I mean seriously: how expensive can a few servers be to host a few thousand of players?Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
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I mean seriously: how expensive can a few servers be to host a few thousand of players?Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
Quote:
Originally Posted by oggbnvwnyc
Blanket statements are very usefull for effect but dont represent different usecases (Moors, Raids, Game systems, Expansions with increased population load etc). Each can require a different subset of solutions that dont work across all. And everything costs money. Dont think you buy all the best for whatever you need, but on some points you go for functional within the budget you're willing to spend.
It's not an excuse, its just a fact.Quote:
Originally Posted by oggbnvwnyc
LOTRO itself is not Optimized to handle the amounts of Data (Coding, Systems, Characters logged in, what all is going on with any given Server, the amount information each Server must track: Inventory, Vault, Shared Storage, Wardrobe, Housing Chests, all the Items in the Barter Wallet and so on) compared to how it could back in the day and it is by the Month and Year getting worse for the whole game with 1 Server in particular: Evernight, showing the biggest consistent issues.
It is a fact, LOTRO had more Servers and more Players on said Servers back in the day when LOTRO was run from a United States and European Server Host Locations.
The two Server Host Locations back in the day is also why the Coding for Characters doesn't allow for NA & EU Servers to have Transfers between each other.
They moved all Servers to Boston, Massachusetts, USA in June 2011 when Codemasters no longer were running the EU Side of LOTRO's Servers. Obviously we had the Server Closures and everyone having to pick a new Server (or for those who didn't have their information atm stuck in limbo but sounding like this "might" be within striking distance here before end of 2021 for folks to start Transferring off Closed Servers).
Later these Servers were moved and here in 2021 their current Server Host Location is in New Jersey, USA.
Start and End of the day, LOTRO is unique for how it was Coded, dealt with and being dealt with. You can't compare how any other Company or Game is doing but there aren't many, if any, Games that have been handled akin to LOTRO when it comes to Coding, Character Data, Servers, etc.
The biggest thing is: Internet and Server Hardware has gotten better but LOTRO has not been keeping up with trying to be Optimized over it's over 14+ year history which we don't have a specific date when it's first and earliest bit of Coding was being worked on.
LOTRO has seen several DirectX's, several Operating Systems for Personal Use Computers, it's seen several Server Hosting Operating Systems, LOTRO was made during an Era where 32 Bit Programs was the norm and nowadays 64 Bit Programs is the main stay more and more. LOTRO is just a relic of a different time and era that has made it into an era where such older ways of building anything is becoming more and more obselete.
LOTRO is just a House and the Property it is on which the yard is overgrown, the House and Yard has not been maintained as well as it should have with the Driveway and Sidewalks are cracked/pot holes/broken & angled/etc, various issues on the outside of the House and on the Property and the House itself is old with Piping, Wiring, Plumbing, etc which is outdated, the stairs are creaky, the floors creak at the slightest step, etc. Then the House and Yard is just packed with all kinds of Junks from Personal Possessions to various Equipment which used to help keep the House and Yard in order and things moving along but many are now left sat out in the elements just rusting away.
So SSG has 3 main choices:
- First option which basically is akin to what it has been and likely will be. Do what they can which they have but LOTRO itself is going to force both this game and SSG into a position where it'll no longer be sustainable unless MAJOR work is done to improve and keep it doing well. This is the most likely option taken.
- Second Option is to have the Sidewalks and Driveway torn up and redone. Have Landscaping come in and get the Yard better. Demo the House, gutting it to it's core foundation and trying their best to build up around the framework. This option however cannot fully get away from the Foundation issues this game will always have due to when it was built. Basically this means trying to Optimize the game as much as possible but the Old Coding will always be a factor but this would give LOTRO X amount more Years especially if LOTRO saw an increase in the Daily/Monthly Accounts logging in.
- Third Option is to do what they can with the House and Property. Do some maintenance wherever they can that doesn't break the bank and take tons of hours. Then look to get/build a new House. This option is basically LOTRO 2.0 with keeping Current LOTRO, working on it more, keep it going as strong as possible through until LOTRO 2.0 would be fully on it's feet, launched and with a decent amount of Content. Then it would be slowly turning off the lights of LOTRO 1.0 however this is the most unlikely choice.
The price to make Modern Games keeps rising per year and pending the scope of a "LOTRO 2.0" it could be several Hundred Million Dollars (USD) just to see a LOTRO 2.0 get made, into Beta and see a Launch. Also a LOTRO 2.0 would take X amount of Years to be worked on so even if this choice was decided on say in 2022, it would be unlikely to see LOTRO 2.0 until after 2025 and likely closer to 2027. Note: LOTRO 2.0 wouldn't be porting things over so it wouldn't be a Copy X of LOTRO 1.0 and Paste it into LOTRO 2.0, everything would be 100% brand new.
Perhaps the clients at your datacentre listen to your advice about requirements to run their services. They (Turbine) ran servers with much bigger populations in the past, there's no possible argument there. Rather than keep thinking Daybreak/SSG have your best interest in mind you might instead ask around for anyone with contacts at SSG's datacentre. Those calls for crowd-funding so quickly turned down by SSG might be circumvented if they are directed to a few days of double bandwidth at the datacentre, to prove a point. And if SSG step in to stop it, you'll find out.Quote:
Originally Posted by maartena
If even blanket statements like "Your server is laggy" won't work to get SSG to take action, which has been proven for years, then what good are precise and in-depth reports?Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoroasterax
True, there are constraints, but are the server currently functional, as in getting customers to play, stay and spend money?
Would you react different if the national weather service issued a tornado warning for the street you live on vs one for the entire state you live in?Quote:
Originally Posted by oggbnvwnyc
Ok, it is clear that SSG is not going to take this seriously, I propose we go on strike from the game for a day or so.
