Do not play this game due to excessive lag

[Palanthas]

++++++++++++++1111

PPL, seriously, stop making this non sense discussions (you will never guess the actual source of it anyway). We have a problem - LAG. We don't care what classes cause it, we don't care what the source of it. We just wanna play PLAYABLE game for which we pay our money.
Its a turbine's problem to fix it. How they do it, we don't care much as well.

There are enough topics on that, enough assumptions/suggestions. Time to make conclusions for Turbine Inc.

-1

Actually just calling it "lag" doesn't help anyone. There's client-side lag and server-side lag. Client-side, low frame rate due to a poorly configured PC, or a high ping, or packet loss due to your connection, is not Turbine's problem.

Server-side issues such as reduced awareness or mobs not aware of you in the game world are due to high populations and the saturation of server resources. That's why Brandywine players are suffering and Eldar players aren't.

Lumping in client-side issues and calling everything "lag" doesn't help Turbine identify and fix the problem.

And I'm definitely qualified to talk about it.

[Leopoldio]

-1

Actually just calling it "lag" doesn't help anyone. There's client-side lag and server-side lag. Client-side, low frame rate due to a poorly configured PC, or a high ping, or packet loss due to your connection, is not Turbine's problem.

Server-side issues such as reduced awareness or mobs not aware of you in the game world are due to high populations and the saturation of server resources. That's why Brandywine players are suffering and Eldar players aren't.

Lumping in client-side issues and calling everything "lag" doesn't help Turbine identify and fix the problem.

And I'm definitely qualified to talk about it.

Ty captain obvious. No1 eva knew about server/client side lags. Just read 1000 topics about that issue and u'll find all possible reasons and solutions for this problem. No need to repeat what have been discussed already. We complain and QQ only about the server side lag, poor coding, which is the real issue due to code which was written 8 years ago. And in fact the are no hidden reasons behind it, no class issues. Its only source code. Qualified...OFCS

[Calta]

-1

Actually just calling it "lag" doesn't help anyone. There's client-side lag and server-side lag. Client-side, low frame rate due to a poorly configured PC, or a high ping, or packet loss due to your connection, is not Turbine's problem.

Server-side issues such as reduced awareness or mobs not aware of you in the game world are due to high populations and the saturation of server resources. That's why Brandywine players are suffering and Eldar players aren't.

Lumping in client-side issues and calling everything "lag" doesn't help Turbine identify and fix the problem.

And I'm definitely qualified to talk about it.

Very sensible.

My problem is this: I am in an instance. My ping is the same as the previous time I did the instance the day before. I am running on low graphics. My traceroute is the same-down to exactly the same hops. My frame rate is the same. My graphics card is the same. My ssd is the same. Yesterday even my group was the same. But one day/hour I have few issues, the next I get marching ants, lose target, buffs debuffs flicker, npcs disappear and reappear on top of me, etc etc..

It always improves after lots of 'fix the lag' complaints,-as it does for Leixy, and as it did recently. So it appears to us something else is wrong at their end

Then it steadily worsens until I am hitching and sticking in empty zones. This happens on Landroval Laurelin and even Silverlode.

So people speculate: either the data centre can't cope. There is a memory leak in the servers. Or Turbine's ISP chokes the packets, or they do something weird inside their borders where we can't tracert.. Or their servers are old and clunky.

I know networks are complicated beasts and comparing 1000s of PCs and internet service providers means there are a zillion (scientific term) possibilities. But you can see the reason people get frustrated and simply want it fixed. NOW! Specially when it has been sorted a few times in the past after many complaining threads and then downtime for maintenance.

[CookieArtisan]

And I play on wifi, with an old and very outdated, not-built-for-gaming laptop. I am used to lag.

I play on a cabled modem with an ASUS p6X mobo, icore7 prcessor and plenty of RAM. Now, my graphics card is getting very verrrrry old, but overall my equipment is fine. It's my internet connection through my ISP I think I have to blame for lag and disconnections.

[CookieArtisan]

We don't care what classes cause it, we don't care what the source of it. We just wanna play PLAYABLE game for which we pay our money.
Its a turbine's problem to fix it. How they do it, we don't care much as well.

There are enough topics on that, enough assumptions/suggestions. Time to make conclusions for Turbine Inc.

YES, we do care. if your ISP is gating your bandwidth THAT is your problem and not Turbine.

i'm no corporate apologist by any means, but if the problem ain't Turbine, banging on their windows like a buch of zombies isn't going to help.

[Bulbous]

DON'T try to run LOTRO over your 300-baud Vicmodem.

[Hammadryad]

YES, we do care. if your ISP is gating your bandwidth THAT is your problem and not Turbine.

i'm no corporate apologist by any means, but if the problem ain't Turbine, banging on their windows like a buch of zombies isn't going to help.

