More crashing lately

[Ardineck]

I've been crashing more and more often lately. Arkenstone. Computer can easily handle very high and ultra high graphics, but I don't even play on high anymore because I was crashing so often. Now, it's happening even on medium and this just shouldn't be how I have to play the game in the first place, but now the client is crashing way too often...at least that's what I've seen Frelorn say is the issue.

I know people I play with are still crashing like crazy and avoiding Minas Tirith like the plague, but I just crashed in Eastern Rohan and have crashed elsewhere today, not just there.

Is something really being done or is everyone just working on the raid that is going to have bugs in it, too and probably crashing and lag? Please fix it before the raid comes out, no matter how far along the pipeline the raid is.

This is such a long time problem that I just don't get how this isn't priority number one to get that part fixed. Is it even on the board or is new content going to keep coming out and people who WANT to play this game keep having trouble. It's not my computer and it ONLY happens here in LotRO. Not SWTOR, TESO, GW2...nothing else has this issue.

[Milogson]

I've been crashing more and more often lately. Arkenstone. Computer can easily handle very high and ultra high graphics, but I don't even play on high anymore because I was crashing so often. Now, it's happening even on medium and this just shouldn't be how I have to play the game in the first place, but now the client is crashing way too often...at least that's what I've seen Frelorn say is the issue.

I know people I play with are still crashing like crazy and avoiding Minas Tirith like the plague, but I just crashed in Eastern Rohan and have crashed elsewhere today, not just there.

Is something really being done or is everyone just working on the raid that is going to have bugs in it, too and probably crashing and lag? Please fix it before the raid comes out, no matter how far along the pipeline the raid is.

This is such a long time problem that I just don't get how this isn't priority number one to get that part fixed. Is it even on the board or is new content going to keep coming out and people who WANT to play this game keep having trouble. It's not my computer and it ONLY happens here in LotRO. Not SWTOR, TESO, GW2...nothing else has this issue.

Don't worry, the best Turbine can do is tell you that you have to by at least a Titanium with 6 GB per core for this game to function at the 1260 resolution. Everything else below those specs is bound to crash. So it has to be your fault! And don't you know it!
/irony off

It's been the problem since the release of MT when they started splurging on layer over layer of useless graphics objects that were completely unnecessary as there is nothing that is not covered by tons of other objects hiding everything else behind it from sight. So it should not be required to have to load those background graphics at all. Yet somehow Turbine has succeeded in loading every single one of those objects every time you turn around - and then not releasing every instance of an object that can't be displayed thanks to inefficient memory handling. Obviously that causes graphics memory and cache to overload quickly at higher graphics settings.

But due to TBs incessant belief that a tiny group of programmers who don't even know the engine's base code anymore are able to wrangle huge increases in viewing and display distances from an engine that was never intended to show such distant objects we have come to the current situation.

They have now fed the players the idea: "Hell, I should be able to turn up display distance to the max - my rig is way too powerful for this ancient game!" and the players feel entitled to this viewing distance now that they have played with it for over two years. But stupidly the devs decided to overload everything from MT forward in every viewing distance with MOBs (mobile objects) that all need to be loaded and updated constantly. With the inefficient server processing & networking capacity this causes for such huge lag that the graphical engine gets so backlogged in objects that need to be displayed and updated in position that it frequently crashes due to sheer memory overflow.

All of this is my conjecture on the basic engine, and specifically the graphics engine, based on my own experience in the field - without having any access to the coding myself. But if you ever check your graphics memory as it tries to cope with the over-abundant MOBs in MT and further regios you will see what I mean.
Is there hope for any relief? Sadly, no. Even Frelorn so much as agreed that they don't have a single software engineer who knows the basic code of the engine from more than eight years ago. So just forget it that this will be solved any time soon - or at all (the latter is my opinion).

[Castorix]

//...
This is such a long time problem that I just don't get how this isn't priority number one to get that part fixed. Is it even on the board or is new content going to keep coming out and people who WANT to play this game keep having trouble. It's not my computer and it ONLY happens here in LotRO. Not SWTOR, TESO, GW2...nothing else has this issue.

