Brandywine- Lag Data collection

[Vyvyanne]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

[Sthrax]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

1) 9PM-~11PM EST

2) Dol Amroth, particularly in the Bank. 6man Helm's Dike and Retaking Pelagir BB. 12man Deepening Wall BB. "Reduced Awareness" is very common, and skill lag of up to 3-5 secs at times.

3) In Dol Amroth, maybe a dozen in field of view, certainly much more outside of it. In the BBs, usually just NPCs, mobs and other 5-11 team members.

4) Mid-Atlantic US.

[Thorgrum]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

1. 8pm - 11pm
2. Entenmoors, Bree, Dol Amoroth. Pelagir
3. Yes
4. East Coast, 20 min west of Turbine home office.

[Ingiogal]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

1 - I experience lag at most any time of day when playing on Brandywine. It also isn't confined to a particular day of the week, such as weekends or holidays. It was worse during the Christmas holiday. It has been so bad at times that it has made my wardens essentially unplayable: gambits cannot be seen building, they do not show launch... enemies have died in front of me with the first gambit still building on my screen.

2 - I don't know that it's isolated to particular regions. For instance, I have a character that got many drops playing the level appropriate zone for her in North Downs. So I logged other characters and found myself getting dropped in all regions that day. I play in Bree, The Shire, Evendim, Trollshaws, Misty Mountains, Eregion and Moria and have experienced lag and drops in all of them. (I rolled new characters and so those are all the levels I've quested since joining Brandywine.) I frequently experience lag/server drops and they occur when transiting between regions either traveling across a "known border" such as crossing bridges over rivers, and very, very frequently will get dropped during a handoff in game such as transiting a doorway or a swift travel. I've had days when this has happened seven or eight times a day over the Christmas holiday. After the maintenance performed in the new year, that drastically improved to many days free of the issue but I've noticed lately that getting dropped and lagging is worsening again to it occurring 1 or 2 times a day.

3 - Number of players in proximity doesn't seem to be a factor. It will happen as often in the Crafting Hall with many players or duoing with just my husband in a low population zone or even happens when I'm alone in a low population zone.

4 - In the real world, I am located in central Indiana. Comcast is my internet provider.

[Wooktastic]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

1. around 8-11pm EST
2. usually Bree, Dol Amroth, Pelargir landscape areas. Helm's Dike/Pelargir 6man BB/Deeping Wall 12man BB. Other 12man raids to a lesser extent.
3. Usually around 15-20 player characters in view on the landscape, the rest of my group and NPCs in instances.
4. Illinois

[atmonello]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

1. Almost any time I log, be it week nights, or weekend afternoons.

2. I'm at Moors 95% of my play time. Lag starts right after entering GV.

3. Sometimes, I am the only one in GV, but if it is being camped, it's already lagged. Usually it becomes unplayable when there is a Raid v Raid happening (like 24 people around). But having more than 6 already starts showing up some little lag.

4. Brazil. My latency is parked around 120ms. I play on other servers with barely no lag, even when raiding.

[Sezneg]

7:00pm est - 11:00pm est

Location: Ettenmoors, Creepside.
MOAR SPECIFIC: Around the TR Keep, lawn. Behind Luguzag on the hill leading down to gramsfoot. At the Good TA map location.

While it is more common to spike lag when there are 10-15 players or more visible, there have been evenings of spiking lag when there are only 2-3 visible (but could be more just outside draw range).

[Mcgiver]

its not only brandywine it also appears on "dead" servers like vilya especialy in ettemoors (but brandy is far worse)
sometimes in DA and bigbattles

[Vo1c3zzz]

1. Pretty laggy all day but mainly during peak US hours.

2. Dol Amroth and Bree but most of all in the Ettenmoors to the point of being 100% unplayable due to extreme skill lag the second more then like 6 people are there. (Literally out of combat in the middle of a raid fight).

3. Depends on what's happening elsewhere but it's almost guranteed lag at anything bigger then 6v6 but more often then not it lags anyways. Full 24v24 is just impossible at the moment, skills not actually applying and going on CD or just flat out never going off and stuck in place. If you target a healer, or anyone, with a ton of buffs and debuffs your screen just becomes completely frozen until you untarget.

4.Virginia, East Coast United States.

