Last night on Argo it took me from 6:04 PM to 6:10 to open 3 mail messages and detach the items. Shortly thereafter my wife opened the deconstruction machine and the client completely froze for 10 minutes after which we just terminated and restarted. This is just not acceptable.

So I'm not getting to play the game anyway, I might as well help you fix it.

Build a version of the client that logs key events to hard disk with timestamps.

1)Make sure it co-exists with the regular client like the Lamania client does.
2)Make sure the file is small enough to email or ftp reasonably - a circular buffer of approximately 20 minutes should be plenty, and you could probably keep that under 5 MB.
3)Make sure there is a way to log forced terminations - an external program that does nothing but tries to contact the client (by DDE?) and writes a log entry with the result would be fine, I could invoke that program before manually terminating the client.
4)Pay special attention to bank, mail, and craft interactions - for these make sure the transaction start time and completion time are recorded so you see exactly how long these take from the *client* perspective.
5) I realize this isn't as big a priority for you, but as a quid pro quo maybe you could log commands sent to hirelings the same way?

When I'm in a bad lag period I could log out of the regular client, log on with the special client, and try to play. If I encounter a really spectacular lag event, I could email you the log with a description. Or FTP the file. Whatever.

You could even use this to test potential fixes, just tell me that - send me a patched version incorporating the change and I will test it during lag periods and send you the log. Obviously that isn't perfect for a couple of reasons - lag can come and go abruptly and lag related to a memory leak would be cleared by switching versions - but it would be a start.

In fact, if you suspect a memory leak I'd be willing to run the debug client for a long continuous run (provided you used the circular buffer) so there was time for it to build up. I know it would run slow, but I'm willing to make the investment in the hope of future payoff in the form of improved playability.

I suspect other players might be willing to participate in a similar fashion.

And if you are already are doing this, or decide to do this and pick players who play more, please post the fact, and let the people participating communicate publicly about it. This lag is hugely frustrating, but the lack of progress or even a visible effort to fix it is nearly as frustrating. I recall a recent exchange between 2 forumites (I think Cauthay and Smatt, but I could be wrong) where both were complaining about lag and one was trying to sound optimistic and the other was just bitter and frustrated and I was thinking how I'd really like to be the optimistic one but was feeling more like the bitter and disenchanted one. If participants could share their experiences with the community, it would greatly improve morale.