Fix The Lag Plz

[Lucifuge_ha]

Hello there gang I am a fairly recent addition to DDO as of 5 months now I think... the first 4 months ran beautifully but over the last month I am getting the impression that your service is running out of cash to pay for itself as the quality of the servers seems to have done a TOTAL nose dive. Every time I log in now I go through consistent lag, sometimes bare able but as of the last week it is now stopping me from playing all together. I would like to see this issue fixed, personally extra content mean squat to me or anyone if the game plays like the first days of WOW. Like I said the first 4 months loved the game now I keep thinking of canceling my sub for something else that plays decently. DDO has an extremely low player base and the loss of another just speeds up it's demise, so whatever you did in the last month to wreck the quality you might wanna consider fixing asap. Just thoughts from a concerned subscription holder.

[Ringos]

I understand, as it gets pretty old. I've seen some really odd stuff caused by the lag. The only saving grace for me is running with guildies and allies that seem to get it done in spite of the issues.

Try to hold on until the next update..I am. I'm hoping that it will be back to normal. I am really hoping.

[Aranticus]

how do you define lag? now if you define it as you getting odd incidents of the toon not responding, you may want to check these few things

1. are the rest in the party affected? if everyone stops moving, then its more towards the server problem. that turbine will to address that issue but here are some areas that they have no access too
(a) cabals infrastructure out of turbines AOI
(b) connection points to servers

2. if you are the only in the party, there can be a range of problems
(a) if wireless, check if someone is snooping
(b) check if other programs (esp anti virus) is running in background
(c) check if you have sufficient ram
(d) check your internet connection
(e) check your client (could be a degraded client, install a new one if needed)

there are lots of reason. maybe you like to check first before assigning blame

[Ringos]

Uh, yeah, everyone has the issues at the same time...at least when I notice it. I'll temp lock up, or start rubber-banding and someone will say 'lag spike' about the same time. If multiple people are complaining about it on the boards and in-game, there is a bigger issue.

The blame falls where it is deserved.

[ENGRAV0]

Here is another possibility, no one seems to deny that when they changed the mobs AI the lag monster hit, and hit HARD. So, is it possible that something they did when coding MIGHT have done things that affect hardware on individuals PCs? This is ONLY and EXAMPLE, not something to go by, byt is it POSSIBLE that somehow the coding that they did, that went to our PCs during the update proccess, has affect, as AN EXAMPLE all NVidia VGU's, or NVidia chipsets, or any particular chipsets, or sound cards, or whatever?

Once that patch went in, I have NEVER been the same, save ONE day. On that day, I was having so much fun with freinds and such, that perhaps I still had some of the stuff, just that I really wasnt paying that close attention, because I was enjoying running with a sort of different crowd than normal, so things were a little different. No, as I recall, there was no big lag hits, maybe one or two little ones, can't recall now, but still, I to this day encounter various degrees of alg and rubberbanding. I am NOT the only one. If it isn't EVERYONE, then maybe it isn't the actual server, perhaps, just PERHAPS it is something that their new AI coding and THEIR update did to peoples machines. I would say it would certainly be worth a look, perhaps if a Dev shot everyone that is complaining of these Lagtastic times a PM and asked them to provide system info, then they could set up a similar machine and check that route.

Now, that would require them actualy COMMUNICATING, but still, we all learned that from birth, I think they should be able to remember how to do that.

[stabbert]

Its an MMORPG people!

It going to lag sometimes.. I dont see any problems.

I have had lag a couple times as well, but I will tell you this.

I used to play World of Warcraft, if you want something to whine about, go play that game.
The lag happens alot worse on alot of the servers there mostly at night during primetime (Especially on weekends!)

EVERY FREAKING TUESDAY they take the servers down "for maintenance.." for 5-8 EVERY WEEK.
What are they fixing with the "maintenance"?? Because the lag never stops happening.

In contrast with the lag on WoW and on here, no thanks, ill stay here.