~Chieftain Afluk

[Cirumsus65]

1 - Weekday evenings 6pm - 10pm EST / Weekends All Day and night
2 - I've been in the Rohan areas mostly on a level 80-95 these past weeks. During solo non mounted combat it's most noticeable with the battle stopping for 3-10 seconds, then a fast catch-up.
When I do epic battles or skirmishes I do not notice it as much.
3- Very few players in view if any
4- North East Ohio - Time Warner - CPU=I5 2500 - GPU=GTX970 - SSD- 256G

It was unplayable during the holiday break. When you reset the equipment upon your return a few weeks ago it got 100% better. Since then it's going down hill again.

[Leixy]

The Christmas / New Years lag was horrendous just about everywhere. That being said, it has been mostly normal the past few weeks. But not good enough. Oh, and 99.5% of the time I have 55 ms latency and 0% loss to the server, even during reduced awareness.

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
The following times are when I notice "Reduced Awareness" the most:

7-11 PM server time M-TH
6-10 PM Fridays
3 PM - Midnight Saturdays
1 PM - 10 PM Sundays

2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
I most often get reduced awareness in the following locations:

Zones:
Ered Luin ( this seems to happen a lot with just a few players in it, or with heavy festival / ettenmoors action ).
Central Gondor: the other day(Sunday) Reduced Awareness was so bad mobs would disappear from my visual range 25 meters away and mini-map at 40 meters, that has never happened to me in other zones. And Central Gondor never has many players in it.
West Rohan: This expansion seems to get it a lot, is it on the big battle shard?
Misty Mountains & Forochel: maybe it has low dedicated CPU cycles, but it doesn't take much for either of these regions to get massive lag spikes.
Ettenmoors: Please give the ettenmoors its own server/CPU cluster for Brandywine, lol. It is absolutely horrible, even during off-peak hours.

Instances:
Moria Skraids, mobs will often freeze in place and everyone will have to wait 10+ seconds before the fight continues.
Epic Battles, very hard to say when, but most definitely the 12 man at times, especially with defilers and their totems. Probably due to the totems pulsing damage to every NPC and Freep all at the same time.

3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?

For landscape, no, you can be the only one for thousands of meters and still get reduced awareness and massive lag spikes.

As far as groups, in the Ettenmoors, you notice it anywhere above 6v6 with NPCs. Once you get to 12v12 you will most definitely get 3-5 second skill lag. 24v24 and you could literally wait 30-45 seconds before you can execute the next skill, and it affects basically everyone.

Example of when Turbine Fixed Lag:

Fornost Fire - Zanthrug boss fight. This is the best example of Turbine Fully fixing server lag. This boss fight used to lag out just like a ettenmoors raid fight. But some developer went in a year or so ago and changed something where all 30-40 mobs no longer lag at all, even when the server is under demand, this fight doesn't lag. Please look into what this dev did.

I'm still convinced most of the problem stems from the Server having trouble quickly calculating damage, debuffs, heals, etc.. at an order of magnitude greater than a 12 person group size.

Thank you for taking the time to make this thread.

[Nouri]

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
Between 7 and 10pm CST.
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
Moors
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
It can get a little laggy with as few as six players around, but I typically only get serious lag when there are 25 or more players in view and fighting is going on.
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?
Midwest USA

P.S. I'll see the Reduced Awareness indicator about 50% of the time during the 7 to 10pm CST time period, but I usually only notice the lag in large fights with more than 25 players.

[Giliodor]

1. What time of day do you experience lag?

Must say I don't get server lag too often, but when I do it's between 4pm and 7pm GMT. And yeah, I don't play during US prime time.

2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?

The Ettenmoors

3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?

24+

4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

The Netherlands

[ChaChaLoco]

Hi Vyvyanne,
Here are my answers to your questions regarding out the Brandywine server lag.

1. It can happen at any time of day. But the massive, frustrating, game-breaking lag will happen during US prime-time mostly (so ~6-12pm /servertime?).
2. The Ettenmoors.
3. Sometimes as little as 0-20, but it can range between 20-80 players (more or less). Lag is most assuredly guaranteed in the Ettenmoors with anything above 40 players (and this is the point the game becomes an unplayable slideshow). Anything above 80 players is risking a server crash (which we have caused to happen in the past).
4. Australia. Keep in mind my answers are referring specifically to Server Lag (lag on your end: that is, the server), and not lag on my end. As I'm from Australia and am quite far away from the server, my ping is consistently 200ms, any broadband issues I may be having on my end which cause my ping to spike above this norm are not what I'm referring to in answering these questions (and that never really happens anyway, because I have a good internet connection and speed).