Yes but when you can play Elder Scrolls, Rift, WoW, Hellgate and Runes of Magic without any lag whatsoever, but get awful lag only when playing Lotro, then that is probably Turbine's fault. If it was not then other games would have lag as well, especially newer more demanding games than Lotro.

[Giliodor]

It's true that sometimes, there is server lag. It is true that this happens quite frequently on high population servers. It is, however, also true, that a lot of people are too quick to blame the game for the lag they're experiencing. Often it's just their PC.
Of course, buffs/debuffs on targets really do make you lag out pretty badly, but when people complain about lag in 6-mans/Dol Amroth (apart from the server lag I mentioned), it's often just their PC.

[infinitewhimsy]

Maybe this example will be useful to someone.

I could be happily riding alongside my group in the Moors, zero lag. But when I select someone, frame drop, if I rapidly cycle through fellow members...it is staggering how far my character falls behind from delay.

[GerkinPickle]

DON'T try to run LOTRO over your 300-baud Vicmodem.

LOL I actually had one of these.

[GerkinPickle]

YES, we do care. if your ISP is gating your bandwidth THAT is your problem and not Turbine.

i'm no corporate apologist by any means, but if the problem ain't Turbine, banging on their windows like a buch of zombies isn't going to help.

Do you really think data throughput is an issue for an online game? The amount data going back and forth isn't that big. Rendering graphics, latency, too many bounce points are all causes for client side lag but the miniscule amount of data compared to something like Netflix is extremely unlikely to be a culprit.

In any case, why are people even arguing about this? The lag people are complaining about is so obviously on Turbine's end I have to question someone's motives for claiming it's not. This lag didn't even exist a few years ago, that's pretty much the only evidence I need. Their game changed, my computer didn't and my ISP didn't.

[Dordain]

A not-insubstantial number of people who post here only do so to either rabidly defend Turbine at every turn or to brush up on their high school debate skills.

[frost702]

A not-insubstantial number of people who post here only do so to either rabidly defend Turbine at every turn or to brush up on their high school debate skills.

I will never understand the people who defend this game.

I get no lag, because I'm playing on a dead server. Thus this thread is irrelevant.

Walking into an empty zone gets you Reduced Awareness? It's clearly your router's fault. Even though you're using Verizon FiOS with 150 mbps up/down.

Trying to PvP makes the game turn into a slideshow? Stop playing on a wooden PC with your gosh darn crossfired liquid cooled Titans in your wooden tower rig. Goddamn peasant.

Brb, gotta go worship Turbine in my private backroom shrine & try to pay my house's rent in Turbine Points.

[Palenen]

The only lag I have experienced was mainly in Bree. Its been some time ago. Bree was always laggy. Then they made layers of Bree. Then we had layers of lag in Bree. Im just recently out of Moria, Have Lorien and Mirkwood then Enedwaith and beyond. I occasionally see people but hardly any lag.

[Mar-Evayave]

I will never understand the people who defend this game.

I get no lag, because I'm playing on a dead server. Thus this thread is irrelevant.

Walking into an empty zone gets you Reduced Awareness? It's clearly your router's fault. Even though you're using Verizon FiOS with 150 mbps up/down.

Trying to PvP makes the game turn into a slideshow? Stop playing on a wooden PC with your gosh darn crossfired liquid cooled Titans in your wooden tower rig. Goddamn peasant.

Brb, gotta go worship Turbine in my private backroom shrine & try to pay my house's rent in Turbine Points.

I'll be quite honest. I play on Riddermark (one of the deadest servers) and I play on Landroval (one of the busiest servers). I seldom notice any more lag on Landroval than I do on Riddermark, when it comes to server lag. Landroval gets to be tricky in the Moors and in high-population towns (like Bree) and during festivals. That's just about the only different.

I was getting reduced awareness in Ered Luin just half an hour ago. Almost no one else around. But despite the Reduced Awareness, I was not experiencing any lag, aside from my own client-side lag due to my computer specs and internet connection.

So saying they don't get lag because they are on a dead server is not a reason to discount their comments. I get no more lag on busy servers than I do on dead servers, except when I'm in crowded areas, and that has as much to do with my client as it does with the Turbine servers.

The times I experience server lag (marching ants around skills, etc) are almost universally always inside the Moors itself. On occasion I notice server lag in the rest of the landscape.

Maybe this example will be useful to someone.

I could be happily riding alongside my group in the Moors, zero lag. But when I select someone, frame drop, if I rapidly cycle through fellow members...it is staggering how far my character falls behind from delay.