Given I can't even login to Evernight at the moment, how would they know it's a strike and not just their crumbling infrastructure?Quote:
Originally Posted by qrcc
They still get / have gotten your money but you don't play. Not a strategy likely to prompt action by the company.Quote:
Originally Posted by qrcc
A server-wide boycott of the store would have a better chance of focusing their attention, but it would be hard to enlist enough people and keep it going long enough to really work.
Whether it's optimized or not is beside the point.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
If your car isn't optimized for gas mileage, do you walk the last five miles to work every day?
No. You buy enough additional gas to get there despite being suboptimal. And maybe, longer term, work toward having a more efficient car.
In this case, there is a certain capacity required to handle normal player populations, and they're only putting up the money to pay for a fraction of it.
A hoarder with a bigger house only has more room to fill up junk with.Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
Only solving a current problem with a solution that doesn't fix the root cause.
A better Server can help especially with more overhead but if what is causing the issues, LOTRO itself, are still there mostly in 1 year's time likely we'd be seeing issues again, if not far sooner.
You could slap LOTRO onto the best Hardware for a Server Box, best Connection out of a Data Center but if what is being trying to be run can't do it well, it won't matter.
You can give a person with mobility problems a motorized wheelchair, it'll help them get around but won't improve the main issue of why they can't get around. Especially if it's someone who could improve and have better natural mobility again.
The root cause is not provisioning enough network and/or computing resources to provide the service we are paying for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
They are also ripping us off on QA, with 6 people doing it in Gundabad compared to 62 for the Mines of Moria expansion.
They are also ripping us off on customer service, with 3+ month ticket response times.
Then get a second one so the load is shared between them. This is how distributed computing and client/server architectures work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
This is a silly analogy because distributed computing is about scaling the resources to match the demand. If you want to use it, then LotRO is a wheelchair missing half its wheels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
An update from a blue name would be appreciated.
Performance at peek time is dreadful.
Thanks.
Problems on Laurelin also. We had some lag for a long time now but last two-three weeks is just horrendous. It started in instances and spread onto landscape, it's in every area. People logging off, not being able to play.
I have mixed feelings about all of this.
On the one hand, I have tweaked my game settings and been legitimately able to avoid nearly all of the run-of-the-mill lag people complain about on a typical day. This indicates an inherent flaw in the game's ability to detect optimal settings, largely due to incompatibilities in various DX and OS communications. It's to be expected to a point, as this game has been through many evolutions in software over the years. But, I feel a proper troubleshooting post has yet to be made out of what I suppose to be some effort to save face. In not admitting the flaws of the game's interface capabilities, it seems like players have been left to fend for themselves in finding a way to best experience the game itself. This has backfired into many assuming the game just sucks, and players choose to leave not realising that minor adjustments can change the whole experience altogether. If it's about liability, you're better off fessing up to any flaws a player might encounter.
HOWEVER... having said that about standard issue lag problems, what we are dealing with since the Gundabad launch does not fall into this category.
This is clearly, and undeniably a capacity issue. No dancing around it. No stalling with routine scripted questions about what your system specs are.
This is a separate issue that cannot be addressed in the same way one might skirt around a user error. And pushing your CM to tank for you with rusted garden rake responses isn't a good look.
What I suspect is happening (based on my own experience in game development) is that the issues are the direct result of mistakes made higher up. Perhaps a terrible contract with a sub-par data centre? Perhaps someone is pinching pennies in the budget and refusing to give the dev team the resources they need to execute expectations? Perhaps management is just in utter denial that there's a problem at all and can't be bothered to look into it? Maybe it's all of the above?
But, perception is reality, and here's what it looks like from the outside:
- QoL is being sacrificed for arbitrary deadlines driven by corporate cash grabs.
- Player base is expendable and replaceable, including new players brought in by marketing schemes.
- There is no interest in customer care, feedback, or satisfaction. Only in revenue.
Now, having played this game for many years, I personally don't want to believe any of those things are happening right now. This has, historically, been the least Pay to Win game I have ever played.
But, there has been a sharp, grating tonal shift this year. Something is off. A lot of that has to do with how the public has been addressed, especially following a series of rickety launches.
Let's be honest. Both the LI overhaul and Gundabad were not launch-ready.
They needed infrastructure in place. They needed testing. They needed existing issues to be addressed first.
Now we have loads of players scrambling to try and make their way through bugged, incomplete content. Whether that's getting a proper weapon, or charging through new missions.
This has led to a lot of clustering in problematic areas of the game that are not fit to hold them.
And it's left the servers struggling to keep up with making sense of all of that.
So now you have unhappy people who just bought an expansion that wasn't ready to go live.
You have unhappy people willing to wait for the expansion that are dealing with the resulting server issues.
You have unhappy passive players, who have been dismissively been told that they don't get their perks that they wait all year for because everyone was too busy.
You have unhappy customers who are not getting what they paid for. Whether they paid you in time or money or both.
What's done is done. You can't change where it all sits right now. But you can do something very simple.
Acknowledge the problem.
Communicate with your supporters.
Fix the problem.
Don't make the same mistakes again.
Reasonable deadlines for reasonable work, with reasonable transparency.
You'd be amazed how many people will pay good money for that.
A Reasoned, sensible, detailed argument put forward. Are you sure the internet is ready for this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Razzleberries
We got no idea how much of the revenue is being invested into the game, i highly suspect that LOTRO is a mere milk cow for the owners, especially given how few people actually work on this game. You' have to wait weeks for a mere ticket response, and the live servers are functioning as beta servers.
Vote with your wallets folks...Nothing will change if the money keeps flowing into the owners pockets.
Either the owners will make major investments in the infrastructure or the game will shut down, but nothing will change if you keep giving SSG money. The game isn't even fun to play when the performance is utterly awful anyways.
They can't even be bothered to have a single server in Europe, that ought to tell you guys everything...
