Extreme lag since last hotfix

[Faltout]

Since the hotfix about a week or so ago, I have been experiencing crippling lag (Mabar style) in Khyber. At first I believed that it was caused by what we did in the quest because I had previous experience of causing lag in "In the Demon's Den" while kiting the marilith a certain way (jumping off the ramp making her recalculate the route she needs to take to hit me). But then it starting occuring in spots where we were doing nothing at all. Sometimes lag just hit hard for about half an hour and then left only to return 10 minutes later for another run.

I was being patient with it, but it's starting to impact my ability to play at all. I want to do a hard quest where tactics and awareness are involved and I KNOW that lag will hit at some point making the party wipe. I tried playing much much more safe having some pets, some hirelings to take care of the battle when we are not able to move and making it easy for them by blinding the enemy monsters (and sunbeam won't trigger when lagging) but it's really stupid and we have aborted 3 nights in a row because of lag.

My friend says it's because of the people online at the time (20:00 GMT - 02:00 GMT) and truly there are A LOT of people playing during the holidays, but I've seen such crowd before and the problems started before the holidays.

Are most people experiencing this? Or is it just a few of us? If yes, are the devs that aren't taking a vacation aware that the servers need some maintenance?

P.S. The lag doesn't hit only me, it hits every member of the party that is in the same instance as me. Also, last night, we were waiting for a member to reach King's Forest. We were having no lag at the time, but she had some issues in marketplace, then no lag in harbor or spinner's prison, crippling lag in Eveningstar Cavern, some lag in Eveningstar, no lag in King's Forest. Of course when we entered Impossible Demands while it started just fine, crippling lag hit when we got the the first room at first wiping us and then making us kill the priestess to at least complete. We exited the quest with 2 of the members having 2 permanent firewall dots, our gear broken and a urge to take a break from the lag.

[Viggy]

My group gets horrible lag anytime after 11:00AM EST. Currently I stuck in madstone crater, haven't been able to move in about 15 minutes, completely lagged out. I don't think I have completed a quest without noticing lag or completely lagging out at least once in the past week.

Something needs to be done, no point in having bonus xp when most people cannot play.

[Kerria]

Is it just Kyber or all of them? Lag is killing us in more ways then one. Bags are hanging up, bank is hanging up, transitions, vendors, you name it, it is lagging badly. If the server can not handle the load then maybe it is time for a new one. I have been playing and paying long enough to have bought one for sure. Any first time players will leave and never come back with this going on.

[Faltout]

Is it just Kyber or all of them? Lag is killing us in more ways then one. Bags are hanging up, bank is hanging up, transitions, vendors, you name it, it is lagging badly. If the server can not handle the load then maybe it is time for a new one. I have been playing and paying long enough to have bought one for sure. Any first time players will leave and never come back with this going on.

Haven't noticed anything while playing in Sarlona. Maybe it was the time I played (not the one I mentioned in the OP), but judging by the responses of other people from other servers, I can see that it's not happening on all servers. I have yet to meet a Khyberian that says "no lag while I play".

[Phoenix-daBard]

My friend says it's because of the people online at the time (20:00 GMT - 02:00 GMT)

These were the hours I was playing Friday through Sunday (noon - 6pm PST) and had very little issues with lag.

You might want to try

pathping gls.ddo.com

and

tracert gls.turbine.com

To see if there are any problems between you and DDO. Also remember that certain kinds of lag can be caused by one person in your party having connection issues.

[Phoenix-daBard]

I have yet to meet a Khyberian that says "no lag while I play".

Congratulations you just met one. Or let us say I have seen very little server lag and when I have seen lag it has usually been shown to be somewhere between Turbine and myself.

[Faltout]

Congratulations you just met one. Or let us say I have seen very little server lag and when I have seen lag it has usually been shown to be somewhere between Turbine and myself.

Wow, honestly congratulations. Play for all of us who can't

Btw, traceroute is fine (same as 3 months ago), connection (in game) shows green (while lagging to death), party members are lagging in different instances, guild members are lagging in different parties, even monsters are lagging in quests and forum members are lagging in different timezones.
So that makes you really special. What quests have you been playing?

[Phoenix-daBard]

So that makes you really special. What quests have you been playing?

Nothing that special. I just have been running random epics solo for the most part on a **** ISP who can't give me better than a 600ms ping.

[Lechesis]

Congratulations you just met one. Or let us say I have seen very little server lag and when I have seen lag it has usually been shown to be somewhere between Turbine and myself.

I have a monster computer, graphic card, and connection speed. I only lag when the entire party lags... or the entire zone. if the problem is between me and turbine then i guess the rest of the zone or instance players all coincidentally use the same broken piece of the internet that does not seem to impact our movie streaming or other online gaming.

[Amedeus]

I have never had such lag I can`t move half the time lately and I have never seen so many lag wipes ever. the guild has been communicating on what regions of the server are safe to enter at the moment. turbine I think I want my money back this month.