At least i dont have to wonder when they take the servers down for maint on here if its going to be 5, 8, 24 hours..

-Stabby

[KristovK]

To the OP...run a trace route, see if there are problems between you and the DDO servers, and do it when you are experiencing bad lag issues ingame, to see if the problem really IS the server or something else.


Here is another possibility, no one seems to deny that when they changed the mobs AI the lag monster hit, and hit HARD. So, is it possible that something they did when coding MIGHT have done things that affect hardware on individuals PCs? This is ONLY and EXAMPLE, not something to go by, byt is it POSSIBLE that somehow the coding that they did, that went to our PCs during the update proccess, has affect, as AN EXAMPLE all NVidia VGU's, or NVidia chipsets, or any particular chipsets, or sound cards, or whatever?

Once that patch went in, I have NEVER been the same, save ONE day. On that day, I was having so much fun with freinds and such, that perhaps I still had some of the stuff, just that I really wasnt paying that close attention, because I was enjoying running with a sort of different crowd than normal, so things were a little different. No, as I recall, there was no big lag hits, maybe one or two little ones, can't recall now, but still, I to this day encounter various degrees of alg and rubberbanding. I am NOT the only one. If it isn't EVERYONE, then maybe it isn't the actual server, perhaps, just PERHAPS it is something that their new AI coding and THEIR update did to peoples machines. I would say it would certainly be worth a look, perhaps if a Dev shot everyone that is complaining of these Lagtastic times a PM and asked them to provide system info, then they could set up a similar machine and check that route.

Now, that would require them actualy COMMUNICATING, but still, we all learned that from birth, I think they should be able to remember how to do that.

Have you run a single trace yet Engrav0? And please, get in contact with someone who knows about computers and software, especially in relation to online gaming and MMOs before you make any more of comments of this sort. MMOs don't install the AI on your system...matter of fact they don't install much beyond graphics and sounds on your system, keeps people from altering the game to suit their whims...you know..hack the game.

I personally hit a huge lag issue tonight, so bad I had to log out of the game totally, and I wasn't the only one in the party I was in who was having problems. Whole party did NOT have lag, just a couple of us, but it was so bad the 2 of us couldn't continue playing. Trace showed the issue real quick, 90% loss on the 5th hop between me and the server, with loss running 40-70% for the remaining 13 hops. Called my provider and found out that they were having some issues in SC, which just happened to be where hop 5 was located. 4 hours later now and my route to DDO is clear...but it's also no longer going through the SC hop, so I'm not sure if that issue was corrected or not, I do know that that SC route wasn't my typical route to the DDO servers, but it's not static after all. Oh..yeah...your actual route between your system and DDO's servers won't be the same route every time, it'll change from login to login, so just because you don't see any issues right now doesn't mean they won't show up next time you log in. So..if you start having lag issues, immediately alt-Enter(for those of us who run full screen) and run a trace, see if the route you are using AT THE MOMENT you are experiencing lag is the problem or not, while you are still connected to the server.

[Vaypor]

I've seen an improvement in the amount of lag since the last fix, but it is clearly there, and it is CLEARLY on Turbine's end. Yes, I've run the traceroute, and looked where Cust. Svc. said to look. I'm not talking about a spike here or there, but PARTY rubber banding, PARTY "held" in place while the mobs beat on ya. That is the lag I still see, though admittedly less, and the lag I believe the OP is referring to.

I'm sure some lag is caused by bad hops. But I tend to ask what area my party members are in, just out of curiousity, and if from CA (me) to NY and Austraila, we ALL see the spike, it's surely not related to our "hopping" thru the same route.

Hopefully, with Mod7 the lag will be even better, or ideally gone.