I suspect that's pretty close to the mark.Quote:
Originally Posted by Razzleberries
Unfortunately the best opportunity for a while is past, with the intro of the new expansion. If sales had flopped badly, it might have triggered a response. As it is, I expect the expansion has done reasonably well, and any small dip after that could easily be explained away. So now it would likely take a substantial and sustained effort to register, which simply isn't likely to happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
Well, something certainly happened seen from here.
Sadly, I don't know whether the patch did something or me switching between custom settings and standard high and very high graphics, but I have smooth gameplay at 1920x1440 resolution, with 1200+ players at 22:00 GMT+1.
Haven't sen that since returning to the game a few months ago.
How about peeps press Crtl Alt Del and get task Manager up and watch how much bandwidth you are using, performance tab ironically.
Compare the figures you see with your ISP DL/UL and a 56K modem, yes 56kbps dialup modem. Is your current bandwidth being stretched one iota?
How come these performance measures only kick in when we drop below 500 non-anons and improve further when the numbers drop to under 200?
Raninia or Cord,
When can we expect an update on the server performance? It would be really useful if it could be a considered response, rather than "we're working on it".
Paid expansion, poorly implemented instances and dreadful server performance are not really doing much to change our minds about the fact you're focusing on what the community wants.
Lob
There was work done during yesterday's maintenance that we are hopeful had a positive impact on game performance on Evernight, and we will be keeping an eye on this thread along with our game metrics throughout the weekend. We know, though, that yesterday's work did not correct everything, so we continue to identify other areas to focus on, and knowing how this weekend goes will also inform that. So, please do let us know how things go on Evernight!
Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cordovan
Bugs aside, both of the new instances had periodic freezes for the whole group as we were all on discord at the time. Later on, similarly within Sword Halls, the server would freeze periodically.
Skill lag is still apparent also.
Minor improvement at best.
I have definitely noticed an improvement since the maintenance yesterday, not sure what you did, but it was definitely a step in the right direction. There are still occasional occurrences of lag (especially in relation to missions) but overall it's far better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cordovan
Not that there isn't still lag, especially at peak times, it's just better.
Lanscape seems improved, fewer laggings out than recently but hard to say if thats due to work or fewer plays
Instances same old freezing issues.
Missions are worse than ever. no exaggeration it took me 5 minutes to hand in 1 mission
I hope the improvements help on Evernight - however the performance issues are not limited to that server. I play mostly on Arkenstone and performance issues are noticeable, even in solo Missions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cordovan
Yesterday I ran a low level (15) character through a quest instance on Gladden with just over 600 on the server. On two occasions both myself and the NPC I was following froze for 5 to 10 seconds. Once unstuck the NPC was far
ahead of me engaged in combat.
At times I freeze in combat only to come out of the freeze needing to scramble out of trouble. Even stable master horses on occasion path incorrectly before eventually self correcting.
The issue is not local to us. In this house we play other AAA MMO's with no problems. We Zoom, do online video schooling etc. The only app we have consistent performance issues with is LOTRO. Hope you can sort them out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
Another way to state such is LOTRO is a guy at the mall carrying a lot of Bags & Boxes in that comical he's carrying everything and his girlfriend/wife has one bag.
That is every LOTRO Server, carrying tons of boxes and bags.
Now you can get someone to help (another Server Box) and have the boxes and bags evenly being carried between two people but the amount of bags are still the same amount.
Each person carrying has less weight, can see better, has better movement, awareness and ability to react buuuuuuut the gf/wife is about to enter another store (more Content coming in 2022) and load up both people with more bags and boxes and now you have 2 guys who comically are carrying too much.
LOTRO just is that guy who is carrying those Boxes and Bags ALL the time.
Better and/more Server Boxes only will solve potentially very short term issues with spreading out said load while not helping the long term issues which will eventually pile up again if Optimization is not more heavily invested into.
Times have moved on; it's reading barcodes and using the store's free wifi to order from elsewhere now. But modern systems promise the appearance of another dude to take up the new bags seamlessly. We however get an injection of hundreds of new items and paltry means to deal with them, so I'd imagine the same kind of thinking goes into the upgrading of systems to handle new content, none.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
I think Evernight has improved a lot, in landscape some occasional lag but not a lot. Moving stuff between bags and storage is still slow, but not banging-head-against-the-table slow anymore.
My kinnies - spread over EU - agree.
My first thoughts were a roll back of all measures taken to improve performance over the last couple of years. Or another fibre optic cable purchase. Only been harvesting nodes today though.Quote:
Originally Posted by OghranNasty
Mostly my example was explaining how LOTRO is, it's like going about your daily life always carrying a bunch of boxes and bags and it'll hinder your performance in a variety of tasks whether they are simple to complex. You can get folks to help but everyone still has to carry those bags around and deal with such for said simple to complex tasks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Braer
It's getting the amount that must be carried down more which will bring more results and will ensure better Server Hardware has extra overhead and can last longer compared to how things are.
Potentially in 1 to 2 years (if not far less) we'd be right back to "we need newer hardware to deal with all the excess baggage" issues which we currently are faced with if there isn't a better New Stuff to Optimization Ratio in 2022.