I don't understand either why it is not the 1st priority.
Some big memory leaks appeared in RoR.
I had asked that they fix them ASAP, because it could be worse on next updates ("snowball effect").
But Turbine did not care because mainly 32-bit OS were concerned and now it seems that even people on 64-bit can crash regularly...

[Sheaezra]

It's 9 year old game. Players equipment these days shouldn't be and really isn't an issue.

[Frelorn]

We are still and will continue to investigate and fix the various causes of performance issues and crashing clients. There is not just one thing causing the issues. There is no magic fix. This is a matter of fixing small things along the way as we find them.

[maartena]

We are still and will continue to investigate and fix the various causes of performance issues and crashing clients. There is not just one thing causing the issues. There is no magic fix. This is a matter of fixing small things along the way as we find them.

Is the reason it is taking so long that you are currently understaffed or have different priorities, such as releasing content on-time? I would much rather see you delay 18.2 by a month or even 2 months if your teams can focus 100% on fixing the game first, before adding more to it.

[Belnavar]

I'm getting insane lag at times, which I'm confident is a game optimisation and server performance issue.

My rig:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P
CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 (Skylake)
RAM: 16GB HyperX Fury Black Series (2133 MHz DDR4 CL14)
GPU: MSI AMD R9 380 (4 GB GDDR5)
PSU: Corsair CXM Builder Series Modular (600W)
SSD 1: Samsung 250GB 850 EVO
SSD 2: Samsung 500GB
OS: Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)

In group runs, whenever there are a lot of particle effects (RK and LM skills), there is very bad lag, even if I'm down to Very Low settings. In fact, on many occasions there appears to be no noticeable difference in lag on Very Low or Very High.

I also get some bad lag periodically in landscape, especially Minas Tirith and Pelennor. Yesterday it was insanely bad, no matter where I was, with long load times, chat disconnects, client freezing (never happened before), long delays on skills and quests opening/completing, etc. No problems with my net or PC for anything else.

I have ~90ms latency (Ireland here), with 0.0% loss. 240Mb broadband.

-Bel

[Thoroval]

We are still and will continue to investigate and fix the various causes of performance issues and crashing clients. There is not just one thing causing the issues. There is no magic fix. This is a matter of fixing small things along the way as we find them.

You say the above and then just one minute later close an official thread that was still yielding feedback. No explanation. No results. Seems like mixed messages to me.

Do you consider your changes to Landroval successful despite the numerous posts that performance was degraded when compared to before the changes? What about performance becoming more degraded over time, including an increase in failed internal server hand-offs? Did you or are you going to roll back those changes?

It has been 6 months and your back end is still not to the level it was prior to the datacenter relocation. And that's not even considering the routing which continues to take huge hits at times, especially ewr-cntr-11.inet.qwest.net and 206.103.215.50.

[Hetweith]

i crash up to 12x a day since u18, i try to avoid MT at all costs since a crash is certain when arriving and or leaving MT. before u18 i rarely crashed at all. that should narrow things down considerably.

[Ardineck]

We are still and will continue to investigate and fix the various causes of performance issues and crashing clients. There is not just one thing causing the issues. There is no magic fix. This is a matter of fixing small things along the way as we find them.

Can anyone see how many bug reports I file? Because I file a lot and honestly, I don't file them all. When I'm in an instance and crash, I can't tell the people I'm running with "Hold on. I crashed, but not only am I asking you to wait for me to load back in, you have to wait for me to type in my information" and type it in EVERY TIME even though it's the same computer.

If the bug report only required me to set up my computer information once (and only change if I change computers) and only type in what happened each time, that would be better.


I have 5-6 crashes a day. I don't play that much daily. I just crashed in fact, which is why I checked the forums.

Look, we ALL understand it's not easy, but telling us there is no magic fix is not making us happy and I know there's no magic fix. What we want is to stop releasing new content until you fix it. All hands on deck. Everyone works on this.

