When I'm grouped and combat occurs so does MEGA lag.

[B_Notorious]

Please someone suggest to me what I can do. Everything is fine when I'm solo, but when I'm in a group and we enter into a combat situation my lag becomes unbearable. It's not just lag, but everything freezes for long periods with the occasional flash of movement or ability for me to act. I should add it's not just me that freezes, but the party APPEARS to as well.When I finally come out of my time suspension bubble, the party is through the combat and usually ahead in the dungeon, but once I catch up it's just rinse and repeat. I've been playing now for years, I took a little break and have experienced this since my return. I use to be able to run the game at AT LEAST mid settings, as well as various other programs in the background. I am using the same machine that I always have. My drivers are all updated, my machine is virus free, and I've tried dropping my settings to the lowest of the low. Is there any one out there that can help? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[B_Notorious]

I should add it's not during EVERY combat situation, but it's darn near every one.

[Gedwyn]

Same thing for me 2 nights running now.

Only at night...was fine for most of Sunday the 13th, I was on for a good chunk of the morning and afternoon, but somewhere around 7 or so pm EST I started getting hit my massive packet loss and my ping went from ~40 to ~350.

Stuttering due to server not knowing where I was, I couldn't cast, use potions, attack and actually hit or miss...just empty swinging. A couple of times I couldn't even move.

A relog seemed to fix the issue.

Same thing tonight, and upon more examination, this is happening during combat primarily. I didn't log in until 9:30 pm est, but started getting lag as soon as I got into an instance and started fighting.

A relog seemed to fix the problem, until the next fight and more skyrocketing ping and associated massive packet loss.

Logged off at 11:30 pm est in frustration.

By massive packet loss, I mean my PL goes from 0.0% to ~140 150% very quickly. Under a minute, maybe a tad longer than a minute. Then it stays there until combat is done, and then my ping starts to come back down to earth, and the associated PL gets better.

I guess I'm glad it's not just me...but this is pretty unplayable if this keeps up.


Edit: wanted to add that I have zero issues with anything else while this is happening. Email is fine, Web is fine, the Torrent I have going is fine, and so is the continual ping to a random server I started when the PL started. Continual ping to www.turbine.com ( ) = 0% loss, running it for about 80 minutes or so while having this weird network spiking during combat thing happen.

[Gedwyn]

9:45 am Est the next day...came on for about an hour this morning. Ran 1 quest, solo, had 1 large fight (5 or 6 mobs)...and bam! Heavy increase in ping and a few stutters from packet loss. As soon as the fight was over, things started to get back to normal.

Sure doesn't want to make me buy a VIP account, as much as I like this game.

[Mirthgar]

One option is in the in-game Options menu under the ADV Graphics section try turning off the "Player Mesh Combining" option and lowering the "Player Crowd Quality Control" slider to 0. Also under Audio if the sound playback options on any of the "Hardware" options try the "Software" ones to test.

Just in case it is a connection related issue though I'd also give the connection steps here and the connection related ones here a run through.

One other thing, does it still occur if you lower the games "overall" graphics level to the "bare-minimum" (not permanently just to test)? (Also post your dxdiag when you can, steps how are in the "how to get help.." sticky linked in my sig)

[B_Notorious]

Unfortunately I have tried turning off the player mesh combining and 0-ing the crowd control quality, as well as dropping the overall to very low, and am experiencing the same issues. I tried to run a shroud today and at the end battle everyone was completed and I was still seeing the battle in slow motion time suspension with the raid boss at 50% life. I will post my dxdiag later when I get the chance. Thank you for the suggetions thus far.