Just a note, that is not server-side lag. When your framerate drops, that's your computer. FPS has nothing to do with server lag at all -- it is specially your computer's ability to process data and display it. An example of server-side lag would be like when the game is running smoothly around you, and yet you and everyone around you is frozen in place and your skills won't fire. Even the NPCs won't be moving. Latency (issues with the internet itself, like if the wifi cuts out) does the same thing. But when you FPS drops, it's because your computer is struggling to process data.

THIS is an excellent read on the difference between FPS dropping and server-side lag (or latency). When you click on someone (or cycle through them) you are asking your computer to display their gazillion buffs and debuffs (and in the Moors, we get a LOT) over and over and over. That's why many people go for options in-game such as the one to display only the effects cast by you and only show dispellable effects. But targeting the player directly will still show those effects anyway. That's also why people who struggle with this often target-forward through someone with fewer buffs/debuffs.

[trancejeremy]

DON'T try to run LOTRO over your 300-baud Vicmodem.

The sad thing is, I probably have a worse ping than one of those would have, since I have Hughes.net, and somehow I never experience "lag" in this game, except for rare occasions when I play on Landroval at peak hours, and that's fairly minor. OTOH, no problem at all on Imladris.

I can't play Star Trek Online at all, and SWTOR only works late at night (from 6 pm to 11:30 there's just too much lag, dunno from their server or my ISP, but it literally can take minutes to register a keypress during that time). Yet LOTRO is playable all the time, basically. So I don't think it's on Turbine's end, except for a few overloaded servers because people insist they have to play with as many people as possible.

[swamphobbit]

The answer I would love to see people address, especially folks taking great pains to explain what is wrong with "my PC" OR "our PC's", is how if it is my PC I have no issues with movie streaming, SWTOR, bandwidth "throttling", etc.

Only LOTRO.

Why can I log in to SWTOR, a much more demanding game than LOTRO, and experience zero slideshow effects, reduced latency or random disconnects? I would like somebody to answer that. Hell I'll take speculation at this point. It doesn't make any sense, but I'm willing to listen to somebody try to tell me what for. I might be able to remedy a solution at my end that doesn't involve a poop ton of cash to replace hardware that is quite functional and not outdated. Seriously, it's not like I'm trying to play on Windows XP anymore. Ironically, when I first started playing the game I had a low end machine (for a game of this nature) and the only time I ever experienced lag, really non-functional game inhibiting lag, was the one time I joined a 24 man Helegrod raid. It wasn't long after that I proceeded with my first gaming rig build (Disclosure: LOTRO was my first MMO and I had more than enough machine to meet the minimum requirements, but I realized that I would have to step up to the plate if I wanted to be effective and relevant in this game versus just getting by.)

Recently, and I've posted about this elsewhere, after almost six years of playing this game, I started getting randomly disconnected sometimes as often as 4-6 times in less than an hour. This occurred regularly throughout the day. I'd hold my breath every time I had to swift travel, or go into a building.

A simple change to the UserPreferences.ini file seems to have remedied the problem, an issue that had not been a problem for almost six years.


I have had four major revisions to my hardware since I started playing LOTRO in 2008, two of em were complete from the ground up builds, the other two were upgrades to existing hardware. I'm not going to build ( I don't buy pre-made machines) a new PC every two years just to keep up with this game when I can go to another game that is newer AND more demanding and not ever experience the problems I've experienced over the last several months with this game.

I don't want to call anybody out, especially Turbine. I tire of what appears to be non-action on their part, and I really tire of all of the people on these forums BUT especially in the game using the common refrain that is "it's your PC". A recent community manager was really good at that. I just want this damn problem solved. I can't afford to throw money at hardware that may experience problems in 4-6 months that has nothing to do with my end. I just want to play a game that is reliably stable.

Hasn't been that way lately.

fwiw

[Mar-Evayave]

A simple change to the UserPreferences.ini file seems to have remedied the problem, an issue that had not been a problem for almost six years.

What did you change? If it has fixed the problem for you, it might be worth a try for others. Sometimes there are hidden options in the preferences file that aren't displayed in the in-game options.

[swamphobbit]

What did you change? If it has fixed the problem for you, it might be worth a try for others. Sometimes there are hidden options in the preferences file that aren't displayed in the in-game options.

Good morning Mar. I submitted several bug reports and one of the suggestions was to modify the following in the LOTRO .ini file

[Net]
BindInterface=
ComputeUniquePort=True
ConnectionSpeed=0.00
UserSpecifiedPort=9000


I changed that last line in that section of that file from 0 to 9000. AFAIK, it had been set to 0 since day one back in late 2008. Additionally, they recommended that if I still continued to experience the issue to go back in and modify sequentially up. The range is 9000-9010. It should be noted that if one modifies this file, they may also want to go into their Firewall and add a permission to allow that range of ports. I have not had to do that to this point and it has been a week with no "Connection to the server has been lost" events.