Now, are you telling us it's going to take more than a month to do that if everyone is working on ONE thing? Then maybe it's time to hang up the hats and shut the lights out, because if playing the game isn't possible, we can't spend money in the game. Each time I crash, a little part of the joy of playing dies. I'm not saying stop developing new content. I'm saying that this has to be the top priority. Too many people are experiencing the same thing. What small things have you found? Let us know. This isn't the kind of thing I think people want to hear excuses about anymore. The grumbling with people I play with is as loud as it was before they left the first time. They just started coming back. If this is happening with the raid, then as soon as that's done, they'll all be done. It would be BETTER to delay the new raid until this fix. Anticipation is better than disappointment. Delay delay delay. Fix fix fix.

[Misapprehension]

Lately i have been crashing too. In loading screens. Last time it happened when trying to use festival horse from bree. The time before that, loading from bree festival fields to instance (helegrod drake wing, if it matters). There was more crashes. Mostly happens when trying to join instance.
And after the crash, trying to load back into game fails again and again. On the loading screen the progress bar just doesnt move at all. After a while a black screen pops with a message "The Connection to the server has been lost."
Right now had that message twice and unable to load back in the game. Character select loads in fine, just the character would not load.

[Polymachos]

(chiming in)

Did you recently install or update anything that brought a background program that starts with the PC bootup, or a service? After this experience with a faulty Realtek/Lenovo updating service, that occupied any Ram it could get its bits on, and which was responsible for at least half of my crashes, I have become suspicious about background processes that get installed only for convenience while they aren't needed by the sytem (that includes 'experience' things that come with varius drivers, or the premature start of Adobe Reader, and a lot more of that kind).


Greetings, Polymachos

[Forodir]

I agree, FIX FOR THE CRASHES NEEDS TO BE A TOP PRIORITY. This problem has been there for way too long. Pull people from other projects for a while if needed, but the game needs to be fixed before adding new content.

I don't fully agree that it is just fixing small things here and there or optimizing the graphical content. There are bigger issues in there as well. When looking at the memory allocation and release of the lotroclient it's clear that there are some real issues. When you move between the areas in game the client doesn't properly release the memory from previous areas, but keeps accumulating the memory until it crashes. It is also very obvious that when application is getting closer the memory limit you get lots of stutter and glitches in frame rate. Game is silk smooth when you load it, but more you play (and more memory the app has accumulated) more stutter you get when app is doing the memory allocation/release on the fly and obviously quite inefficiently or slowly. Again a clear indication of problematic memory handling. I wouldn't be surprised if lag and rubberbanding has some connection to this as well since client-server communication is probably having similar "stutter" when app is closer to memory limit and app is spending a lot of time on memory handling instead of communicating with server.

It shouldn't be too hard to debug the code to see how the memory is allocated/released (to remove stutter) and to identify why release isn't done properly (to avoid crashes).

In game I hate going to MT and other new areas. I also hate to participate in group content since I don't want to crash while being part of the group in instance. It is certainly not worth the VIP subscription which I cancelled already.

[Marxlne]

In game I hate going to MT and other new areas. I also hate to participate in group content since I don't want to crash while being part of the group in instance. It is certainly not worth the VIP subscription which I cancelled already.

Pretty much same here. Lately i've rarely participated in group content because there is nothing worse than crashing in the middle of the instance or boss fight as a tank, thus causing wipe and failing challenge. Only way to reduce crash possibility for me is to restart client right before starting instance. But even then when session takes too long (1 hour or more) or there would be many wipes (thus additional reloadings which increase memory allocation) i'm bound to crash.
And the new Raid probably will be unplayable for me too, cause nobody wants a tank who crashes multiple times during raid

[Castorix]

Exactly what Forodir & Marxlne said.
I cannot group anymore with my Guardian as tank because I know I will crash in the new instances (I can only do them as "pseudo-DPS" when the leader is a friend, otherwise after 2/3 crashes/wipes in a pug, I will be dismissed and I understand that)

[thinx]

Same crashing rate since January for me.
Once on entering/leaving MT or Pelennor fields close to MT.
Silent street entry ~30% crash probability.

Since months.

[Nymphonic]

I finally got to play last night(7 work days a week takes time), and in Angmar I crashed over and over. And I haven't had a crashing problem in 9 years.