You do get that every main server had the capacity to run with much higher populations than we have now. You don't continue to pay running costs for customers who quit. All the invested resources to make the merge possible was to reduce those running costs. And they've been talking about improving performance ever since. Now if your strategy is to fool enough folk into thinking you have their back then you won't have the confidence to actually increase capacity in case you get rumbled and a bunch more leave. Throw in the suits at Daybreak/EG7 demanding their tranche and SSG are stuck between a rock and... ah, us. Even the database/"restructuring" change was an overhead cutting measure that cut into performance. Because we'd get acclimatised to it with further talk of performance measures to try, the last few making things demonstrably worse so we might believe the roll back would be seen as an improvement, who knows? Cord the painting in the attic they abuse to retain a semblance of morale compass, as far as I can see.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
Likely very close to the mark. They have a track record of using player concerns as an excuse to undertake changes to either save them money or make them more money. The server consolidation was supposedly undertaken to address concerns of low server populations - however, the real objective was cost saving. Even the recently introduced LI system was supposedly done to address player concerns about the grind required to obtain a max imbued LI. However, to obtain a max LI under the new system not only requires an equal or greater grind, but requires grinding of much more difficult content (raids, maybe high tier instances) than was ever required to obtain empowerment scrolls or star-lit crystals for the imbued system.Quote:
Originally Posted by Braer
Feedback here please --> https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...st-of-November
I saw this too late sadly to place info they ask for :/ But maybe someone can help.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Braer
Back in the day when LOTRO was still new-ish it didn't have as much Coding, Systems, Data, etc which did allow for more folks to play on a single Server at the time with far weaker Computers and Server Hardware than what is available and used in 2021.Quote:
Originally Posted by DKenny
It's just been the "piling of stuff" which has ensured how LOTRO runs for a Server that is on a Server Box or Boxes will see various issues due to how much junk there is with bigger Data Amounts like Evernight showing LOTRO is at it's limits or getting dangerously close.
By the time SSG had bought LOTRO and DDO from Turbine in December 2016 the Server Consolidation had already been announced in January 2015, Server Transfers were under way in 2015 with April 2016 (months ahead of SSG being the Developer) for the Closing Date of all Closed Servers and LOTRO had already seen the Pathes of the Dead as LOTRO's Main Story was heading towards Osgiliath being overrun, the Siege of Minas Tirith and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields while still under Turbine's leadership. SSG becoming the Developer after the March of the King Update had already been released before the official announcement Turbine was no longer the Developer on December 19, 2016.
Turbine was the one who started the Server Consolidation Process, it's just SSG who inherited the task of dealing with the fallout afterward. Now have they handled such as good as they could have from what information we have? No, we don't have the full story but SSG overall kept up with Practices and Habits that had been entrenched for years from Turbine with mostly New Content Heavy Development Cycles in SSG's 5 Year History.
So anything to do with Server Consolidations for Closing Worlds in the form of how it was handled was NOT SSG's business even if various SSG Members might have been from those days with Turbine. How SSG has handled such afterwards is the only thing that can be examined for such which LOTRO has seen 3 (4) Servers added, SSG are still trying to allow folks to Transfer off said Closed Servers and the latest news was such was very close and just how to go about allowing folks to do such was the main goal (hopefully a more staggered Transfer to keep the amount of Data moving lower as problems will likely arise).
Obviously pending when such finally occurs it isn't happening but outside of Optimization for how LOTRO runs and SSG's choices in Server Hardware there is nothing Pre-December 2016 that can be discussed that is SSG's responsibility only what SSG could have done Post-December 2016 that could have led to better results years down the road.
Now for saving money to make more money, what good business doesn't try to spend as little as possible while making the most profit? This isn't something solely done by SSG and far bigger Companies do far worse than SSG has done yet are given many magnitudes more Money on a Yearly Basis than LOTRO has likely seen in it's 14+ Year History.
You don't run a business to break even or just see a little bit of profit on a yearly basis, that is how businesses never grow and eventually fade away or get bought out by some other business.
I'll concede that there a lot more stuff in the game but it's largely compartmentalised. Similarly so with SSG staff mores the pity.
All pats on the back and well done in the inhouse dev servers but zero evidence of any load testing capability. Just Live. Our CM avoids (or finds them beyond his understanding?) all but the very basics of game systems. There's a lot we don't know, if we don't look deeper and just believe the spin ofc.
Is it acceptable to enter a Mission, run to the end boss objective and AE it down and leave the Mission before any mob is visible? Then wait up to 5 minutes in a busy Mission Hall for the tracker to update and hand in the quest? No, we instead have the devs second guessing when the "messages" go poop and have the work-arounds in-place rather than question the tech they've been given to copy these spaces. Making do with what they've been given no questions to be asked?
But they are asking us to supply our diag data and videos of our performance problems with /locs supplied, but to what end? Do they have anyone to look at any of this stuff? What is porting to a /loc going to tell someone on a default systems account with zero baggage and zero chance of recreating the player's experience going to be worth to anyone? When we play lag and poor performance it's more about the differential between our input and how the game reacts so only the most obvious videos are going to convey the problems and if you don't play the game and know the environments how much can be recognised as normal or abnormal?
What they do have is high pop servers they can play on themselves and experience the same issues, yet that seems to be beyond them! Can't even be open about what they have changed and where they expect us to notice a difference for any such test over the last 5 years.
EN playing much better for me since the patch. Not completely fixed, but better. That said, the rush of new characters going through early Gundabad zones has dropped significantly too, so some minor improvement would have been expected given that. All that needs to happen ow to make Gunda fully playable is fixing Clovengap and the instance bugs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cordovan
Idk what you guys did during the maintenance, but there was a noticable improvement. Moors is still unplayable in some places, but the improvement is encouraging.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cordovan
Server performance dropping off again.
- Skill lag.
- Mobs not attacking or loading morale bars.
- Freezes - instance and landscape.
You are on [EN] Evernight server 33 at r2 lx1968 ly1856 i19 cInside ox-63.80 oy-89.06 oz-460.95 h56.2. Game timestamp 456667890.221.
Character - Lob
Time - 21:11 GMT
On my old computer, it used to lag all the time, especially during festivals. Since I got my new computer, there's been no lag that I can see, and rubber banding is reduced to almost none.
So it maybe be the pc right. Nah, people are sitting with high- end pc for 3-4k and still lag. One friend have 1000/1000 mbit fiber.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lofnheid
big lags again tonight, all zones.