[MrCow]

When I get lag spikes like this I tend to see noticable increases to my trace routes from Level 3 in New York and attens (AT&T, I think) in Boston. For example:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 7 ms 5 ms 7 ms c-75-67-216-1.hsd1.nh.comcast.net [75.67.216.1]
3 15 ms 6 ms 6 ms ge-2-4-ur01.londonderry.nh.boston.comcast.net [68.86.236.97]
4 10 ms 8 ms 8 ms po-10-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.146.21]
5 9 ms 10 ms 11 ms po-10-ar01.springfield.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.146.22]
6 13 ms 12 ms 10 ms po-11-ar01.chartford.ct.hartford.comcast.net [68.87.146.26]
7 15 ms 16 ms 13 ms te-0-10-0-5-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.45]
8 14 ms 15 ms 14 ms xe-10-3-0.edge1.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.71.184.1]
9 14 ms 18 ms 13 ms ae-43-99.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.16.197]
10 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms ggr2-p360.n54ny.ip.att.net [192.205.33.93]
11 21 ms 22 ms 21 ms tbr1.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.106]
12 24 ms 21 ms 21 ms cr2.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.16.149]
13 21 ms 22 ms 20 ms cr1.cb1ma.ip.att.net [12.122.31.126]
14 20 ms 21 ms 21 ms tbr1.cb1ma.ip.att.net [12.122.20.146]
15 20 ms 21 ms 19 ms 12.127.5.93
16 126 ms 205 ms 201 ms 12-122-254-14.attens.net [12.122.254.14]
17 22 ms 22 ms 20 ms mdf001c7613r0003-gig-10-1.bos1.attens.net [12.130.0.170]
18 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms 12.130.10.69
19 22 ms 22 ms 21 ms 206.16.13.87


I'm not completely sure of the validity of the relationship but you will notice that the one I highlighted in red is a major point for serving Dungeons and Dragons Online (its in every tracert in the forum it seems), Lord of the Rings Online, Asheron's Call, and *cringes* even World of Warcraft's Boston Datacenter. A bulk of these online gamers go through what would be hop #11 - #17 to get to their respective games.

Just thought I'd toss that out.

[CSFurious]

entire party this morning on khyber in the vale would freeze up for 5 to 10 seconds multiple times over the course of approximately 60 minutes of play

also, when we looted the chests, major lag

i know it is not my computer

fix the lag now or it will be real bad when mod 7 gets released in the next 2 weeks

[Krago]

My thoughts are that the lag crept in at the same time we had the marketplace invasion. When they added the random invasions by devils/orthons is when the lag spikes started appearing.

That is the correlation I have noticed.

[stockwizard5]

All appeared reletively well after the lag patch until the last few nights.

Something has gone seriously wrong again - not pre-patch wrong - but substantially worse than the days following the patch.

[Theboz]

There is alot of people who have no idea how computers and the internet works. Poeple think all you need to do is plug in your computer to the internet and it will never have a problem. And as soon as they have problems they always assume its not there computer(because it starts fine and I have not changed a thing way of thinking) or its not there ISP not causing some problems, they say well i can play these other games just fine its just this game that is bad.

Have you ever thought maybe why some games are good and some are bad, just maybe they are in to different location. If you live on the east coast and you connect to ddo might totally differnet then if you connect to a game on the West coast.

Also, Everybodies connection gets directed though ATT&T and they do have some very overloaded Nodes(hops) on the east coast. You cant connect to DDO without going though them. So what looks like that might be a Turbine problem because if one person has a lag spike, everybody has a lag spike. The people that see a rubberband effect, that sounds like a connection problem and not a lag issue.

When you rubberband, you are getting packet loss between you and the servers, as i said between you and the servers and not from the servers.

If you see lag when someone picks up a power shard from inside the chect that is a server lag. That is the only Lag I have seen.

One more thing how do you think Turbine can diangnos the problem when you dont give them no information. What if there is a computer related problem and people who expereince more Lag then some other people have an Itel processor and not AMD or the people who have more lag are using Vista or they only have 1 gig memory, or they have more then 3 gigs of memory.

There are alot varibles tha need to be considered. Just because someone says they need to fix it. Fix what? just because you say there is a problem does not mean anything without any documentation to back up what you say.

