second lag during fights.  Then the raid entered FTH and members would comment in vent they would be getting lag.  A few people tried to log out and come back to ease the lag.</p><p>One thing I have noticed is that LON has a memory leak, it will eat up memory even if you don't play the game, so reboots are required more often.</p></blockquote>I have noticed the LoN memory leaks.  I have also noticed a slight increase in lag over the past 2-3 weeks.  It isn't a huge increase in lag, just a little one - but every 1 second lag spike can lead to disasterous results while in combat. 

[Lektar]

<cite>Lana@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have noticed it occasionally, but it isn't a consistent problem for me. Is it really fair to expect the servers/internet/network to be running at 110% everyday?I could be really off here, I haven't really noticed it that often. I usually just attributed it to latency either on my side, or server side. Are you talking about Video latency, or Network latency? Most people just lump the two together and call it lag, when it really isn't anything the servers are doing, its just your computer catching up.</blockquote> The main issue with the network lag is during raids in my experience. I define the problem in detail in the second post so that people do not confuse the lag being client side. The issue is certainly server side and has been getting worse for the past few weeks as I have previously stated. As for the network running 110% every day, no I do not expect 110%, merely 100% when servers are not down for maintenance. I pay a monthly fee to play this game (and have been doing so since November 2004) to cover the expenses of server maintenance, developer salary, and a host of other services. It is the same as asking for my phone or internet to be up 100% of the time that I am paying for it.  To me... this is not a game issue, it is a customer service issue. Again, all that I ask is that the problem is checked, rechecked, and checked again to make sure that this game that thousands of people pay monthly for, is running at peak efficiency. We should not feel privileged to play this game, we need to be proactive as consumers to assure that we are getting what we pay for <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[SteveOmatiC]

I have been having problems on and off for the last few months and it is really horrible at times.   The problem usually always presents itself in combat, sometimes I will lag out for as long as 8-10 sec and it is a good thing that I play with friends otherwise no one would want to group with me!  Its like the connection drops out, I can move anywhere I want onscreen but I can't use an CAs or interact with anything or anyone but my cable modem still shows an active connection.  I've had the cable company check my connection, modem, etc, and it occurs whether I'm on my desktop or laptop.  It was so bad a month ago that I almost stopped playing.  Just a few odd and end occurances since then but still enough to be a nuisance.

[Fatkiddown]

0 lag on raids or anywhere else for that matter, no avatar gear though.

[Computer MAn]

The major issue of lag comes with the high end gear (gear that modifies reuse times and casting times especially) and that usually means avatar gear. If your guild doesn't have avatar gear you probably won't notice much lag.

[DrRothchild]

I'm lagging like crazy. Unrest is RIDICULOUS lag.

[RanmaBoyType]

<p>i am not noticing lag as much as crashing to character select every other fooking zone tonight.</p>

[Ze]

<p>I have been having both problems recently. Server-side lag and crashing when zoning. In particular, I crash every time i exit tradeskill instances. </p><p> Edit: I am tired... I didn't mean crash, I get kicked to char select. </p>

[Gnevil]

<p>It just depends on the zone anymore and its totally random.  Been crashing where I never crashed before and suffering from lag even though I have an extreme machine that I am running on.  Most in my guild are saying the same thing.</p>

[Femke]

No real lag here....  not during raids or else where.And if I do notice some lag, I switch from "high graphic details" to "balanced" and all is good again.Femke.

[Silverfrost]

We have a change that will be going live in GU39 that we hope will help with the lag everyone is experiencing in raids.The particular thing we're addressing here is kind of a 'death by 1000 cuts' problem. As the level cap has gone up player's spell books have gotten larger. We've also made the interactions between spells more complex. The result is that the server is now spending a lot of time generating what we call spell examine information. Currently the client has to request this information for every spell in your spell book, and there are a lot of times in raids when we invalidate all your spell examine info because of a buff or debuff landing, which makes the client request your entire spell book _again_. Generating these descriptions is very hard on the server, they can't be cached because they are very dependent on the character's stats, etc. Furthermore there's a lot of text expansion and, on international servers, translation (think spell effect description text), so this is especially costly for non english server (which have some of the worst lag right now). This whole design is bad for server performance, increases network traffic, and affects client framerate as well. So we've changed it pretty substantially in GU39 by adding some more information to the base spell book data sent, so after this update the client will no longer need to request the detailed spell examine information until you either pull up a tool tip or examine the spell. Hope that clears things up. I understand that it's frustrating to see us say 'we made it better' over and over and not feel the difference much. While I can't promise that this will make it 'all good', from our point of view this is our biggest available improvement right now.