Character just got logged out while lagging around and now whenever i try and log that character i get "there has been an error".
https://i.imgur.com/9ObMxtp.jpg
: DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
I don't play on Evernight, but on Gladden. However, over the last 6 months lag has gotten increasingly worse.
Situations where lag ALWAYS occurs:
1) Teleporting to new area (doesn't matter if its busy or you are the only one there), hopping on horse, and you GLIDE to your destination for up to 30 seconds, while your horse cosmetics aren't loaded but have the generic blond sorrel design, nor is anything spawned around you. Especially bad in neighborhoods (Looking at you Rohan). Can take several MINUTES for things to load sometimes.
2) Angmar. People on Gladden have jokingly called it "Lagmar". It is absolutely terrible. Whatever computers/servers whatever is controlling it, it is failing. Sometimes the ground will not even load for SEVERAL MINUTES, besides mobs, npc's, etc. Many times you will find when the lag has caught up that you are either dead or in combat.
3) Riding a quick horse (not a stable route), directly in one direction, will make you "pass" the server's ability to create your environment and spawn terrain, npc's, mobs ahead of you. Sometimes I will ride past and a node will spawn BEHIND me that I already went thru, and I'll have to double-back for it. Or if its a quest giver or mob, whatever.
4) Sound Lag. For no reason whatsoever, lag will happen anywhere and if you say, talk to an NPC, kill a mob, and travel, there will be SILENCE, until the server catches up and you hear the NPC greeting, battle, and gallop sounds ALL AT ONCE. This one is new to me.
I was thinking of buying a new house in Erebor when it comes out but unless I see at least a LITTLE improvement in these areas, I dunno.
Thalian from Gladden
PS. No, its not my computer/internet connection. 500mb/down and 24 gigs ram and quad core i5 3.x mhz cpu
12:41 Eastern and no chat no access to vault/shared is Evernight in it's death throws?
General Error 0x0000000E
Tonight on Evernight I gave up trying to open my vault - both shared storage and char vault were taking minutes to open that I gave up.
Even several hours later when I could finally see what was in my vault it takes over a minute to put anything in or take anything out.
Party time in Net Opps?
Anyone familiar with The Fast Show? "Today, I have been mostly allocating resources to instances."
Same problems as described above. General error in chat and when trying to move things to and from storage. Several minutes wait time to hand in quests. Gliding around on the goat. Available quests not showing up at all. I logged off in frustration. You gotta do something SSG, even a playerbase as loyal as this won't stick around forever...
While Evernight did see an improvement after the initial update it's all back to the same lag spike \ skill delay \ constant general errors as it was before
You can see it going on in world chat almost every hour of the day where someone complains about it.
It's not remotely fixed yet.. Can i once again suggest free transfers OFF Evernight as the server is in fact ALMOST unplayable
You imagine the welcome we'd get from the Laurelin folk?Quote:
Originally Posted by Emaldiom
Maybe they did buy a couple of weeks of bandwidth for some data to take to their masters, can we have some more? But even then it was far from handling the high pops. Too many years of denial and disregard of consequences. Is another bowl of gruel going to be enough?
Queue the excuses...
Transfer where? There is only one en server left and this is RP Laurelin. I doubt many ppl would transfer to de servers and fr one feels like a ghost city most of the time with dead auction. Some ppl definitely will use free transfer, coz its free but im pretty sure it wont fix the issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emaldiom
A grand total of nobody would transfer OFF of evernight lmaoQuote:
Originally Posted by Emaldiom
Yeah, EU alternatives are the RP server, the French server or a German server (regular / RP). They were warned about this years ago when they did the server consolidation. And there was a sixth server (Snowbourn?) that just barely failed to make the cut for the 5 being left open. However, all concerns were dismissed with the claim "the new hardware could support the entire population on a single server". They could easily have done 6 + 6 remaining servers, but someone decided 5 + 5 was more than sufficient and they weren't going to change their minds regardless of consequences.
Following the last downtime, I experienced very little lag or issues when Evernight was at 1000+ non anon players to begin with, but personal experience, the lag returned around Saturday/Sunday and has been "back to as it was" since.
Interesting to see the patch notes for tomorrow; should there be no mention of performance improvements to combat the lag, and performance improves - albeit temporarily - like it did last week, then there is a business case for bi-weekly restarts until the underlying issue is resolved.
I couldn't sleep last night so was playing Lotro at 3am and interestingly enough i had lag issues. Can't really say Evernight is really heavily populated at that time of day so i guess there is something not quite right in the back end. Fingers crossed that tomorrows patch does improve thingsQuote:
Originally Posted by Burzdolion
X for doubt.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brali
Yes, welcome to Laurelin. Report from a play session from this evening: Reduced awareness, goat gliding, delays interacting with objects, etc. Didn’t try any group content to see how they work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Braer
Edit: saw some comments about lag in chat also so I wasn’t the only one experiencing these.
I can confirm that the EN lag, delays in skills, picking things up, moving items and handing in/speaking to NPCs is sadly - back.
You are on [EN] Evernight server 76 at r2 lx1968 ly1776 i212 cInside ox-57.99 oy-6.28 oz-511.74 h324.8. Game timestamp 457241318.707.
Character - Lob
Lagging, skill delay, instance lock up.
Saturday 15:00 GMT
Evernight unplayable yesterday evening.
I died 3 times due to lag. 3-mans unplayable. The main hub (where missions are) i couldn't move for periods longer than 30 seconds. Putting things to vault, took at least 30 secs per item. Horror.
Again, what are you doing about this SSG, and when this will get fixed? Are you such a poor and full of amateurism company that you cannot fix lag? Buy new server in Europe for us already.
Anyone ever thought about why is it always the missions hall that is the absolute worst lag hole in the entire game?