[ainor]

Is something really being done or is everyone just working on the raid that is going to have bugs in it, too and probably crashing and lag? Please fix it before the raid comes out, no matter how far along the pipeline the raid is.

This is such a long time problem that I just don't get how this isn't priority number one to get that part fixed. Is it even on the board or is new content going to keep coming out and people who WANT to play this game keep having trouble. It's not my computer and it ONLY happens here in LotRO. Not SWTOR, TESO, GW2...nothing else has this issue.

Is the reason it is taking so long that you are currently understaffed or have different priorities, such as releasing content on-time? I would much rather see you delay 18.2 by a month or even 2 months if your teams can focus 100% on fixing the game first, before adding more to it.

Now, are you telling us it's going to take more than a month to do that if everyone is working on ONE thing? Then maybe it's time to hang up the hats and shut the lights out, because if playing the game isn't possible, we can't spend money in the game. Each time I crash, a little part of the joy of playing dies. I'm not saying stop developing new content. I'm saying that this has to be the top priority. Too many people are experiencing the same thing. What small things have you found? Let us know. This isn't the kind of thing I think people want to hear excuses about anymore. The grumbling with people I play with is as loud as it was before they left the first time. They just started coming back. If this is happening with the raid, then as soon as that's done, they'll all be done. It would be BETTER to delay the new raid until this fix. Anticipation is better than disappointment. Delay delay delay. Fix fix fix.

I agree, FIX FOR THE CRASHES NEEDS TO BE A TOP PRIORITY. This problem has been there for way too long. Pull people from other projects for a while if needed, but the game needs to be fixed before adding new content.

I don't fully agree that it is just fixing small things here and there or optimizing the graphical content. There are bigger issues in there as well. When looking at the memory allocation and release of the lotroclient it's clear that there are some real issues. When you move between the areas in game the client doesn't properly release the memory from previous areas, but keeps accumulating the memory until it crashes. It is also very obvious that when application is getting closer the memory limit you get lots of stutter and glitches in frame rate. Game is silk smooth when you load it, but more you play (and more memory the app has accumulated) more stutter you get when app is doing the memory allocation/release on the fly and obviously quite inefficiently or slowly. Again a clear indication of problematic memory handling. I wouldn't be surprised if lag and rubberbanding has some connection to this as well since client-server communication is probably having similar "stutter" when app is closer to memory limit and app is spending a lot of time on memory handling instead of communicating with server.

It shouldn't be too hard to debug the code to see how the memory is allocated/released (to remove stutter) and to identify why release isn't done properly (to avoid crashes).

In game I hate going to MT and other new areas. I also hate to participate in group content since I don't want to crash while being part of the group in instance. It is certainly not worth the VIP subscription which I cancelled already.

Amen. When I first saw the lag in MT I cancelled my VIP right away. To release content with that much lag is just...

It seams it has gotten worse since then. This is not the only thread about the performance issues. In my opinion the forums should be spammed with threads like this. But sure, best dwarf character name and what dresses are on sale in the lotro store is important too!

Frelorn, thank you for reading this thread! Could you please bring this feedback to Vyvyanne and the team.

[Denhith]

We are still and will continue to investigate and fix the various causes of performance issues and crashing clients. There is not just one thing causing the issues. There is no magic fix. This is a matter of fixing small things along the way as we find them.

One could argue that if Turbine kept the game optimized over the past few years, your customers wouldn't be at their wits end. At least you and your boss are actually admitting there is a problem finally.

To the matter at hand, Far Anorien is a hot mess. It's bad enough we are still getting quests to kill mounted mobs, but when my burglar gets on his warsteed (grudgingly), I get rubber-banded to a completely different map--the far side of Beacon Hills? It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad. Add to that skill lag and severe FPS drops on a gaming PC that handles FFXIV and higher-end games with ridiculous ease.

But yes, please do add more "frills" in the older areas. If your goal is to make the ENTIRE game a complete mess, you are on the right track.

[daneyul]

Is the reason it is taking so long that you are currently understaffed or have different priorities, such as releasing content on-time? I would much rather see you delay 18.2 by a month or even 2 months if your teams can focus 100% on fixing the game first, before adding more to it.

