why have the updates to fix game lag stopped

[BangoTwinkletoes]

Hostility solves nothing.

We're adults. If you can't at least pretend to act like an adult, then don't post at all. Your hostility and frustration is doing less then Turbine is doing.

You obviously cannot spot the irony in your post can you?

[Leopoldio]

Game is ruined and unplayable.


Turbine, you don't need any technical details to reproduce.
Go to arkenstone at US prime. Find any zerg and try to exectute skills....Or even move. You'll find out all yourself. Fix it.

If you cant. Maybe its time to sell your product to someone who is capable of making this game for customers (aka playable) ?

[Jillymala]

Hostility solves nothing.

We're adults. If you can't at least pretend to act like an adult, then don't post at all. Your hostility and frustration is doing less then Turbine is doing.

I bet if you put all those hostile users on ignore the forums would be a much nicer place for you, and much much quieter, but then you'd have no one to shout at to behave.

Instead of blowing that little trumpet of yours telling people to play nice, why don't you actually read why they are starting to get hostile.
Many of these people are beyond frustrated and have been patient, playing nice and giving Turbine the benefit of the doubt for well over a month now with zero results.
Instead of results many are seeing things stay the same, if not worse..., being told everything is fine, being told the problems are on the users end, the problems are on the ISP's end, being told to port forward, being told to post problems in the forums, then being told the forums posting isn't good enough and to now (after a month) file bug reports. And the best part is, even though EVERY single user in Ettens (yes yes I know, it's a small subset no one cares about, but it's a great example) experiences dead stopping, 45 skill delay, can't move at all lag.. the guys at support can't figure out that all they have to do is LOG INTO ETTENS and see it. They want us to report it in bugs, which the bug screen doesn't work 25% of the time.

How long would your patience last?

[Macdui]

Looking at the forum dates (with mid 2011 for EU) it's a majority of older players who are active in these threads. We have experienced the game throughout it's history and it's decline is notable.

It's sad to see someone's second post telling of their VIP cancellation.

My personal opinion is that few players post on the forums, fewer would file bug reports as many wouldn't think anything they did could have any effect on the game. Many that have filed bugs in the past may very well have given up and the trouble with the system for reporting is the email that thanks you, tells you that they won't ever update you on the outcome.

I still wonder at a bug that must have been filed by someone detailing that rust die critical producing black die was a bug. Someone at Turbine who didn't know changed it to produce rust on crit. To compound this our complaints that non-guilded scholars could not now make black die and guilded ones were limited to 5 per day lead them to produce a guilded recipe for black die. This is my greatest fear, that the game is being worked on by people who don't know the details. The Trait Trees and Threat mechanics came because no one was left who understood how it all worked and it's place within the context of the raid mechanics. As new content is added at an alarming rate these days is there a disregard of the engine's ability to process it because there's no one left who understands the limitations.

Having filed several bug reports in the last few day I know that I myself have filed more reports than Turbine have said they receive a day. However for each I have filed, there could have been perhaps 10 more during the times I have played.

I did wonder that a completionist main might have extra "baggage" (demonstrated by longer load screens) that might add to our performance issues, but travelling as a chicken with the least baggage possible in the game, wandering into the Westernmet and through to Gondor onto Minas Tirith and getting lag, hitching and freezes tells me of the bigger problem that is only highlighted by the current poor performance issues.

~Macdui

[Hallandil]

Well if we're going to get this desperate then.....

How about you people do what any proper would do and send a polite and courteous letter and/or petition to someone higher up to trickle funds further down so Turbine (specifically Athena) can have the resources to actually employ more staff, develop tertiary/secondary systems to replace the outdated browser integration, include hardware data and crash log generator collection services (oh wait... here comes the "Privateers" hue hue).
That way they can have the required assets to properly analyse the given data and have no excuse for "Lag issues."

I mean, the CEO of Warner Brothers DOES have an email address and can be found with a quick Google search, plus if you have half I brain it's actually quite a predictable email at that.

---

And On That Note;
In the meantime there's the Ticket system which in the description of you can include your hardware information, area where you experience issues, time of day (either local or server), global physical location and the nature of your issues (network, FPS drop, packet loss, CTD etc. ). Yeah, it'll probably get added amongst the pile of backed up tickets since January/December... but hey, at least they'll now have it. I mean, it's a Catch 22 with you all. Either they let the QA developers sort through the existing tickets that were successfully sent in or make their way onto the forums to read badly written walls of text describing how terrible it is to play at the moment, taking up there time with that instead. Unless someone does do the above suggestion, I very much doubt there is a "Why can't we have both?" option.