[DizzyGee]

Thank you for replying - looks as if there is, after all, hope on the horizon! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Guzz_Deaths_Door_EF]

<cite>Silverfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>We have a change that will be going live in GU39 that we hope will help with the lag everyone is experiencing in raids.The particular thing we're addressing here is kind of a 'death by 1000 cuts' problem. As the level cap has gone up player's spell books have gotten larger. We've also made the interactions between spells more complex. The result is that the server is now spending a lot of time generating what we call spell examine information. Currently the client has to request this information for every spell in your spell book, and there are a lot of times in raids when we invalidate all your spell examine info because of a buff or debuff landing, which makes the client request your entire spell book _again_. Generating these descriptions is very hard on the server, they can't be cached because they are very dependent on the character's stats, etc. Furthermore there's a lot of text expansion and, on international servers, translation (think spell effect description text), so this is especially costly for non english server (which have some of the worst lag right now). This whole design is bad for server performance, increases network traffic, and affects client framerate as well. So we've changed it pretty substantially in GU39 by adding some more information to the base spell book data sent, so after this update the client will no longer need to request the detailed spell examine information until you either pull up a tool tip or examine the spell.Hope that clears things up. I understand that it's frustrating to see us say 'we made it better' over and over and not feel the difference much. While I can't promise that this will make it 'all good', from our point of view this is our biggest available improvement right now.</blockquote><p>Finally someone with nuts who can come out and explain the problem and cut through the BS and just tell us what the problem is, give the man a pay increase!</p>

[Tstorm]

<cite>Silverfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>We have a change that will be going live in GU39 that we hope will help with the lag everyone is experiencing in raids.[snip]</blockquote>Wow, thanks for the explanation, Silverfrost!  I don't want or need to understand how everything in-game works under the hood, but when it comes to issues, it very much helps to explain the technical nuts & bolts of the problem like this.  Granted, I think most players likely just want it fixed, but explaining it helps us understand why it isn't necessarily the kind of thing that just gets fixed overnight!Thanks again! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[UlteriorModem]

<cite>RanmaBoyType wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>i am not noticing lag as much as crashing to character select every other fooking zone tonight.</p></blockquote><p>I believe there discussing lag in raids.</p><p>I havent had any crashes to desktop.</p>

[Embret]

<p>THANK YOU Silverfrost and Tunare's blessings on you for stepping up to the plate.  I now expect you to go through the rest of your company and give them lessons.  And to all of you who poo-pooed the OP for stating an obvious issue (and in a very NICE manner I might add) you can just take your flame-anything-that-doesn't-elevate-Sony attitudes and.....N/M (I wouldn't be able to control my language for you doo-doo-heads.)</p><p>As I see it....and this is only my opinion using anecdotal evidence, but ever since the introduction of that goofy c(t)ard game it seems that the lag has gotten progressively worse.  I'm not sure what a c(t)ard game has to do with my MMO, but so be it...there must be a perceived profit for Sony...even if it's at the expense of the majority of the paying player base who don't want it.  (Argh!)  Raiding since the last few updates (and GU) has gotten to be a bit more challenging than intended.</p><p>Again, bravo to Silverfrost for at least explaining one aspect of the issue.  (You're not going to change my mind about the c(t)ard game causing some of this issue...of course you are welcome to replace my anecdotal information with empirical data at any time you wish to correct me.  I also fully understand that perceived cause and effect are not always what is fact...then again, there's Ockham's Razor.)</p><p>EDIT: PS We are often being sent to character select when attempting to zone into instances, either as a full raid or as a group.  This only seems to happen in instances where the 'leader' is the one that zones the entire group.</p>

[Einadin]

<p>Can we expect GU39 before RoK, or will it be with RoK?</p>

[Zyphius]