Posting A Tracert to Gls.DDO.com using a program called Pingplotter
Post a DXDIAG so that turbine can get a list of types of computers that are having problems with lag

Get your internet connection test at www.BroadbandReport.com (http://www.BroadbandReport.com) go to their test page and do a 24 hour packet loss test, to see if any packet losses are accuring on your line, and its free and there are some other really good test adn info on that site.

There other things you can try also.

When people start to post their info then people can start to see what really is happending and make a informed decision as to what is causing the lag problem.

[Ringos]

People can give all the tech reasons they want, but when things were fine a month or so ago, then a patch is applied and a LOT of people start seeing a problem, even the bottom-scrapers like me can figure out what caused the issue. As an IT guy myself, if I do something (apply a patch, make a policy change, etc) and a large number of users start having similar issues, it usually points back to whatever I messed with. I don't start blaming other things.

I guess maybe since everyone is calling it 'lag', we are not stating properly what the propblem is, but lag seems to be the common term for 'gameplay slows down to a crawl'. Please don't get hung up on the term 'lag'...most of us mean 'slowdown'.

[MrCow]

Get your internet connection test at www.BroadbandReport.com

I think you might mean www.broadbandreports.com (you forgot the "s" at the end of report and none of it is capitalized).

[stockwizard5]

There is alot of people who have no idea how computers and the internet works.

Yes yes - but we went through all this the last round.

When running the shroud and multiple people are throwing Mass Heals on multiple people and none of the thowers or receivers are getting any of them - we generically call it lag. Under the same scenario when all spells are executing after a delay of 2s to 6s - we call it lag. Under the same scenario when the Mobs are still executing normally (e.g. moving, attacking, causing damage) while we all are unable to act - we call it lag. When benefical buffs are counting down normally but we cannot move AND effects cast by mobs are not counting - we call it lag.

That is - the scenarios that we are commonly refering to have some portion of the game all but frozen (generally our ability to act) while other portions continue normally (generally mob behavior). In these cases it is not our computers, the internet, or having no idea how computers and the internet works. It is clearly server side issues where internally calculated activity (them) is still processing and networking correctly while client side calculated activity (us) is not being updated on the server and returned to us.

[nakedfatguy]

Yes yes - but we went through all this the last round.

When running the shroud and multiple people are throwing Mass Heals on multiple people and none of the thowers or receivers are getting any of them - we generically call it lag. Under the same scenario when all spells are executing after a delay of 2s to 6s - we call it lag. Under the same scenario when the Mobs are still executing normally (e.g. moving, attacking, causing damage) while we all are unable to act - we call it lag. When benefical buffs are counting down normally but we cannot move AND effects cast by mobs are not counting - we call it lag.

That is - the scenarios that we are commonly refering to have some portion of the game all but frozen (generally our ability to act) while other portions continue normally (generally mob behavior). In these cases it is not our computers, the internet, or having no idea how computers and the internet works. It is clearly server side issues where internally calculated activity (them) is still processing and networking correctly while client side calculated activity (us) is not being updated on the server and returned to us.

OFT!

[Theboz]

I think you might mean www.broadbandreports.com (http://www.broadbandreports.com) (you forgot the "s" at the end of report and none of it is capitalized).



:o oops but it still goes to the same place

[Theboz]

Yes yes - but we went through all this the last round.

When running the shroud and multiple people are throwing Mass Heals on multiple people and none of the thowers or receivers are getting any of them - we generically call it lag. Under the same scenario when all spells are executing after a delay of 2s to 6s - we call it lag. Under the same scenario when the Mobs are still executing normally (e.g. moving, attacking, causing damage) while we all are unable to act - we call it lag. When benefical buffs are counting down normally but we cannot move AND effects cast by mobs are not counting - we call it lag.

That is - the scenarios that we are commonly refering to have some portion of the game all but frozen (generally our ability to act) while other portions continue normally (generally mob behavior). In these cases it is not our computers, the internet, or having no idea how computers and the internet works. It is clearly server side issues where internally calculated activity (them) is still processing and networking correctly while client side calculated activity (us) is not being updated on the server and returned to us.


