Awful network lag (Are you on virgin media ADSL?)

[Sloth]

Does anyone else get awful lag, and by awful i mean between 5 and 50 seconds of lag?
Maybe this is an isp problem (my isp is virgin media in the uk) i have been unable to play since Monday morning however TF2, download speeds are all good.

I tried to do a tracert to the server but i uncovered something weird, using software to monitor packets sent while trying to play i found client was sending data to the ip 206.127.147.197 which is a server in Austin TX, the hop before this ip is in Hanburg which is where i thought the server was?
I don't really understand whats going on there? my tracert to the Hanburg ip is fine but no response from Austin TX.
I also noticed lots of error packets when i was monitoring.

I tried to play on the other servers but the lag was pretty much the same, i have already canceled my account, no point in paying for a game i cant even play which is a shame because i do want to play.

[BlasterKnight]

Austin Tx is where NcSoft's North American Headquarters is as well as the devlopment group for this game is.

[Gangrel]

Sloth, what zone are you having issues in.... as ATM it appears to be Mires that is having huge issues.

Also on top of that who is your ISP? And also what time of day is this happening?

[smooth]

Sloth, what zone are you having issues in.... as ATM it appears to be Mires that is having huge issues.

Also on top of that who is your ISP? And also what time of day is this happening?

errrr..

He said Virgin in UK...

You english need to slap your isp's around a bit...they seem to suck...quite a bit..*winks*

[Gangrel]

Gah!

Believe it or not though, a friend of mine who is with Virgin has had slow internet usage quite a bit recently (22kb/s and never higher) . Shame that its taking him a while to get the issue sorted (he needs to run 6 speed checks at different times of the day). Shame he is working though so that is quite a hard one to resolve.

The fact that it has started from monday though, it could be due to a change that Virgin have done to their routing.

[Sloth]

Its was happening on every map i tried but i am currently in Palisades with my main and alt.

I tried to play again this morrning and suprise suprise i can actually play however i am still not happy with this level of "normal lag"
I shoot my rifle or injector gun and it plays the shooting animation twice, once for when i press the mouse button and once when the server sends a response to that.
Not only is that very annoying but it makes the overheat gauge on the injector gun useless as both animations increment the gauge, i assume the jammed calculation is done server side because i have had that gun beeping for a very long time without it jamming up.

back too the lag i do seem to be getting less packet loss in the morning but afaik there is really no way to tell whats happening there.

Oh and yes virgin media adsl is terrible (and they know it is), they do limit your bandwidth a lot in the evenings however it all depends on which broadband access module you connect to when you log your modem onto there network, as far as i can tell its random and they are not load balanced, last night i really lucked out and got on one that gave me 5Mbit, usually like your friend i get the crappy connection with 20-40 kbps download speeds.

[Kal Kadel]

I got the same problem....and nope I dont mean im a Virgin Media customer

Started playing about 10 days ago now, each day my lag has steadily got worse to the point where I haven't logged in for 3 - 4 days now. This isnt through choice its the fact that no matter how calm I try to stay playing a game at 5 - 20 FPS just makes me mad and I end up taking it out on my poor mouse / keyboard :/

I havent cancelled my sub yet as I'm hoping that this patch / fix they are working on on the PTS will sort these "lag" issues out, although I am very dissapointed with the fact that it could be anywhere from 2 weeks that we have to wait to get these game breaking issues fixed.

I havent moaned and bitched about quitting becuase I'm still hopefull that I wont have to and that the devs will come good and at least stabalise the servers enough for people to play the game at whatever time of day / night they want without having to play it in slow motion.

TBH I'm very dissapointed that such an important aspect of the game has been over looked and neglected by the devs and I urge them to buy some decent hardware or change whoever is supplying them with there bandwith because as it is now there making it impossible for what seems to be a huge % of players to enjoy the game they have been waiting for since early beta.

Another observation as well is that if anyone plans on using the 3 day trial at present they are going to be left with a very bad taste in there mouth especially if coming from other games where server stability isnt a daily / hourly issue.

P.S im guessing the dev team knew they were going to have problemsof this sort and this is more than likely one of the reasons why they haven't released an official forum for the game - clever move on there part tbh. (if there was any other reason for not having an official forum that anyone else knows about please correct me )

*hopes that the lag is fixed very soon*

[Gangrel]

It is a hard one to measure though, as i am currently playing the game in Torden Plains and i am having no lag issues whatsoever, and i havent heard any issues from my clan members either (apart from the guilty suspect of Torden Mires)...

So it is a hard case to narrow down of what exactly is causing the issue. As i havent had lag even when the server was on High this week.

Please note that if you are having 'Lag' issues please do indeed feed it back (there is a feedback form on the website) or you can post it here in the bugs/tech issues section. But please put down what server you are on, what time of day you are playing and also your ISP (Tiscali users have had issues with playing the game, even during the beta)

Information like this can narrow it down for them as well.