<cite>Silverfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>We have a change that will be going live in GU39 that we hope will help with the lag everyone is experiencing in raids.The particular thing we're addressing here is kind of a 'death by 1000 cuts' problem. As the level cap has gone up player's spell books have gotten larger. We've also made the interactions between spells more complex. The result is that the server is now spending a lot of time generating what we call spell examine information. Currently the client has to request this information for every spell in your spell book, and there are a lot of times in raids when we invalidate all your spell examine info because of a buff or debuff landing, which makes the client request your entire spell book _again_. Generating these descriptions is very hard on the server, they can't be cached because they are very dependent on the character's stats, etc. Furthermore there's a lot of text expansion and, on international servers, translation (think spell effect description text), so this is especially costly for non english server (which have some of the worst lag right now). This whole design is bad for server performance, increases network traffic, and affects client framerate as well. So we've changed it pretty substantially in GU39 by adding some more information to the base spell book data sent, so after this update the client will no longer need to request the detailed spell examine information until you either pull up a tool tip or examine the spell.Hope that clears things up. I understand that it's frustrating to see us say 'we made it better' over and over and not feel the difference much. While I can't promise that this will make it 'all good', from our point of view this is our biggest available improvement right now.</blockquote><p>Here's an idea...</p><p> Since more and more computers are multi cpu/core, how bout multi-threading the client and offloading some of that work to the client side. With 2-8 processors/cores sharing the load, it should be a piece of cake if the client takes advantage of all the processing power available.</p>

[UliTheGrey]

<cite>Silverfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote> ...Furthermore there's a lot of text expansion and, on international servers, translation (think spell effect description text), so this is especially costly for non english server (which have some of the worst lag right now)....</blockquote>Thank you - finally a believable technical explanation.While you´re at it - how about a switch that allows tooltips to stay in their english original form ? I am sure a lot of non-english raiding people would trade everything being fully translated for better performance.

[Kirstie]

<cite>Einadin@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Can we expect GU39 before RoK, or will it be with RoK?</p></blockquote><p>GU39 will be before RoK.</p><p> - K</p>

[melaine_dvarvensplitter]

Silver and Kristie thank you so much.

[Daine]

Thank you soooo much you wonderful devs.  My guild and specifically me have had a ton of lag issues the last few months.  When we all ran out to the Throne of New Tunaria instance to finish SoD the other night, we all crashed to character select at the same time.  A few of us ended up dead b/c of it and had to run all the way back.  I have all of my graphics settings ALL the way down on raids and we hide our pets, but I still have huge issues.  As a healer it's an especially daunting problem...when you click a heal and it doesn't respond for another 5 seconds and then everything gets backlogged from there it's really hard to keep both the tank and your group healthy.Thank you sooooooooo much guys (and gals of course) for trying to fix this, I can't wait.  We raid three times a week and it's getting old.

[ReturnOfMadness]

good news:<a href="http://www.eq2flames.com/general-gameplay/11046-everquest-2-lag-17.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.eq2flames.com/general-ga...t-2-lag-17.html</a>silverfrost posted this there:We've actually moved it up and it should go live Tuesday morning.

[Tokam]

<p>Ever since you guys changed the mentor system I have been kind of wondering why grey 'old tier' spells have been allowed to remain in our knowledge book. Especially since you have started pushing so many de level / casting time / proc effects live.</p><p>Why not just remove grey things that have been out leveled from our books entirely. We no longer use them and each class has over 50 (thats over 1200 for the raid) that serve no other function than to cost cpu cycles on the above recalculations.</p>

[SisterTheresa]

<p>So far my husband and I get lag for specific reasons ..</p><p>Husband - He runs Vista Ultimate and he crashes more than those cars in a testing area because of it.  A person walks through his character?  Crash.  Qeynos Harbor? Crash.  Neriak?  Forget it.  Not sure what it is as sometimes he does fine, but when too many effects or people are in same spot he crashes.  A LOT.</p><p>Me - I lag so [Removed for Content] bad in Neriak/Qeynos Harbor/with more than like 5 people.  Now I know most is with my videocard, but still .. since Neriak was put in and all the updated graphics in some zones, it's impossible to move.</p><p>And if my husband upgraded his computer and software and he still lags and crashes ... hmmm</p>

[ZUES]

Does anyone else have major lag issues when they right click or try to drag something? I lag for a good 30 seconds every time. Both computers, same thing. It's nothing new though. I have had this issue since around GU34.