I'm sorry, your question cannot be answered as this thread has already received its maximum number of responses from Turbine staff (one).

To increase your chance of receiving another single response, please start 50 to 200 new threads.

-The Community Management Participation RNG

[Milogson]

We are still and will continue to investigate and fix the various causes of performance issues and crashing clients. There is not just one thing causing the issues. There is no magic fix. This is a matter of fixing small things along the way as we find them.

I am truely sorry, Frelorn, but I have to call BS on this.
No, I am not blaming you personally for this, as you are nothing other than the messenger.

Yes, there is no magic fix for this.

It has been eight months since Minas Tirith was released in this crash-prone version and NONE of the current 'fixes', 'updates', or 'hot-fixes' have in any way or manner significantly reduced the number of crashes.

But EIGHT (8) months of constant crashing in Minas Tirith SHOULD have called LOUD and CLEAR for an 'ALL HANDS ON DECK!'

Eight months of constant bug searching and checking SHOULD have given you some reeeeeally amazing insights into the workings of your engine, even with only a small number of staff capable of doing the coding. If you did not have enough staff members who could do the coding you SHOULD HAVE HIRED THEM BY NOW!

Do you believe you would be driving a car for eight months that stops working whenever you drive past the Home Depot because suddenly it feels 'burdened' by the possibility of a trunk full of stuff you might buy there? Especially when your daily route to work always takes you along that same street with the home depot on it?
And your local garage owner keeps on telling you that they have fixed the radio, and installed new head-lights that shine twice as far, and added the new blinker that indicates that you are going to continue driving straight ahead, and the new rear-view mirror wiper will keep you safer in sudden rear-wind driven splash rains because you can now see the cars behind you even in the worst rain.

And then you ask that glib salesman if he has found the problem why your car simply stops working when you pass the home depot.
Guess what he tells you?
Yeah, we are working on the many small problems that we find along the way. Sorry, there is no magic fix for this.

I guess you'd have dumped that car on your dealer and told him to fix it or you want your money back.
And if the guarantee and waranty had elapsed you'd be looking for a new car that works, no matter where you drive it.
You certainly wouldn't spend one more penny on that old wreck.

See where the analogy is leading?
If you want your customers to continue spending money give them a working product that does not crash anymore.

This is simply ridiculous.
Eight months of bug searching and keeping your customers at arms length certainly does not inspire confidence in and appreciation for the Turbine team, especially not in me. If you have been searching for less than eight months please tell me why.
Because I personally sent you bug reports eight months ago of the instability of MT and the Pelenor fields concerning the graphics engine and the repeatable crashes at certain load screens as well as certain regional hand-off positions.
And I am absolutely certain others did so as well - also eight months ago - and continuously since then.

Best regards
Milogson

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

For those that have the client crashing and you are running a 32-bit version of Windows, please see my post in this thread here:

Thread: Rage post: This game isn't worth the money I invest due to crashes and graveyard ress

Eh... I'll quote it (and another) for you:

Windows 8.1 Professional 32-bit

OK Simple solution.

Take your mouse pointer to the lower left hand corner of your screen. RIGHT click in that corner and select Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu.

In the command prompt type the following command:

bcdedit /set increaseuserva 3072 (press enter)

Now reboot your system and test for crashes.

If you have any problems with your display driver or any weird and strange funkyness after you'd set that and rebooted, then you can set things back to default with this command:

bcdedit /set increaseuserva 2048

My original thread on this was posted 5 years ago now if you want to check it out:

Thread: Workaround for Client Crash to Desktop in 32-bit Windows

However, on my other desktop computer (64-bit Windows 8) it crashes randomly too.

There are a couple of reasons 64-bit systems will have LOTRO crash on them:

1) You are using the insta-travel horses from Minas Tirith and Fields of Pelennor. These are known bugs and crashes will happen to EVERYONE.
2) You may be running in DirectX10 or DirectX11 mode with all the bells and whistles turned on. This will be an extremely laggy experience and will eventually reach the 32-bit process size limit on a 64-bit OS. It takes a while but it can get there. If the LOTRO client is compiled with LARGEADDRESSAWARE the limit is 4GB.


