Upcoming Performance Work

[Vyvyanne]

This week we have a few things coming online we hope will improve some of the issues you have been experiencing since the Data Center move.

EDIT: I just got word from my operations team that the circuit change will not be able to be made tomorrow after all. I do not have a new ETA at this time but it is still something we are actively working to get done ASAP.
Soon we will be switching over to a new ISP circuit which should help get those of you on connections going through unnecessary hops, come through the quickest channels to our servers. We expect our EU players will see more of a change from this than others, but it may help others as well. There will be no downtime besides possibly a 10 min service hiccup around that time. We would love to hear how things feel for you after that.

Additionally this weekend we will be placing Update 18 on Bullroarer for its first Open Beta session. In this build we will have much of the content going out with U18 but it will also have the following items we hope will improve performance in various areas:
- Awesonium upgrade to fix the store crashes some folks are seeing
- Login Server fix to the "Server Full" error
- New graphics setting options for reducing graphics and client load in PvMP areas
- Reducing the data footprint of the Minas Tirith and Pelennor areas

More details and patch notes to come towards the end of the week.

We hope that you will have a chance to jump in and help test these things out with us and keep providing your feedback here and in /bug. We are reading all of it, even when we can not respond. Your feedback makes a difference!

Thank you,
Vyvyanne

[maartena]

Sounds great! I still have the Bullroarer client loaded, so I will be checking out the beta.... I'm excited about the new content, mostly.

[Erennor]

Very good to see all this!

I might for the first time download the Bullroarer client to provide feedback. The main reason I did not before was time constraints, and also, to not spoil the experience with seeing new areas before they are in the game. But this time, due to lag, drop in fps, and disconnects, I may spare some time for this.

Thank you for the update.

[Olgomil]

Great, i will help with the testing.

Will be a database wipe, right?

Sergio :-)

[maartena]

Very good to see all this!

I might for the first time download the Bullroarer client to provide feedback. The main reason I did not before was time constraints, and also, to not spoil the experience with seeing new areas before they are in the game. But this time, due to lag, drop in fps, and disconnects, I may spare some time for this.

Thank you for the update.

Keep in mind its roughly a 20 GB download. If you are on a slower internet connection, or want to beat the rush when everyone is trying to download it.... you may just want to download it starting today or tomorrow.

[Snowlock]

- New graphics setting options for reducing graphics and client load in PvMP areas

Will this help players on an individual basis, or will it help large groups of players who are experiencing simultaneous, identical perf issues?

[Macdui]

Will Bullroarer get a wipe to enable new copies? Many of us have characters copied over months ago that don't represent our live characters' progression. For example I would be unable to do comparative testing with what I currently do on live.

Would the "server full fix" require BR to be up for a couple of weeks? Does it include better handling of errors?

Are these new graphics setting only operational in PvMP areas or can they be used anywhere when we wish to avoid lag?

Mac

[siipperi]

Will this help players on an individual basis, or will it help large groups of players who are experiencing simultaneous, identical perf issues?

Neither. Graphics aren't what causes performance problems.

[Vyvyanne]

Great, i will help with the testing.

Will be a database wipe, right?

Sergio :-)

Yes there will be a character wipe. QA will post in the appropriate Bullroarer thread when it is complete and it is safe to copy characters back over.

[Vyvyanne]

Will this help players on an individual basis, or will it help large groups of players who are experiencing simultaneous, identical perf issues?

The PvMP graphics setting add a couple more items to options you could turn off to reduce graphics quality anywhere, but the PvMP aspect gives one checkbox that can turn off several options all at once. One of the problems in PvMP is loading all of the graphical renderings of that many characters in one area. This reduces the amount of visual extras your client is trying to load, thus it should help on the individual (client side) basis.

[Vyvyanne]

Will Bullroarer get a wipe to enable new copies? Many of us have characters copied over months ago that don't represent our live characters' progression. For example I would be unable to do comparative testing with what I currently do on live.

Would the "server full fix" require BR to be up for a couple of weeks? Does it include better handling of errors?

Are these new graphics setting only operational in PvMP areas or can they be used anywhere when we wish to avoid lag?

Mac

BR will be up for a few weeks, but it will probably get patches in that time and it will not always be open to players in that time. The fix that went in fixes a problem where the login server was not handing off load to the second server that was waiting to take the load, and this would get into an over-loaded and stuck state. We have also added code to make it crash gracefully if it gets into that state anyway.