Just like weapon swap was removed with the reasoning of improving game performance (didn't help much) might want to consider doing the same to missions next.
Also can you please remove the timer of bartering items 1 by 1 that we need hundreds of, it never improved game performance but was just an extremely annoying QoL nerf to the player.
It won't really help much that it's in the EU if they get a bargain basement service plan and don't have adequate bandwidth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anglion1
Yes! Someone created a tool to harvest existing level specific content within the game and then de-populate/re-populate it dynamically in order to cut the time involved to "create" repurposed content as new. The many (wo)man hours of player time wasted seems not to be of concern when populations reach a critical level. With only 200 online and few in the hall the hand ins are immediate, the 5 minute waits we can get can be avoided by porting out of missions somewhere else rather than the missions hall. Pointing directly at the hall being a problem to address under population load. However there seems to be little evidence that any at SSG have any interest else why would they go out of their way in avoiding every potential area of issue in their streams. They aren't bothered by the minute we have to wait for mobs and objects in many missions to appear as they have only continued to use the same tech in subsequent releases. Have none watched any horror movies where cloning was the theme?Quote:
Originally Posted by shino047
Our CM is charged with quelling the community not serving it. So has no choice other that to suggest some element of the "community" is to blame to the detriment of other elements of the "community". If repeated single bartering was so much of a problem they'd have instituted a multi-barter option or not added more instances where we'd need repeated bartering. Like many of the supposed reasons behind changes it's the more palatable reasons not necessarily the major reasons that from the rhetoric and if not immediately apparent soon reveals itself with subsequent updates to all but the foolish.
These things remain in game so they provide excuses to troupe out instead of admitting the issue is many paygrades above them and under NDAs. But with none admitting where the problems lie how can we foresee much chance of them providing a compelling narrative to the suits to change tack.
The tech staff aren't payed to mis-inform.
I'm having an absolute terrible time at the moment with the lag, it's taking me ages to equip items, this isn't something I've experienced before.
Everyone knew that was bogus trash. If they could have supported everyone on one server, they would have done so simply for the cost savings. The servers in the States aren't faring much better, so at least there's that little ray of sunshine.Quote:
Originally Posted by DKenny
10 days away from Christmas, any update on performance or 64bit servers?
Thanks,
Lob
And now Evernight is back to the constant lag fiesta it was during "whatever you did to improve server perfomance"
- Constant lag spikes on landscape and instances
- Constantly general errors when using shared storage
- 5-10 seconds to pick up quests (This is alot worse at the steepset, where the daily quests are located)
- Insane loading screens with many getting stuck in loading
- Constant skill delays on skills during landscape, daily instances and normal instances
It's getting worse, not better.. Even after a reset it's still awful to play
It is not isolated to Evernight. Landroval had plenty if issues yesterday.
Yeah, this was my experience and everyone's experience on Crickhollow on Saturday at Zidir-nesad, The Steepset in Gundabad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k252hQ_IBo
Note at the start of the video every time my character "stops" is due to the Reduced Awareness and other issues going on and then its 40-ish (if I counted correctly) seconds to access the Geode Vendor at Zidir-nesad.
I went to Bree where I encountered nothing akin to such going on in the main area of Gundabad and then back to Gundabad where the issues at the start of the video were then not happening anywhere near as much.
Yeah, Landroval was terrible yesterday. We were trying to get through Dhurstock T4, but 5+ sec. lag spikes made it impossible. We finally gave up. The game is pretty unplayable with hard content on weekend afternoons (EST), which of course is when it is easiest to get a group together.Quote:
Originally Posted by StinkyGreene
crickhollow here, lag everywhere
Absolutely tragic that my thread is nearing a year old with absolutely 0 improvement in server performance. The game is performing WORSE THAN EVER but SSG are now saying they're seeing improvements?!!?!??! Maybe try logging into Evernight one time.
We're a month from raid release and we NEED to see genuine improvement before then. Every raid release is plagued by this same issue... let's make this new one a bit more fun for everyone eh SSG?
Give us a date for these 64 bit servers; we're getting into the new year without a peep about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nubja
I know this thread has covered a significant amount regarding the Evernight Server. Where, clearly, by the volume of player based feedback on this year long thread, the problems have been very visual and apparent server-wide.
I am not going to moan here or be negative towards the SSG business or services ... I just want to enjoy LOTRO the game ... but I feel the need to give an account of what a solitary 15 year (Beta) humble player (and by this post 100's more players from various locations) are seeing in real-time.
However performance on Treebeard, the Legendary server, as it has ramped up in popularity, is also degrading to the point of concern. Over the past 3 days January 9th - 12th before todays maintenance symptoms have been;
1. General 0XCEE errors on transfers of items between containers (Banks, Shared etc) (Few and far Between but they happen, particularly if my "drag and drop" action is particularly quick)
2. Periodic banding issues ... these sometimes seem to almost like a "rollback" in nature ... Like the client and my characters actions and position in the world have ticked and displayed client-side (rendered) but I bounce back to the exact position from 5-6 seconds previously, almost like the server has pulled me back due to slowness/failure to register my position/location and client actions ... (Fairly regular, particularly when in large Zones that contain multiple functional hubs in the area ... Banks, Vendors, Quest Givers etc)
3. Particular periods of pause when attempting to speak with NPC's at random intervals. The NPC's dialogue and Quest panels take upwards of 8-11 seconds to display on the client ... almost certainly waiting for "data" to be received ... (Occasional, but particularly noted with Dialogues that Link to or Initiate Instances, or within Instances).
4. This is persistent across 5 characters covering the Man, Elf and Dwarven Starting area's and Bree. Not a single character on Treebeard is over level 20 nor have they been to any other area's within the game. I believe this really reinforces the fact that this is not something linked to a specific level of play or server side load on particular pockets of the world geography, when the symptoms kick in, chat channels seem to correlate the timing of the hiccups for players within multiple disparate area's and levels of play.