I know what you mean, but in the eyes of turbine they need to see facts llke Test results(tracerts), and Dxdaig, your connection type; to see if anything is in common with all the people that are getting the Lag.

Not everybody is getting the Lag, Why?

Why do some groups are reporting Lag while other groups or servers are not?

All im asking for, if people would post some infomation instead of making a post and just saying, " Boy, this lag is really bad and please fix it"

How does Turbine know if this person really is seeing what everybody else is seeing or this person really does have a problem that can be fixed, fairly easy.

[stockwizard5]

How does Turbine know if this person really is seeing what everybody else is seeing or this person really does have a problem that can be fixed, fairly easy.

Load and Connection Monitors, Statistics, Alerts, Faults and General Performance Tracking Done by All Large Applications.

[Ringos]

I know what you mean, but in the eyes of turbine they need to see facts llke Test results(tracerts), and Dxdaig, your connection type; to see if anything is in common with all the people that are getting the Lag.

Not everybody is getting the Lag, Why?

Why do some groups are reporting Lag while other groups or servers are not?

All im asking for, if people would post some infomation instead of making a post and just saying, " Boy, this lag is really bad and please fix it"

How does Turbine know if this person really is seeing what everybody else is seeing or this person really does have a problem that can be fixed, fairly easy.

We have no idea what was changed to cause the problems in the first place. Wouldn't the people that actually did change something be the first people to try to solve the issue? If we take time out to try and troubleshoot the issue, are they actually going to use the informaton? I'd be more than willing to help test, etc. but feedback is required on their end.

Something THEY changed caused 'slowdown' issues for many people at many times and now WE should try to isolate the problem for them...WITHOUT any type of feedback or communication on their end? At least we get to pay every month for this honor.

I've never been one to jump on the devs, etc. of DDO...it's a GREAT game. Fact is, people will leave because of these problems so, yes, they DO need to fix them.

[Missing_Minds]

People can give all the tech reasons they want, but when things were fine a month or so ago, then a patch is applied and a LOT of people start seeing a problem, even the bottom-scrapers like me can figure out what caused the issue. As an IT guy myself, if I do something (apply a patch, make a policy change, etc) and a large number of users start having similar issues, it usually points back to whatever I messed with. I don't start blaming other things.

True enough but NEVER leave out the chance that it is something outside of your control that also happened to go at the same time. I've had this happen so many times it is not funny. In other words, stop laying the blame all on ONE spot. In the case of lag there are many possible reasons, sometimes all happening at the same time.

People who come to me with problems and state "fix this" like the OP did, if I can at all, I ignore them. Give us something to work with on how the heck to fix your issue. It is like stating, "the car doesn't work, fix it." Sure.. right on it buddy.

[Warmane]

Oh, C'mon, don't any of you folks remember that CGI cartoon Re-boot? It is the residents of your computer revolting
under oppression!! Lighten up the work load a lil bit, you Tyrant!

[Ringos]

True enough but NEVER leave out the chance that it is something outside of your control that also happened to go at the same time. I've had this happen so many times it is not funny. In other words, stop laying the blame all on ONE spot. In the case of lag there are many possible reasons, sometimes all happening at the same time.

People who come to me with problems and state "fix this" like the OP did, if I can at all, I ignore them. Give us something to work with on how the heck to fix your issue. It is like stating, "the car doesn't work, fix it." Sure.. right on it buddy.

I see this side too, don't get me wrong. My gut just tells me that their changes are causing the issue. When the really bad 'slowdowns' started, it followed an update. When the 'slowdowns' got better, it got better right after the update.

I know there could be other factors at play here, but it seems that the underlying theme is; they change something and the 'slowdown' issue gets better or worse. Since they hold sway over what seems to be influencing the 'slowdowns', it doesn't seem out of line to ask them to fix it. I don't want to be railing on Turbine, it just gets a bit frustrating I guess.

Take care.

-Ringos