[siipperi]

The PvMP graphics setting add a couple more items to options you could turn off to reduce graphics quality anywhere, but the PvMP aspect gives one checkbox that can turn off several options all at once. One of the problems in PvMP is loading all of the graphical renderings of that many characters in one area. This reduces the amount of visual extras your client is trying to load, thus it should help on the individual (client side) basis.

Is there any plans to limit your selected targets buff/debuff icons (ones under vital bar)? Experimental with that could be potentially fruitful. Because trust me we have tried to reduce our graphics to low and it's still terrible if you target person with 7 rows of buffs.

[Snowlock]

The PvMP graphics setting add a couple more items to options you could turn off to reduce graphics quality anywhere, but the PvMP aspect gives one checkbox that can turn off several options all at once. One of the problems in PvMP is loading all of the graphical renderings of that many characters in one area. This reduces the amount of visual extras your client is trying to load, thus it should help on the individual (client side) basis.

I think this will help you more than it will help us, if we employ this setting and still see the lag pvmp's complain about, it may help you further isolate the issue. Which, don't get me wrong, has value. And, it will probably help people with older or poorer performing machines perform better, which is certainly of value. But unless everyone employs the option, then reducing over all strain on whatever it is that causes this, like "turning off cloaks" did back in the day, then I don't have much hope yet (largely because turning off cloaks and such hasn't fixed this lag type). But... It's a step, hopefully in the right direction.

[Snowlock]

Is there any plans to limit your selected targets buff/debuff icons (ones under vital bar)? Experimental with that could be potentially fruitful. Because trust me we have tried to reduce our graphics to low and it's still terrible if you target person with 7 rows of buffs.

What we cannot currently do is reduce visibility of debuffs, or reduce aura effects (like the spinning glow of an RK's runestone). Perhaps we are getting options to turn this down. it may help, it may not, but it's not something we've been able to try before.

[Soccer55]

Is the issue posted multiple times in the Windows Technical Help forum regarding a recent Windows 10 update that renders the LotRO client unusable either included in U18 or at least being investigated by the dev team? Right now, the only way to get the client working again is to uninstall that particular update. As you likely know, Windows 10 forces installation of security related updates and a workaround to block this particular update from being downloaded and installed does not work (likely because it is security related). Having to uninstall an update that gets installed every time I restart my computer just so I can play this game is getting old (which is more frequently than it should be due to a memory leak in the LotRO client). For what it's worth, I was able to play Guild Wars 2 perfectly fine after the Windows update, so there must be something the LotRO client is doing that is causing the client to lock up after the update is applied.

[siipperi]

What we cannot currently do is reduce visibility of debuffs, or reduce aura effects (like the spinning glow of an RK's runestone). Perhaps we are getting options to turn this down. it may help, it may not, but it's not something we've been able to try before.

I certainly wish for it (and many players I play with). having slider where you could choose something like 0-40 (and lastly show all) icons would be really worth of trying since apart from the massive server lag we have now really only performance problems I get is when I target another player who has 5-10 rows of buffs (one row is 8 buffs so potentially 60-80 buffs and there is no need to show that amount of information). On top of this when there's many rows of buffs client starts to flash these buffs which causes huge performance hit.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...strel-PvMP-vid

This thread's video showcases on small scale how much FPS problems you get even on smaller scale when you select target with that many buffs and it's usually worse fps ''lag''.

Edit. It already helps so much when you disable buff/debuff icons under fellowship member vital bars. Like one can't play in raids if you have them all showing at all.

[Snowlock]

I certainly wish for it (and many players I play with). having slider where you could choose something like 0-40 (and lastly show all) icons would be really worth of trying

What they really need to be able to do is let us choose which individual buffs and debuffs we want to see, like with a check box in either combat or UI settings. Unwieldy to be sure. But that's truly what it would take. Even then though, that'd just fix the icon spam. I don't know if it would actually help the performance.

[Macdui]

I'd like the option to see just my own debuffs on targets just as we can select just our own buffs on others and things we can cure.

Information overload helps no one, just like the ride through Pelennor showing an arrow to every building in MT on the mini-map!

