Game suddenly is unplayably slow

[davidstallard]

I've been running LotRO for years on max settings, and using the 64-bit client since it became available. But suddenly it is very stuttery. As soon as you launch, the little Standing Stone logo animation is jittery. Then when I get to the character selection screen, the background graphics slowly pop in as does my character. If I hover over a button, it takes a few seconds before I see it highlight. Once I'm in game, it's the same slideshow - if I attempt to move the camera, nothing happens at first but a few seconds later it jumps to the new position.

I did change antivirus (from Avast to Kaspersky) in between the last smooth run of the game and this new performance issue. However, even if I completely shut down Kaspersky (not just disable it), the problem is still there. I also had the client re-download all data, no change. I uninstalled the non-Steam client and then installed the Steam client, no change.

I have also recently updated my video driver (Nvidia) and installed a Windows update from earlier this year that I stumbled on.

Any idea what might be going on?

[farmhand99]

I can say that the antivirus Kaspersky is Russian owned the US Govt doesn't use it because of that. Now that information I read on a CNet article about anitvirus programs in the last month.

You could provide more information as to when this started, your computer specs and do you normally keep all your programs up to date. It's hard to give advise otherwise.

[davidstallard]

I completely uninstalled Kaspersky and there was no change (I'm not overly suspicious of it, it's one of the top-rated antivirus offerings). I then discovered that other games are also horribly slow now, so it's not LotRO-specific. I'm currently looking into recent Windows updates--I've found articles saying that certain updates really hurt performance, but so far I don't appear to have any of these updates installed.

[davidstallard]

I fixed the issue. Something was odd with my video driver (it kept saying I had a new version to install, even though that version was installed) so I uninstalled everything related to Nvidia and then reinstalled Geforce Experience and the latest driver - that did the trick. Apparently when I upgraded my driver a few days ago it wasn't completely successful, I guess.

[Yarbro]

I completely uninstalled Kaspersky and there was no change (I'm not overly suspicious of it, it's one of the top-rated antivirus offerings). I then discovered that other games are also horribly slow now, so it's not LotRO-specific. I'm currently looking into recent Windows updates--I've found articles saying that certain updates really hurt performance, but so far I don't appear to have any of these updates installed.

Something is "stealing focus" away from the game; you get the same effect if you run the game windowed, and then start using any other program on the rest of the desktop.

Someone else was reporting this issue recently, but I dont remember if they posted what was causing it.

I am willing to bet it is something MicroGit has done.