For those using the "Doctor and Ailment" analogy. Yes both Lag and Cancer are terrible things to have, however a doctor cannot simply treat someone if they're told nothing but that the patient "has cancer." Like screaming "Lag Lag Lag" there's no context and no starting point at which to start treating. I mean, in a desperate attempt to treat it, the patient will end up with chunks missing in an attempt to find the problem.
So before you all swarm in to reply/ignore or troll/bait... How many of you have actually sent in a properly structured, detailed bug report (on either browser or in-game) about the nature of your issues?

Link for browser version of the in-game bug ticket system -> http://support.turbine.com/ics/suppo...?style=classic

Don't know your computer's hardware?
If you're on windows, press Window Key + R to launch the Run and then type in "dxdiag.exe" (without quotations) This will open the specifications scanner of your computer. On the front page will list your CPU type, amount of Physical memory (RAM) and Operating System (Windows type and bit type 32/64). Then also either look at the Graphical (or Render tab for Laptop users) which will say the type of Graphics Card you are using.

Did I say Turbine is the best company in the world and are without flaw? No
Did I go with the crowd and spend my entire time complaining with no helpful suggestions/information? No
Did I realistically describe the situation that Turbine have already implied and/or are afraid to completely repeat due to business outlook? Yes
Did I call you players on your mistakes? Yes

So, in the mean time. Yes, go play that other game you have available to you or go step outside for some fresh air. Update 18 isn't coming out for a while and I'm sure your role-playing events can be rescheduled if you contact your fellow kin members through social media and/or guild websites.

[ShireDweller]

Well if we're going to get this desperate then.....

How about you people do what any proper would do and send a polite and courteous letter and/or petition to someone higher up to trickle funds further down so Turbine (specifically Athena) can have the resources to actually employ more staff, develop tertiary/secondary systems to replace the outdated browser integration, include hardware data and crash log generator collection services (oh wait... here comes the "Privateers" hue hue).
That way they can have the required assets to properly analyse the given data and have no excuse for "Lag issues."

I mean, the CEO of Warner Brothers DOES have an email address and can be found with a quick Google search, plus if you have half I brain it's actually quite a predictable email at that.

---

And On That Note;
In the meantime there's the Ticket system which in the description of you can include your hardware information, area where you experience issues, time of day (either local or server), global physical location and the nature of your issues (network, FPS drop, packet loss, CTD etc. ). Yeah, it'll probably get added amongst the pile of backed up tickets since January/December... but hey, at least they'll now have it. I mean, it's a Catch 22 with you all. Either they let the QA developers sort through the existing tickets that were successfully sent in or make their way onto the forums to read badly written walls of text describing how terrible it is to play at the moment, taking up there time with that instead. Unless someone does do the above suggestion, I very much doubt there is a "Why can't we have both?" option.

For those using the "Doctor and Ailment" analogy. Yes both Lag and Cancer are terrible things to have, however a doctor cannot simply treat someone if they're told nothing but that the patient "has cancer." Like screaming "Lag Lag Lag" there's no context and no starting point at which to start treating. I mean, in a desperate attempt to treat it, the patient will end up with chunks missing in an attempt to find the problem.
So before you all swarm in to reply/ignore or troll/bait... How many of you have actually sent in a properly structured, detailed bug report (on either browser or in-game) about the nature of your issues?

Link for browser version of the in-game bug ticket system -> http://support.turbine.com/ics/suppo...?style=classic

Don't know your computer's hardware?
If you're on windows, press Window Key + R to launch the Run and then type in "dxdiag.exe" (without quotations) This will open the specifications scanner of your computer. On the front page will list your CPU type, amount of Physical memory (RAM) and Operating System (Windows type and bit type 32/64). Then also either look at the Graphical (or Render tab for Laptop users) which will say the type of Graphics Card you are using.

Did I say Turbine is the best company in the world and are without flaw? No
Did I go with the crowd and spend my entire time complaining with no helpful suggestions/information? No
Did I realistically describe the situation that Turbine have already implied and/or are afraid to completely repeat due to business outlook? Yes
Did I call you players on your mistakes? Yes

So, in the mean time. Yes, go play that other game you have available to you or go step outside for some fresh air. Update 18 isn't coming out for a while and I'm sure your role-playing events can be rescheduled if you contact your fellow kin members through social media and/or guild websites.