[Lechesis]

I have never had such lag I can`t move half the time lately and I have never seen so many lag wipes ever. the guild has been communicating on what regions of the server are safe to enter at the moment. turbine I think I want my money back this month.

That is the humorous thing about lag deniers. We have set up special talk channels to communicate which zones are unsafe/frozen.

[count_spicoli]

yes khyber is a disaster right now. every other quest has been a failure due to lag and im lagging in public areas. DIed in the twelve when i was rubberbanding and next thing was in the lava. This needs to be adressed by the devs that they at least know about it. I sent in a bug report and i suggest that everyone do the same'

[Fafnir]

Both questing and raiding have been made very difficult by lag the last days.

[96th_Malice]

Ive honestly been OK ... a bit of issues with the bank yesterday. But quests and raids have been fine !!

[Fuitentooty]

It's the worst I've ever seen. It takes forever to load up the DDO store also. It is very frustrating to the point where I just log in to roll the daily dice and check out the auction house.

Getting a permanent sleet storm dot during a lag episode on a melee character is debilitating, but provides lots of party humor (permanent blind)! But still debilitating.

Sadly, I've actually started playing other MMOs, and it feels great to play games without crippling lag. Hopefully after the holiday break it'll improve, because I still like DDO a lot. It's just not fun to play at the moment.

[inspiredunease]

Running a trace route from the UK, I'm getting a million request timed out instances:

12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Any network bods that could maybe inform us on setting up a better DNS / static route configuration? Is that even possible for DDO?

EDIT: Just to note, I do not get lag all the time, it seems to come and go in waves, but when it's there, as others have said it's crippling. I'm sat on my guild-ship at the moment completely unable to move. Relogging seems to work about 50% of the time.

[96th_Malice]

Well that proved it .... Khyber server is located in Canada



No issues .... AND still running the old 6 CORE AMD

[Lechesis]

It's the worst I've ever seen. It takes forever to load up the DDO store also. It is very frustrating to the point where I just log in to roll the daily dice and check out the auction house.

Getting a permanent sleet storm dot during a lag episode on a melee character is debilitating, but provides lots of party humor (permanent blind)! But still debilitating.

Sadly, I've actually started playing other MMOs, and it feels great to play games without crippling lag. Hopefully after the holiday break it'll improve, because I still like DDO a lot. It's just not fun to play at the moment.

Permadots noted during lag so far:
Acid Fog
Sleet Storm
Wall of Fire
Ice Storm

My record so far is having three at once before re-logging to clear. On a character with high resist numbers of course.

[Faltout]

Running a trace route from the UK, I'm getting a million request timed out instances:

12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Any network bods that could maybe inform us on setting up a better DNS / static route configuration? Is that even possible for DDO?

EDIT: Just to note, I do not get lag all the time, it seems to come and go in waves, but when it's there, as others have said it's crippling. I'm sat on my guild-ship at the moment completely unable to move. Relogging seems to work about 50% of the time.

Hi, I'm guessing you're on Windows and running tracert. This is based on pinging with ICMP packets. Not all routers/servers will respond to an ICMP echo request (or an IP packet that died in their hands because the TimeToLive field expired) because of their policy. So, it's only natural that you see a lot of packet drops. If the server is not responding (like gls.turbine.com for example) then you'll never see an end to your traceroute. For all you know, gls.turbine.com could be the point number 13 and all further echo requests with a higher TimeToLive field would be dropped as well.
However, if the traceroute has passed from your ISP to the ISP's provider, to a Tier1 provider, to Turbine's provider then it's safe to assume that the connection is fine. If the trace stops sooner then you really can't assume anything.

The only reliable tool to test your connection is running a packet capturing software (if your card allows it) and inspecting what happens when you lag. But that is nearly impossible because you first need to understand what the UDP packets are saying (they're talking in DDO language) so you can determine if there is packet loss and why.

[inspiredunease]

Hi, I'm guessing you're on Windows and running tracert. This is based on pinging with ICMP packets. Not all routers/servers will respond to an ICMP echo request (or an IP packet that died in their hands because the TimeToLive field expired) because of their policy. So, it's only natural that you see a lot of packet drops. If the server is not responding (like gls.turbine.com for example) then you'll never see an end to your traceroute. For all you know, gls.turbine.com could be the point number 13 and all further echo requests with a higher TimeToLive field would be dropped as well.
However, if the traceroute has passed from your ISP to the ISP's provider, to a Tier1 provider, to Turbine's provider then it's safe to assume that the connection is fine. If the trace stops sooner then you really can't assume anything.

The only reliable tool to test your connection is running a packet capturing software (if your card allows it) and inspecting what happens when you lag. But that is nearly impossible because you first need to understand what the UDP packets are saying (they're talking in DDO language) so you can determine if there is packet loss and why.

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I'm definitely hitting some sort of US carrier, so from what you're saying it doesn't sound like the routing is at issue, or if it is, it's beyond my skills to work out why, or where. Just so frustrating, I'm clutching at straws.