5. At randomised points in play ... Skill clicks at the client level are not met with a response ... very akin to they have not registered with the server and therefore the relevent client feedback you would expect is not recieved. Sometimes this is a notable delay of say 2 - 5 seconds ... but just every so often the action will disappear altogether, like it had not even registered.!
6. For general information my Home Internet provision is rock solid without fault able to sustain (At different times of day) multiple 4k Video streaming clients, and playing ESO, WoW, Halo and other online based services without issue across multiple devices without issues. To be clear, sometimes in the later hours, when my gaming rig is the only "active" device in the house really utilising the connection ... the issues with the LOTRO gaming client are consistent in their occurrence.
Really interested to get some direct feedback, incredibly happy to dedicate some time to retrieving logs or creating good quality streams/videos so this issue can be sent to you for assessment ....?
Thank you and good luck.
An Avid Fan.
The lag is not server wide. Its game wide. Even Treebeard with around 200 players logged in have awful lags and players rubber band constantly.
Its not even game wide, its across several titles including DDO, EQ1 and EQ2.
it's kinda been worse than ever before on Evernight the past weeks
Running instances you constantly have the same lag spikes
Landscape getting quests and doing dailies is painful with rubberbanding, delays etc all the time
You need to fix this before a new raid is out.. Can you imagine doing progression raiding with this lag!?
Cause we player do.. The past 3 raids was NUTS to do progression raiding with this raid. .
For fokd i would say 20\30% of our raids got cancelled due to the server performance just didn't allow you to play the game
Out of curiosity: at what resolution and graphics quality setting are you guys running?
It's not about your own graphics or whatever settings you yourself are using
There is ofcourse FPS lag (as the FPS in this game is so unstable it can vary from 20-200 constantly)
It does not matter if you run high settings or very low, the result is the same
It does not matter what PC you are running as the result is just the same (I'm sitting on a 2080 TI, i7 9700k etc etc)
They (SSG) are aware of it but seems to believe it's getting improved while it certainly is not (atleast for Evernight)
That is not my experience.
Reducing graphics quality helped me a lot with area loading, stutter and rubber banding. Little or not at all with skill delays, vault activity and such.
Logically you'd expect it to have an effect on framerates, but as I never monitored that it is just a guess.
Its not as simple as just buying new server hardware or reducing graphics, its the way the game is made.
ALL calcs are done server side, so you use a skill, your input is sent to the server, calced out then the results are sent to your PC and displayed on the screen.
this happens for every player, every skill used, every move, every inventory check etc etc.
while this keeps LOTRO remarkably hack free for an MMO, its an invitation to lag that cant be easily fixed.
so its never fixed, would require a complete software revamp that while i hate to say never, is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
You are just lowering the amount of Data being sent to and receiving. So yes, it will help.Quote:
Originally Posted by OghranNasty
But LOTRO's issues are not Hardware based beyond the Server Box(es) being used at least in Late 2021 needed an Upgrade based on what SSG had stated. As far as we know, this hasn't occurred but this will only provide a small benefit. Basically putting a band-aid on an open and bleeding wound.
LOTRO's issues are Software based with how the LOTRO Client & LOTRO Servers work. It's one key reason SSG won't add more Storage Space for Character Vaults & Shared Storage in the foreseeable future. To give a quick example, lets say 15 more Personal Vault Storage Spaces were added in 2022 and that in 2022 there are 300,000 Characters that purchase & use said 15 spaces. SSG would be adding 4,500,000 more Spaces and Items that their Data has to keep track of. This would be putting a very noticeable strain on an already overburdened game.
To give an example for Graphics, I have 3 computers.
I have an old Office 2012 PC which with an RX 550 2GB GPU could easily see in excess of 100 FPS with a mixture of settings and using 1920x1080 . This PC however is pretty much using all it's CPU, RAM & GPU Usages just for LOTRO.
I also have an i7-3700K and have used that same RX 550 2 GB GPU and my main GPU a GTX 970 4GB (really 3.5 due to how they made such) and both also see in excess of 100 FPS usually with somewhat better settings than the 2012 Office PC.
Finally my main pc, a Ryzen 7 2700X with 32GB of RAM, GTX 970, running Windows 10 OS on it's own M.2 NvME SSD, LOTRO on another M.2 NvME SSD with mostly maxed graphics Ultra High/High Fullscreen Windowed with certain elements like the 5 things under Post Processing not being used can get up to 120 FPS as I have it limited to such.
But pending where a Character is in LOTRO, how much is going on, etc you can see such FPS numbers dip. Plus while in 2021 I admit I was among the folks usually not encountering various issues with Game Performance except for areas where a lot of Characters were at such as Festivals or the Gundabad Expansion's main area. This was also on all 3 given examples for computers I own. But since Jan 1st, 2022 I've seen more Performance issues akin to what others report although I've not had a game crash so far.
You are mistaken.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
What lowering graphics quality does is lowering the amount of data being processed locally on my PC.
Don't believe me. Look at the network numbers to see that it is impossible to render all that landscape detail with the bandwidth the game consumes. Or just do what I did: download the sysinternals suite and trace Lotro with procexp64 (correction: should be procmon64). You'll see that most of the game's activity is based on locally stored game files and that network activity is surprisingly small.
I am pretty sure all the landscape rendering is a purely local affair, as are mobs rendering, and that all interactions with the landscape, mobs, inventories and so on are server-side. Simplified: how an orc looks is defined by the game files, whether it attacks you, with which attacks and what the effect of your actions is controlled by the servers.
All this is not meant to say you are wrong, or that there aren't serious issues with server performance and landscape design, only to say it is a little more complicated that that, as performance issues usually are.