I think the better solution is to have Turbine employees log into the moors, as they have been invited to several times over, experience the problems first hand and write their own bug reports. They know what info they're looking for in the bug reports, so theirs should be the most informative.

They can do this from friends' or family members' machines to get a variety of hardware/software in the mix too.

Getting insight into the moors' problems should give insight into the problems people experience in other areas too.

Make it an internal team v. team competition to write the most bug reports, and make it a focused effort to understand and fix the problems that those bug reports reveal.

Get the artists and the store folks in on it too, make it a "war room" type situation and commit to staying with the effort until the crisis is over.

Because make no mistake, this *is* a crisis. Fight for your product, dammit, don't just let it fade away in a sea of apathy and bad feelings.

[Macdui]

I think the better solution is to have Turbine employees log into the moors, as they have been invited to several times over, experience the problems first hand and write their own bug reports. They know what info they're looking for in the bug reports, so theirs should be the most informative.

They can do this from friends' or family members' machines to get a variety of hardware/software in the mix too.

Getting insight into the moors' problems should give insight into the problems people experience in other areas too.

Make it an internal team v. team competition to write the most bug reports, and make it a focused effort to understand and fix the problems that those bug reports reveal.

Get the artists and the store folks in on it too, make it a "war room" type situation and commit to staying with the effort until the crisis is over.

Because make no mistake, this *is* a crisis. Fight for your product, dammit, don't just let it fade away in a sea of apathy and bad feelings.

I concur.

But the voices in my head are shouting "screenie or it didn't happen". So how about "Fun with Frelorn" twitch doing something useful for a change and investigate some of the scenarios where we are having performance issues? This will at least get the view count up above 19!

And I ask again put the request for bug reports on the launcher page if we want this fixed.

[ShireDweller]

I concur.

But the voices in my head are shouting "screenie or it didn't happen". So how about "Fun with Frelorn" twitch doing something useful for a change and investigate some of the scenarios where we are having performance issues? This will at least get the view count up above 19!

And I ask again put the request for bug reports on the launcher page if we want this fixed.

Given what we've seen so far, neither of those is going to happen.

We have official statements that "the issues have mostly cleared up", except for "problems that a subset of users is experiencing".

Using your Twitch stream to gather data on game performance issues and adding a request for bug reports in the launcher would seem to contradict those happy statements above. Especially the launcher request, (which face it, is going to be seen by a lot more people than anything asked for on the forums, and is bound to cause awkward questions in chat).

It's more about keeping up appearances, doncha know.

[Macdui]

Aragorn: Gimli keep up!
Gimli: I'm going as fast as I can, it's like wading through gruel though.
Legolas: Don't I look pretty in this light though. How many kills now Gimli?
Gimli: Harumph...
Legolas: Eh?
Gimli: I got skill lag, hitching and rubberbanding and your auto attack kill everything before I can reach them with your pass through on.
Aragorn: Guys I got a Solo instance quest, I'm dropping grp, cyas. (phew)

[gcpate]

We do get those, but what about everyone who is complaining about lag and delays. If the client does not crash, it does not automatically send us logs, hence why we want the bug reports.

So if I crash to desktop, you all get an automatic report? Well then, you should be seeing 5 or more of those a day from just me.

[Amorey]

Aragorn: Gimli keep up!
Gimli: I'm going as fast as I can, it's like wading through gruel though.
Legolas: Don't I look pretty in this light though. How many kills now Gimli?
Gimli: Harumph...
Legolas: Eh?
Gimli: I got skill lag, hitching and rubberbanding and your auto attack kill everything before I can reach them with your pass through on.
Aragorn: Guys I got a Solo instance quest, I'm dropping grp, cyas. (phew)

That is funny ...btw Elves looks pretty in any light ( according to them )

The 'real' Breaking of the Fellowship ....you forgot to add the hobbits though

[GerkinPickle]

...fewer would file bug reports as many wouldn't think anything they did could have any effect on the game. Many that have filed bugs in the past may very well have given up...

This is it (at least for me) in a nutshell. I've reported so many bugs over the years that have gone unfixed, what incentive do I have to go through the process of submitting more now? Especially considering we already have the Iraqi information Minister on here saying everything's fine and only "outliers" still have lag issues. I mean really, what is this opinion based on? Is there really more data out there that gave them the definitive ability to make this claim, than there is data to make the exact opposite statement (that lag is indeed still a most prevalent problem)?