Thanks,

~Ushrak.

[TheGreatWhiteRhyno]

lag on Brandywine

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag? different times of day , mostly prime time
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time? zones that have more then 10 people at a time , Moors mostly , Bree , New areas
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it? yes
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in? Canada
If you want to see what lag problems we have , come out to the moors and look for a RVR or a creep/freep Zerg , you will see what lag is all about and what we have been dealing with for years
Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

[maetamaeta]

It's unclear what you mean by "lag". I am going respond based on server-end lag, as I understand it: things like the entire raid, or both sides of a fight!, cannot successfully execute a skill with less than a 10s++ delay, etc.

1. What time of day do you experience lag?

It's more of a function of player density that time, but ~5-10pm servertime is usually when that occurs during my playtime.

2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
Ettenmoors.

3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
Not always. Being in proximity to another group of players is sufficient, but obviously, trying to engage an enemy fraid vs. just mapping in near one exacerbates the issue especially if there is a keep, NPCs, they have rows a buffs or you do, etc etc.


4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?
Southern U.S.

[Shammer71]

1. Major Lag = 1pm-12pm (UTC-8:00) Pacific Time Zone.
2. Brandywine - Ettenmoors (Especially in keeps like TR).
3. Yes, 48+, sometimes even with just 12(ish) players.
4. Pacific Northwest (Washington State).

[tkroll]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

1. Evenings 6-10 pm pacific
2. Breetown, Dol Amroth, Pelagir, and the ETTENMOORS
3. usually yes but I've had lag spikes in Big Blunders and with no visible players present
4. Northern California

[Leopoldio]

1. Everyday lag from 6pm server time to midnight, on weekends the same or even earlier. It can also happen at 1 PM server time if it is too crowdy
2. Ettenmoors, if you open Eriador map, that affects all areas surrounding it (South east Angmar, Misty Mountains, Trollshaws, North Down east). Lag becomes totally unplayable in keeps with npcs and 24+, just a slideshow, skills not going off at all.
3. 24+. But sometimes it happens even with 18+ ppl.
4. Estonia, EU

[Snowlock]

Players of Brandywine!

Please help me in gathering some data around the lag you are seeing in game.

If you can, please post to this thread answering the following questions:

1. What time of day do you experience lag?
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time?
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it?
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in?

Thank you very much! This data will help us make some important decisions about player migrations and hopefully help remedy the issues you are seeing.

Cheers,
Vyvyanne

1. Whenever I log in
2a. Reduced awareness is everywhere
2b. Lag in 21st hall, Gondor, bree, in BB's, Saruman fight in Tower of Orthanc, Ettenmoors.
2c. Also get lag whenever I use a skill or pot to clear a negative combat state (except Purge Poison).
3. Yes
4. Midwest USA

[dr0idx]

1. What time of day do you experience lag? - Just about any time of day truthfully
2. What zones/ regions/ instances are you in at the time? - PvMP(especially here), Bree, DA, many instance clusters, almost anywhere as ive even had reduced awareness in my personal home in bree.
3. Are there a number of other players in your field of view when you experience it? - sometimes yes and sometimes no
4. What approximate region of the real world are you located in? - East Coast USA

OK final edit, as i just read this in another post...."We just have not moved the larger worlds over to their new hardware and data center yet"... OK this gives me much hope <3 and i have taken much of what i wrote out because i was unaware of the hardware and DS changes.

[Cadibble]

It's nice to see a thread started by Turbine on this topic. However, I think you're setting yourself up for a lot of frustration unless posters distinguish between the types of lag they're encountering.

Multi-player Targeting Lag
This occurs when 10 or more players have the same player or npc targeted that is being dps'd. It affects those doing the targetting, and the player being targetted. This lag causes the client to turn into a slideshow and lag behind real time until the target is dead or a different target is selected. Occasionally a player will believe he's still fighting his target, when in fact the target died several seconds earlier. It can be consistently reproduced by having a creep raid attack the lumber camp tyrant. When it occurs, the Opponent Vitals UI element stops displaying the target's buff/debuff (HoTs, DoTs, etc.) icons except for an occasional brief flash. The majority of the time, this type of lag does not occur when target forwarding through a raid member or pet...note that target forwarding does not display the enemy's buff/debuff icons. This leads many to believe that the client is lagging due to graphical updates of the buff/debuff icons. However, using the "Turbine.UI.Lotro.LotroUI.SetE nabled( Turbine.UI.Lotro.LotroUIElemen t.Target, false )" lua command to eliminate the Opponent Vitals UI element does not prevent this type of lag from occurring. This lag could be related to the quantity of buffs/debuffs on the target, which has grown substantially since SoA. It could also be related to the number of countdown timers on the buffs/debuffs, how often those timers are refreshed, or perhaps by the client expecting updates to target's buffs/debuffs within a certain time period, but the server is unable to process and distribute the info in time due to the quantity of attackers and quantity of buffs/debuffs. Some people suspect weaver DoTs to be a large contributor to the issue. It would be interesting to hit the lumber camp tyrant with single class craids to see if any particular class makes a noticeable difference.