Just saying "ZOMG I HAVE LAG" just points out that you are having lag, and it doesnt help the devs at all in working out where the issue is.

Also your framerate shouldnt be a measure of lag though (Torden Mires for me still produces 40fps almost constantly... just with a 1 second delay on most things)

I hope that this small post helps you out.

[Kal Kadel]

Aye your right Ganrgrel it is very difficult to say what is causing the lag...but as i read the threads on this forum alone its obvious that there is a huge % of players that are having these issues.

When people reply to me well I have no lag so theres no problem it makes me shudder and prey that the devs dont have the same attitude. As there is no way of knowing 100% what is causing the lag I've had to compare my lag in game the only way I know how and that is against other games, Ive got active accounts for WOW / LOTRO / SWG / COH / COV / EVE and the only lag issues I get in any of those games is a little bit of rubber banding in the highly populated areas which anyone can live with.

My net connection at home is BT broadband running at 6meg atm, ive donme plenty of bandwith speed tests and they all tell me the same 6 - 6.5 meg ...enough for any online game.

As for sending in bug reports and error reports...once maybe twice ill do this (and have in many previous games ive played) but as the issues never.....aye NEVER get fixed i find it annoying to send in ticket after ticket, especially if it is to say im lagging in certain areas at certain times of day and lets be honest if thats what most of my game time is going to go towards then why shouldnt I just go play a beta somewhere without the monthly sub.

In my opinion the game has been released way to early, and if the Dev team cant fix / stabalise the clients sooner rather than later the early launch of the game could be its downfall, especially with so many other big name titles soon to be released in the genre.

lol all this being said now ill bet that i log in and it runs as smooth as solataire

[BlasterKnight]

Lag is always a hard thing to adjust for.  There is your system specs, your isp, what zone, server load ect.  All online games, and I do mean all, have these kinds of issues shortly after release.  Some dont get it completely sorted out for the first few months and even then its not nessarly fixed for everyone.  Not sure bout everyone else but I do admit to getting a bit of lag here and there and mostly on the maps with lots of players and non-multiple versions of that map.  However upto bout Palsaides its smooth for most people.  After that is where the problem mostly apears and that could be caused by any number of reasons. 

As of right now what we can all do is submit bug reports with as many details as we can to the devs so they can narrow down the issues as soon as they can.  Also good to check with your ISP to see if there is something that they are doing to mess with your connection to the game.  Just becasue it doesnt have problems on other MMOs doesnt mean they are not effecting your current game. 

[Kal Kadel]

yeah i understand that the servers are gonna be shot for the first month or so hehe i remy the day SWG launched well unfortunatly :/

And im trying to stay positive about the game, what makes it so frustrating is that out of all the MMO's ive played I think so far this is the one I really want to play, hell the first 16 lvls on both my clones i haven't caught myself watching my xp bar once and in other titles id have already gone into "just grind mode".

hope any of the above didnt sound to much like a rant btw like i said just frustrated about not being able to play properly atm

[Gangrel]

EU Launch of CoX was very rubber bandy for the first few weeks of launch as well... but then again that did affect everyone in that zone.

But as i have said... a low fps does not always = lag... I have to admit i am with BT as well and i have yet to have any lag issues so far unless everyone in the zone was being affected by it at the same time. (and even then sometimes because i was in a low populated part of the zone i also sometimes avoided it).

The speedtest checks are good for seeing what speed you can get... but they dont show you the network delay that a packet of information will recieve though to a different server.

Ahh well, i have just realised what was causing my ping to hit 250.... Damn file transfer over msn

*edit*

No worries about it... but if you are getting a low fps i would recommend dropping down the graphical details in the game a little bit, who knows, it might help you out a little bit_

[Sloth]

No problems with fps here, i am regularly hitting the 100 fps cap 

I am going to try on a different pc with virgin media cable modem as an experiment, i also found something interesting when i made a cut down tr client too fit on a usb stick, if you remove all the sound files the game runs as usual only with no sound (obviously) although i swear the load times and fps felt better, i think memory usage was also less.

Might be worth thinking about if you have a low end pc and don't have sound on anyway?

[Nyxx]

I havent had any problems with the game. I run at 40-60 FPS, but I am running a decent PC and its above the recommended. I do say the Memory is a very big factor to this game. I run DDR2 and i see a big difference. But i would recommend atleast 2 gigs and restart your PC every few hours of play. I havent had to restart but i have heard people talk about it due to a small memory leak that hasnt been fix yet that happens in most new games.

[Ronnan]

Also I remember several horrible periods in wow where the lag was just horrible, which was down to some problems with the link between Virgin Media (and other ISP's across the EU) and Blizzard game servers, with the company Telia being the problem. If you're getting net lag all the time it might be something like that messing with your ping. I remember on the wow forums the support staff were blaming the ISPs and the ISPs were blaming Blizzard (and the players were blaming everyone and threatening to quit), whereas it was the middle-man, Telia, casuing the problems.