To put it another way, I'm going to wildly estimate that hundreds of players have submitted tickets over the years on (what I consider close to game-breaking) HiPS/Dissapear bugs. Have you ever seen a blue, even once, discuss or acknowledge these bugs? Ever?

So again, what's the point?

[MasterOfNothing]

I think the better solution is to have Turbine employees log into the moors

I don't think that they will ever log into the moors at prime-time, simply BECAUSE this would mean they would have to acknowledge the problems.
Now they can conveniently say that whenever they logged in (at office hours, e.g. non-prime time and probably not even grouped), they did not experience any lag.

Or more specifically: If you have a collection of servers, some virtual some hardware, you need some monitoring software or hardware, that allows you to distributes the load between the servers.
Does anyone of you actually believe, that such monitoring is not capable AT ALL to detect the heavy load in say Gramsfoot at prime-time or during a raid-sized instance?
Of course their monitoring systems MUST BE ABLE to AT LEAST DETECT the heavy load, otherwise you could not distribute the load among the hardware and virtual servers AT ALL.
Without the ability to detect, you could as well be twiddling your thumbs or throw software/hardware switches at random.

The problem is quite evidently not one of detecting the heavy load (and the associated lag).
Rather the problem is that they do not have any server capacity left, to distribute the load to other servers that are not yet running on maximum load.

Turbine has been ignoring this problem for years. Why should they acknowledge it now?
From a business point of view, I even understand it.
If we ourselves are honest (as honest as we demand Turbine to be), the players at level cap do not really contribute much any more to fund the game.
With all Xpacs bought and our mains maxed out, we might have still a VIP-subscription running. Either because we are charitable, or we play in the moors as freeps
If we play creeps, we do not even need a VIP-subscription and can play completely free.
If I look at when I spent the most real money for the game, it is quite likely that the main source of income comes from the new players, that are still leveling and need to buy expansions, quest packs, storage etc.

The main source of income comes from these players and the systems are set up in such a way, that the lag is minimal for those players.
These players are still on their journey (and the journey, the quest-line stories, etc. is Turbine's real strength).
Of course these players are heading towards level cap, some slow, some faster. They will eventually reach level cap and most are probably looking forward to do instances (some to do PvP)
If Turbine acknowledged that parts of the game at level cap (namely PvP and raid-sized instances) are not playable, at least not at all times, it would hurt the stream of income from the aforementioned players.

Of course it is a bit borderline, not to acknowledge the problems (or to say its only a minority problem), at least if you pay for your VIP subscription in order to do PvP.
But it seems that Turbine can afford to loose these customers. If they couldn't, they would have acknowledged the problem.
If you acknowledge the problem, you can at least MITIGATE it (even without buying additional server hardware)

For instance, you could provide incentives to reduce the load at prime-time and move it towards non-prime time.
Here are a few incentives that come into mind:
- better marks/med for raid-sized instances, when done at non prime-time
- better comm/infamy gains ffor PvP at non prime-time and in small groups
- better loot for instances done at non prime-time

If the problems were acknowledged, maybe players/Turbine would be able to come up with much better incentives to mitigate the problems

[ShireDweller]

I don't disagree.

Instead of going to the moors, how about we ask them to log into Minas Tirith instead and make their bug reports there? Do you think there's any more chance of that happening?

I don't.

The signs are clear that what we have now is what we're going to have to accept, barring some breakthrough in their understanding of the performance issues. Even then, the solution may be beyond the scope of the aged software to handle, or too expensive in time or resources to implement.

We were better off before the move.

[Gutterat]

[MasterOfNothing]

We were better off before the move.

I am with you and agree fully.

However, in hindsight it is somewhat naive to think that they did the server move in order to benefit the players.

The main reason for the server move were
- cut costs (new hardware being less expensive in purchase and maintenance, also more powerful so you can buy less)
- security reasons (need to update OS, because Win 32-bit is not being supported any more)

Both reasons are legitimate, and would have helped us, the players as well, if the move had been properly executed.
Less costs and better security - at the SAME PERFORMANCE - would have been a win-win situation for all involved.