[Daine]

To SisterTheresa:  his problem is most likely Vista...I strongly dislike the OS and won't use it once it's the only M$ one supported.  I'll dual boot XP and Linux...XP for games, Linux for everything else.  I just feel like it was rushed, badly designed, and incompatible with 95% of things on the market, in addition to the privacy issues involved.  I don't understand why Microsoft releases a new OS around the time they start fixing the old one /sigh.  I hate monopolies...  Anyways, it's probably Vista's functions having to scan every packet coming in for viruses/legitimacy or something that's crashing it lol.

[Guy De Alsace]

Going into QH causes merry hell on my 'puter. Even when I leave it, the HD continues to take a while to settle back down again. Its made worse by all the "events" that bypass the rest of Qeynos and always seem to happen in QH =

[Daine]

Last few times I've gone into QH there have been 45-63 people in there...add to that the normal NPCs, the plethora of NPCs for the Kunark quests, and all the mounts, and you've got horrid lag going on.  Not to mention many people seem to think QH is the perfect spot for their 20 duels in a row...

[Iseabeil]

<cite>ZUES wrote:</cite><blockquote>Does anyone else have major lag issues when they right click or try to drag something? I lag for a good 30 seconds every time. Both computers, same thing. It's nothing new though. I have had this issue since around GU34.</blockquote>I cant remember a time when right clicking didnt cause any lag at all. Depending on your computer and how much is used itll freeze ye anythin from extremely short to annoyingly long. If I rightclick on my main computer with low load its barely noticeable, on my laptop its really annoying and in raids or when running two accounts my main computer it will lag out heavily as well, but its always there even if its so short that you dont notice it.

[arksun]

<p>Can a dev confirm that the update for the lag went in yesterday as planned? (9-25-07) Or, is still to be released with GU 39?</p>

[Novusod]

When I logged in after the downtime yesterday I found there was much less lag in the game. I gained a good 10fps with this update so I think the lag fix went through.

[Rindelk]

<cite>Silverfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>So we've changed it pretty substantially in GU39 by adding some more information to the base spell book data sent, so after this update the client will no longer need to request the detailed spell examine information until <b>you either pull up a tool tip or examine the spell</b>.</blockquote><p>Tooltips in hotbars for spell descriptions are set to be automatically displayed. Unless you're aware that they can be turned off or you are using a different UI that already disables this feature, I don't see how this fix will resolve the lag issues unless you're able to default the UI via the patch to disable the display of tooltips within toolbars or wherever else they can be triggered. Personally upon reading this thread I immediatly disabled anthing that I could see would poll the server for information, but I'm sure that others will not do the same out of blissful ignorance. We'll see a small % decrease in lag, but not what is being projected within this thread.</p><p>On a sidenote, with RoK, are you guys finally going to be using hardware occlusion culling? Seems there is a new version of dPVS!</p>

[khufure]

I don't see a follow-up post, so I thought I'd comment.  This fix has helped a lot.  Thanks.  Now make the client multi-threaded plz!!  (My 3 idle cores on a CPU limited game will thank you)

[Novusod]

I am reposting in this thread because the Lag that was fixed in the 9/26/2007 update has now returned after the update done today on 3/4/2008. The game is now as lag filled as ever with the return of the Spell Examine Information lag. Lets hope the devs take notice and fix this.This is the most important thread in the history of Eq2 lag reduction. Let it rise again.

[Gnobrin]

<p>There's ALWAYS "something being done" to help, but some zones are simply designed such that it'd take an overhaul to cure it.  Every update, there's things being done to help, when you're talking about a game with 700+ zones and the equation addition of players-per-capita, it's not something that can be corrected with a flip of a switch, but something that needs to be continually tweaked per hotfix and update.</p><p>~Gnobrin!</p>

[Novusod]

As per the 18th post in this thread. The dev Silverfrost came up with a magic bullet update the fixed everything when it went live on 9/26/2008. Something dreadfully went wrong today when with the hotfix that rolled back his solution filling the game once again with lag. Maybe Gnobrin can bring this to the attention of his co-worker Silverfrost.