Incidentally, a good test for this is to:

1) Ride from South Bree to Minas Tirith
2) Open the instance join panel, click the third tab and find the Silent Streets instance. Enter that instance.
3) Go through the door and to the area where the first set of mobs are.
4) Leave the instance and go find a Supplier. (Specifically a Supplier - they have more items in their window) Right click on the Supplier.

If you didn't crash you should be good.

[witchys]

I am truely sorry, Frelorn, but I have to call BS on this.
No, I am not blaming you personally for this, as you are nothing other than the messenger.

Yes, there is no magic fix for this.

It has been eight months since Minas Tirith was released in this crash-prone version and NONE of the current 'fixes', 'updates', or 'hot-fixes' have in any way or manner significantly reduced the number of crashes.

But EIGHT (8) months of constant crashing in Minas Tirith SHOULD have called LOUD and CLEAR for an 'ALL HANDS ON DECK!'

Eight months of constant bug searching and checking SHOULD have given you some reeeeeally amazing insights into the workings of your engine, even with only a small number of staff capable of doing the coding. If you did not have enough staff members who could do the coding you SHOULD HAVE HIRED THEM BY NOW!

Do you believe you would be driving a car for eight months that stops working whenever you drive past the Home Depot because suddenly it feels 'burdened' by the possibility of a trunk full of stuff you might buy there? Especially when your daily route to work always takes you along that same street with the home depot on it?
And your local garage owner keeps on telling you that they have fixed the radio, and installed new head-lights that shine twice as far, and added the new blinker that indicates that you are going to continue driving straight ahead, and the new rear-view mirror wiper will keep you safer in sudden rear-wind driven splash rains because you can now see the cars behind you even in the worst rain.

And then you ask that glib salesman if he has found the problem why your car simply stops working when you pass the home depot.
Guess what he tells you?
Yeah, we are working on the many small problems that we find along the way. Sorry, there is no magic fix for this.

I guess you'd have dumped that car on your dealer and told him to fix it or you want your money back.
And if the guarantee and waranty had elapsed you'd be looking for a new car that works, no matter where you drive it.
You certainly wouldn't spend one more penny on that old wreck.

See where the analogy is leading?
If you want your customers to continue spending money give them a working product that does not crash anymore.

This is simply ridiculous.
Eight months of bug searching and keeping your customers at arms length certainly does not inspire confidence in and appreciation for the Turbine team, especially not in me. If you have been searching for less than eight months please tell me why.
Because I personally sent you bug reports eight months ago of the instability of MT and the Pelenor fields concerning the graphics engine and the repeatable crashes at certain load screens as well as certain regional hand-off positions.
And I am absolutely certain others did so as well - also eight months ago - and continuously since then.

Best regards
Milogson

Have to agree this crash fixing should be the main and perhaps the ONLY thing they should be working on. We didn't need frills in lower area's being added while a good chunk of the population is crashing and turbine have acknowledged there is a issue. There is a limit that approaching where turbine will find many will simply walk and no longer pay to play a buggy laggy mess if they havent already gone

[ShireDweller]

Chromite's fix for 32-bit windows systems worked for me several years ago when I was having problems on my old computer, and let me be able to keep playing until I was able to get a new computer. I hope it helps others in the same situation the way it helped me. Thanks again, Chromite!

[MalonSaria]

I recently came back to the game (was gone when Minas Tirith was implemented) and I can't believe the crashing. I'd never crashed literally once in the 9 years i've played, and now i crash to desktop literally EVERY SINGLE DAY, at least once. I crash taking a swift horse from anywhere to Minas Tirith, occasionally to Dol Amroth, and strangely, to Aldburg. In the time i was away i also had a brand new pc built, capable of playing any of the current pc games at max resolution etc, so i know that can't be the problem.

No warning or anything either, just flat out crash. And there's a new raid about to come out?? Omg please tell me it's not in the Minas Tirith/Pelennor area or else i'm screwed as i'll crash just trying to enter it :/ The only saving grace since i've been back is that I can do the daily instances as they're in older zones, i even subscribed again (kicking myself that i missed the lifetime option)