But it did not become a win-win situation, because we do not even see the same performance, the performance is worse.
Maybe they even thought that the performance would be better themselves.
It is rather obvious to me, that they do not properly understand what stresses the servers most.
For instance, it is a myth, that more people in an area increase lag. Sometime more people even decrease lag.
But they encouraged us in the stress tests on Bullroarer all to come to Bree.
Likely they believed the myth "the more players in the same area, the more lag".
For this reason they might have thought, that all players in Bree produces the highest possible load on the server.
They then scaled the hardware according to the above myth.

No, the highest load PER PLAYER on the servers are raid-sized PvP, raid-sized instances or raid-sized Big Battles.
I estimate that the lag PER PLAYER is roughly a factor of 10 higher than their extrapolation from the Bullroarer stress tests.

[siipperi]

[IMG]http://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt105/sloperroadbloobird/oneshotters_zpsyxt6myab.jpg

This shouldn't be lag related problem, you could have seen this happening from time to time over the years.

[BBChild]

... This is my greatest fear, that the game is being worked on by people who don't know the details. The Trait Trees and Threat mechanics came because no one was left who understood how it all worked and it's place within the context of the raid mechanics. As new content is added at an alarming rate these days is there a disregard of the engine's ability to process it because there's no one left who understands the limitations.

That's the sad truth.

I think the better solution is to have Turbine employees log into the moors, as they have been invited to several times over, experience the problems first hand and write their own bug reports. They know what info they're looking for in the bug reports, so theirs should be the most informative.

They can do this from friends' or family members' machines to get a variety of hardware/software in the mix too.

Getting insight into the moors' problems should give insight into the problems people experience in other areas too.

Make it an internal team v. team competition to write the most bug reports, and make it a focused effort to understand and fix the problems that those bug reports reveal.

Get the artists and the store folks in on it too, make it a "war room" type situation and commit to staying with the effort until the crisis is over.

Because make no mistake, this *is* a crisis. Fight for your product, dammit, don't just let it fade away in a sea of apathy and bad feelings.

This is a great idea, but for whatever reason, the Turbine employees find every conceivable excuse to not actually play their own game. At least not on a public server that would allow them to experience the game the way ordinary players do (assuming they're not completely BSing us and really have "run through the game").

This shouldn't be lag related problem, you could have seen this happening from time to time over the years.

The point being, this is an obvious bug that has existed for many years... Yet no fix has ever been made.

[Macdui]

That is funny ...btw Elves looks pretty in any light ( according to them )

The 'real' Breaking of the Fellowship ....you forgot to add the hobbits though

The hobbits ditched this fellow when the skirmish loot rules go broke and a ninja call Boromir tried to swindle them. He was taken care of:

[Mar-Evayave]

This shouldn't be lag related problem, you could have seen this happening from time to time over the years.

Yeah, that's happened many times over the years. It's pretty hilarious so long as the other side isn't around. If you are the side unfortunate enough to be sent to the rez circle, the other size can just tag you from a distance and let the one-shotters get you (because even if they seem like they have their hands full, they have no problem throwing random attacks at the players from time to time).

[jfdiogddsfsd]

So after an insane evening of lag in the Ettenmoors on Evernight , have Turbine now got enough bug reports to diagnose the problem?

[BBChild]

...You can tell you doctor over the phone your symptoms, but they still need to see you in person to diagnose the disease because there is other data they can only get in that way...

There would be a hell of a lot of dead people if doctors operated the same way Turbine does. Just saying.

[Snowlock]

Don't you say "this is a whole new team" blah blah blah line of bs again, Frelorn. They're just like the all the others. Arrogant down-speaking Titanic Captains yelling to their passengers that there was no iceberg, but it was the passgeners own fault the ship was sinking. Nothing at all new about this.

[Gutterat]

Yeah, that's happened many times over the years. It's pretty hilarious so long as the other side isn't around. If you are the side unfortunate enough to be sent to the rez circle, the other size can just tag you from a distance and let the one-shotters get you (because even if they seem like they have their hands full, they have no problem throwing random attacks at the players from time to time).

That's what made it so funny, I was there for ages. I was jumping up and down, waving at the creeps. They couldn't tag me because nobody could target....

[LagunaD2]

Let's go to the Ettenmoors for a LotRO client Live Stream of some very exciting news:



Update: due to unfortunate technical difficulties, many "outliers" ... er, "players" are reporting that the Live Stream from the Ettenmoors appears to be a single, frozen, still image. Although this can only be due to a problem with your computer or ISP, you are all encouraged to submit detailed bug reports!