There are serious issues with server side coding (see recent comments by Raininia for that), server hardware (they are not replacing them for giggles), but part of the performance issues an individual player experiences could have to do with local bottlenecks. Experimenting with graphics quality could help with alleviating some of the less bothersome performance glitches. It will not help with the more annoying issues such as skill lag or anything that has to do with interacting with the environment, npcs, mobs, inventories or other players.
Currently dual clients running on Evernight. One with losses between 5% and 20% the other 0.1% losses. No I can't figure that out either.
Since Cordovan asked to say if we feel any difference from this update:
I don't feel any difference. Yesterday I have played Big Battles with my kinship and there were terrible big lags. We are playing on Evernight.
All people in group had lags, so its not our internet or pc.
Sunday afternoon 900 players on Evernight is creaking, it takes seconds just to add a quest to the quest track, you hear the click and then several seconds later the quest ring gets highlighted and the quest appears on screen.
Storage giving general errors etc. etc.
What ever you're doing that is supposedly fixing things isn't working, the lag is as bad if not worse.
@Cordovan & @Raninia
All jokes aside, the bandwidth increase has done nothing to improve the performance of the game.
Running the new 6 man last night around 7 pm GMT was practically a slide show at times. The lag was synced for all of us in the group and there are countless people complaining about in World chat.
Please address this as a priority.
Lob
Yes, it is terrible. It seems like every day it gets worse and worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1Asy1
The game is still as bad if not worse than the video i posted from shortly after the LI revamp
My play experience has be good lately. Did they change anything? Am I the only one who noticed the lag is much better? Mostly just delayed sound fx now.
Depends on the Individual.Quote:
Originally Posted by made_of_light
The SSG LOTRO Team are "stating" they are doing continued Development Work to Improve LOTRO's Game Performance.
X amount of folks have stated they "feel" it's better.
X amount of folks have stated they "feel" it's worse.
It's mostly that LOTRO has far too many Performance Issues and any 1 bit of work is unlikely to see a "Holy crude! LOTRO's Performance is night & day!" moment in the future. It's going to take a lot of Game Performance Work that hopefully will see by end of 2022 where LOTRO will be a much better MMORPG Performance-wise for a Majority of folks.
@Cordovan & @Raninia
Can we expect the 13th raid member to be present on Thursday?
Thanks,
Lob
Coming off night-shift with the Ashes Tours and Winter Olympics over-with has me finding either a load of peeps have suddenly gone over to Anon or are AWOL. Evernight.
Is this really something you can twist into a "generally well received" comment on LIs and RT? And maintaining of the fallacy of signs of improved performance without citation, from this game?
Back on "normal" playtime has me experiencing the exact performance expected (and grown use to) in proportion to the active pops.
@Cordovan & @Raninia
Any update please?
- Loading screen bug is back with a vengeance.
- Server performance is the same if not getting worse.
- Chat servers are - General Error 0x00000003.
People want more than a 1 liner in the official updates, where are the 64bit servers? where are the other material improvements?
If we make it to another 15 years, we'll be looking back at 15 years of laggy servers.
Lob
20 minutes spent in a queue.
A further 15 minutes spent on the loading screen.
Had to force close the game and now can't get back in to Evernight.
The character left in their in undies after a failed load is back, I've noticed. I got to see what my poor minstrel looks like her in smalls after failing to get into the game the first time around.
It may also be worth mentioning that I've always suffered the same bug since coming back a couple of years ago, whereby the usage of my right-mouse-button can cause my camera to turn a sudden 180 and sometimes turn upwards so I'm looking at the sky, but now it's worse than it's ever been. There are times when I literally undergo it several times in a row, and can't direct my character properly or see a damn thing. Going over bridges has always been done with my keyboard in case the camera bug causes me to veer off over the edge, but this past week I've been avoiding them altogether. I could handle it when it happened maybe once an hour, but now it's neverending, and I must look to outsiders as if I've completely lost control of my character.
I'm sad to say I haven't noticed any server improvements at all. In fact, things are worse than ever, and verging on unusable for me.
What you describe has nothing to do with lag but is a known bug that also happens to people playing Wow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mollymixtures
Maybe this helps: follow the links shown in this reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lotro/comme..._of_the_weird/
I'm seeing more of a black screen with UI showing on top in the missions load than before but less time waiting for mobs to load in the usual suspect ones. Hand ins even with max capacity seems quicker too despite a bunch more peeps with access to WotTP. Ofc the same skill delay and mobs' death standing under load just as bad.
It's like someone's still trying to improve things but would rather not say. Only got one fail to load/naked char but loads of empty gardens about so whatever thing they have to do to clear that for a while needs to be done again.
Today was a disaster trying to log in on Evernight.
Tried twice to log in, before being timed out each time and receiving the black screen with the 'The Connection to the server has been lost' message.
Got in on the third attempt after turning texture detail down to very low (this is much worse than just very low graphics - it essentially just makes things blobs, and some things stay as blobs no matter what settings you change once you get in!)
On for a bit, logged off and returned later.
Two attempts with texture detail (and everything else!) turned down to very low and was timed out both times. One of these times, the character was naked, but I still couldn't get in.
Eventually got in on the third try.
My computer may not be of the highest spec, and my main character may be a completionist (and so therefore there's a lot more data to load in relation to them), but I've never had the problem this badly before. Please look into making the log in process so insufferable!
Thank you! I've been searching this problem for ages. I've changed settings, and I even changed my mouse, all to no avail. I've also noticed it only happens on a small number of mmos, and as a result I assumed it was lag related due to poor servers or server distance. I can occasionally go through periods where it lessens or even disappears, but it always comes back in the end, and makes playing very difficult. This past week has been unbearable, along with general lag, hence my reason for putting the two together.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fadil
The discussion you posted is interesting, but it appears as if it's centred around WoW. It has given me some understanding as to why it's happening though, and a few things to try on my end.