Problem I'm not exactly sure how to describe....

[sugrcain]

I’m not exactly sure what to call this problem, I suppose it could be lag. Started about a week before the patch and some days it’s better, some worse, but hasn’t been completely gone any day. Any time I’m in an area with a lot of mobs or pc’s, particularly the shroud or fights with swarms of mobs (like the bats in eerie forest or vale, rats in orchard, or really anyplace you can get a decent number of mobs at once) it seems like the battle data is taking far longer to get processed through than it used too. Things will start off fine at first and deteriorate, eventually getting to a point with choppy lag that’s a bit difficult to move around in and then back to normal once everything catches up. The worst example was a couple days before the mod, in part 5 of the shroud my pit demon fight went on for about three minutes after everyone else had finished. Voice chat stays current. Another example, doing the bats and shadows in eerie forest last night, I would finish the fight but see combat spam continue on for about 30 seconds after it was over, still going after I had looted the chest. And then there are times like this morning, only a few hits of combat spam after combat is finished with the rat hill in the orchard. Sometimes it’s playable throughout with a bit a lag delay on clickables or equipment switching, sometimes it’s so bad I can’t move or hope to click a potion. Regardless how bad it got or how long it took, once it catches up the game is back to normal with no lag.

I’m at a bit of loss, I’ve tried every pre-set graphic setting. The same thing happens on ultra low as ultra high. I’ve updated graphic drivers. I don’t suspect it’s that to be the problem anyhow, as Champions & Vanguard play without any hitches or lag and my single player games are all fine. I have moved during the two weeks this happened, keeping the same ISP (AT&T DSL), now with a slightly faster connection, nothing changed inside the computer or with the settings in XP. Connection wise, as mentioned, other MMOs are playing fine (also this started before my connection changed). Nothing else seems out of line, torrents for example will hit max up and down speeds (also I do not run a torrent client while playing online games). This has been happening for one week on my old connection and one week on the new now. I don’t have a firewall active. I do use clamwin for virus scanning which is on, but it’s never interfered with any gaming before. Computer wise, dual core intel (forget mhz offhand), 4 gigs, ati 4870 w/ 1g onboard, on board sound, XP & dx9, 300 gig hd with 80 gigs used and freshly defragmented. If it’s important, I’ve haven’t noticed the temperature of the video card getting into a dangerous range (which I’ve made sure to check because I’ve had an overheating video card before).

If anyone has any ideas I’d appreciate the post. DDO definitely my favorite MMO right now, but I’m finding I can’t be bothered to play now when I have no idea how the computer is going to handle it on any given day. Thanks for reading too, was a bit long winded.

[Strakeln]

Wow, tough problem. Happened before the move, and other games are fine, so it shouldn't be that. Happened before the patch, so it shouldn't be that. Rig has enough power that it should have no problem handling DDO.

The only thing that comes to my mind - and I really doubt it is the problem - is Pando. I noticed that thing sorta goes on doing its own thing and hogging bandwidth after you've downloaded DDO. I doubt that's the case, as I assume (hope) that it doesn't fire up on startup, and you've certainly done some reboots. Regardless, I uninstalled it after DDO was finished downloading, once I discovered it deciding to hog bandwidth after I was done DLing.

Good luck