Skill Lag
This usually occurs when there are 30+ players in the same area. The affect worsens when the players are in or near a keep, especially TR. With this type of lag, it appears when a skill is selected the client will acknowledge it with the traveling dashed line around the skill, but this dashed line state stays constant for a long period of time while the client waits for an acknowledgement from the server (thicker dashed line). For me, this usually takes 6 seconds. I've heard of it taking much longer for other people. This usually makes melee combat impossible since the target needs to remain within range for the entire duration. For ranged attacks, certain skills have to be avoided since they will self cancel due to a built-in timeout (5 seconds?) while waiting for a response from the server, while other skills do not have this limitation. This skill lag affects both freep and creep players simultaneously, and in the most severe cases skills will never fire, allowing freeps and creeps to run around each other without fear of being attacked. I've also had this occur in Sixteenth Hall recently. I can't recall seeing skill lag like this prior to Helms Deep, but I wasn't playing on Brandywine in that time period.

Slow-motion Lag and Freezing
I lump a lot of oddities into this category. Slow mounts/dismounts, which is rare. Several seconds delay when moving items from inventory to the vault, which is constant in the evenings now. 3-4 second freezing when combating a freep (does not affect the freep at that moment in time)...this is rare. Getting stuck in place for 30 seconds to 2 minutes...chat servers functioning fine, but all characters running/standing in same place. Sometimes getting stuck only affects me, but occasionally see others complaining in chat at the same time. This seems to happen once every week or two, and may be an ISP issue on my end.
Edit: When moving after progress bar completion for picking up logs/kindling/saplings, the server will report progress is interrupted...need to wait for materials to be added to inventory which can take a few seconds. TA quest windows may take 5 seconds to appear, and be acknowledged after submitting. Both these issues tend to only happen for me when the moors is busier than usual.

Rubber-banding
Not sure this counts as lag. This is rare for me and I've only noticed it in the moors during peak hours and when the moors is more heavily populated than usual. Does not appear to be proximity related to other players, since it can happen when I'm alone. Usually requires me to change direction to recover, but in severe situations I'll only be able to find one direction of travel that lets me recover.

Note that I'm in Massachusetts with Verizon as my ISP. Up through Rohan, I'd witness PvE raid lag much less frequently and to a lesser extent than other raid members. Currently, in the moors I'll experience targeting & skill lag as frequently as other raid members, but perhaps to a lesser duration. The other types of lag are still rare for me. My play times fall within 9pm-1am weekdays, and 11am-1am weekends. Targeting lag occurs for me at any time of the day. I only recall skill lag in the evening, and afternoons on weekends...player count seems to be more of a factor than time of day. Since Helms Deep, I've only played in the moors except for the last month where I've been levelling a freep.

[Vyvyanne]

Thank you everyone for this feedback. It has given me valuable information and I am now investigating a potential cure for some of what you might be seeing. As one person pointed out, lag can mean many things for many people but many of these answers do lead me to one potential culprit that could relieve some of it

[Thorgrum]

Thank you everyone for this feedback. It has given me valuable information and I am not investigating a potential cure for some of what you might be seeing. As one person pointed out, lag can mean many things for many people but many of these answers do lead me to one potential culprit that could relieve some of it

I would caution you that choice of words for a producer are very important on the lotro forums. If you are not investigating a potential cure I really respect your candid reply, its likely not going to go over well though. If you are and mis posted, you should probably edit your response and delete mine.

[Sthrax]

I would caution you that choice of words for a producer are very important on the lotro forums. If you are not investigating a potential cure I really respect your candid reply, its likely not going to go over well though. If you are and mis posted, you should probably edit your response and delete mine.

Yeah, that is probably the worst possible typo she could have in her post. Well, at least, I hope it was a typo...