Mac

[Thorwynn]

These are my observations about Minas Tirith:
Whenever I enter any interior space there, the game slow to a crawl. I hold the forward button, my toon takes a step, freezes for 3 seconds, takes another step, freezes for 3 seconds, repeating the cycle for about 45 seconds until I can move normally. Interior spaces like a storeroom shouldn't have such massive data that needs to be loaded, nor should the game be completely unloading exterior data, since you will be back outside in a few seconds. I have a really fast computer running on an SSD with 32G RAM.

Outside in MT it isn't nearly as bad. While riding around in MT however, I have noticed there are certain spots in the floor where there are cracks and you can see all the floors below being rendered. This seems like it would be a huge unnecessary drain on computer resources.

I hope the upcoming changes improve things.

[Phindecano]

The PvMP graphics setting add a couple more items to options you could turn off to reduce graphics quality anywhere, but the PvMP aspect gives one checkbox that can turn off several options all at once. One of the problems in PvMP is loading all of the graphical renderings of that many characters in one area. This reduces the amount of visual extras your client is trying to load, thus it should help on the individual (client side) basis.

Could you explain please how this graphical CLIENT options will fix awful SERVER lags of your hardware?

[SirVile]

Well, I have had my prepaid Subscriber account switched to Premium 4 times today.

I believe it might have to do with the Universal Ingredient Pack crates - specifically,
using both sorts of them in one day. In fact, I duplicated the problem with a Turbine
CSR on the telephone earlier, but they believed that it is something to do with the
billing software.

All I know is that I'm getting bloody tired of losing all my subscriber benefits on a
prepaid 'VIP' account. It's actually a bit more of a "VPO'd" account at this moment...

[Vyvyanne]

I just got word from my operations team that the circuit change will not be able to be made tomorrow after all. I do not have a new ETA at this time but it is still something we are actively working to get done ASAP. I'll update once I am given a new window.

The rest of the items in my list should still be in Beta this weekend regardless.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Is the issue posted multiple times in the Windows Technical Help forum regarding a recent Windows 10 update that renders the LotRO client unusable either included in U18 or at least being investigated by the dev team? Right now, the only way to get the client working again is to uninstall that particular update. As you likely know, Windows 10 forces installation of security related updates and a workaround to block this particular update from being downloaded and installed does not work (likely because it is security related). Having to uninstall an update that gets installed every time I restart my computer just so I can play this game is getting old (which is more frequently than it should be due to a memory leak in the LotRO client). For what it's worth, I was able to play Guild Wars 2 perfectly fine after the Windows update, so there must be something the LotRO client is doing that is causing the client to lock up after the update is applied.

The problem you are having only affects some Windows 10 players. I have Windows 10 Pro. I do not have this issue. Lotro works fine with all the current updates.

The big question is what is there about your PC hardware and applications that causes Lotro to fail on your Windows 10 PC.

[Hallandil]

Additionally this weekend we will be placing Update 18 on Bullroarer for it's first Open Beta session. In this build we will have much of the content going out with U18 but it will also have the following items we hope will improve performance in various areas:
- Awesonium upgrade to fix the store crashes some folks are seeing
- Login Server fix to the "Server Full" error
- New graphics setting options for reducing graphics and client load in PvMP areas
- Reducing the data footprint of the Minas Tirith and Pelennor areas

More details and patch notes to come towards the end of the week.

We hope that you will have a chance to jump in and help test these things out with us and keep providing your feedback here and in /bug. We are reading all of it, even when we can not respond. Your feedback makes a difference!

Thank you,
Vyvyanne

I would like to have spiderman give a few quick words to summarise my current feelings.

[maartena]

Could you explain please how this graphical CLIENT options will fix awful SERVER lags of your hardware?

There are fixes done both on the server side and the client side. One thing that I have noticed over the last few months (even before the data center move) is that the Ettenmoors is fuller than ever as there are only 5 servers now and they are nice and full. I have never been "lag free" when there have been fights of 20, 25+ people in the same space, and as of late I have seen fights with as many as 30 on each side....

I'm hoping the combination of fixing the server side lag, the ISP improvements, and the client fixes will make those kinds of fights possible without too much lag. I expect there will always be some, as this game was never really designed as a PvP type game, it was added later and uses characters that are largely optimized (both graphics and network wise) for PVE from the get-go.