Most systems connecting to this game are probably Windows platforms so Notepad should be all one needs to apply this remedy.

Some additional information from my end.

As a rule my latency numbers range from the mid to high 50's to the low to mid 60's, with no Loss. Comcast is my ISP, and I have 50 mbps service. I'm running my gaming rig via hard line, no wireless. Most wireless routers do not add up to the advertised speeds, but this is across the spectrum. I prefer using a hard line for gaming.

Complaining about lag was always a fun thing to do over Vent when I was in my raiding kin (especially when I was primary healer ;D ). Some people never complained about it, which means one of two things: it wasn't worth the trouble or they were not experiencing it. The problem really began to manifest itself after RoI was released, specifically in the ToO raid cluster.

When Rohan hit, it just got nasty. We more or less gave up after getting most of the instance cluster deeds finished.

I have characters on two servers: Brandywine and Meneldor. Grouping for TC dailies on both servers is problematic, with Brandywine being the hands down winner in frustration and annoyance

When I group I have to change my overall graphic settings to Low or Very Low. Normally, I run High or Ultra High, when in non-group environments. I have an AMD HD 6870 video card and have been thinking about upgrading but the cash isn't really there right now for that.

FWIW, my Windows experience "rating" is 7.3 overall

Processor - 7.3
Memory - 7.3
Graphics - 7.7
Gaming graphics - 7.7
Primary hard disks - 7.9

I'm running the machine with an SSD drive as the booter. The game is on another SSD drive. Booter is a Crucial, game is Intel. OS is Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, utilizing 8 gig of ram. This may have changed, but I remember reading (and noticing) that Windows XP had a RAM sweet spot, usually around 3 gig of installed memory. Not sure what that would be for a 64 bit Windows 7 rig, or if it would even apply. In the way of an explanation for others, a sweet spot is that point where your machine runs most efficiently as it is constructed with it's existing hardware. Trying to improve it will yield diminishing, if any, returns. Other than on your wallet, that is. I like to refer to it as the 80-20 rule vis-a-vis performance.

As you can see, I have not exactly been miserly with hardware. And the rule of thumb is that there is always better hardware. In the IT environment, hardware becomes a dinosaur much faster than the shelf life of things non-IT. That is just another rule of thumb that is not of my making, it just is :P

I hope this helps somebody. I have no doubt that there are hardware "issues" across the board on the client side. Having said that, I noticed an uptick in complaints in my kin AND in world chat and on the forums after Rohan hit the streets. That can't be a coincidence, although in the interest of fairness I was playing primarily on Brandywine. Meneldor is better, performance-wise, but only marginally so....

[Frelorn]

Thanks everyone for the reports. We do know that some players are having issues with "lag" and reduced performance. Is every report of it because of our servers? No, but there are surely things we can and will be doing to improve performance. Things such as upgrades to our environments to improve playability and getting more information from players as to when and where they are seeing performance issues. Add in that almost no two PC's are exactly the same and that one minor thing could mean the difference between a great or a poor experience, makes tracking down and resolving issues like this a non-trivial thing.

The team is working to try and give everyone the best gameplay experience as possible and will continue to do so. In the meantime we ask that folks continue to let us know as much info as they can via bug reports when they run into performance issues. The more information we have to work with, the more likely we can track down and resolve things.

[Alakin93]

Thanks everyone for the reports. We do know that some players are having issues with "lag" and reduced performance. Is every report of it because of our servers? No, but there are surely things we can and will be doing to improve performance. Things such as upgrades to our environments to improve playability and getting more information from players as to when and where they are seeing performance issues. Add in that almost no two PC's are exactly the same and that one minor thing could mean the difference between a great or a poor experience, makes tracking down and resolving issues like this a non-trivial thing.

The team is working to try and give everyone the best gameplay experience as possible and will continue to do so. In the meantime we ask that folks continue to let us know as much info as they can via bug reports when they run into performance issues. The more information we have to work with, the more likely we can track down and resolve things.

Its only serverside problem. Me and friends have very strong PC and we have lag that we cant play on snowbourn, its an unplayable thing for what we play, 20 secs for as kill to go off in pvP. Face it and I can't send report every 5 misn because I can't use anything. It's a problem you should fix for what we pay...VIP's and not. No excuses about that! No one cares of new pets festivals bla bla bla if we can't play anything on a decent populated server!!

[Pereg]

I will throw in my two cents:

- I play multiple online games. Lotro is the only one that lags
- Lag, for me, seems to be freep related. I only play creep and I can run around with a bunch of creeps or solo lag-free, but as soon as there are freeps nearby the reduced awareness alert pops up and I start getting heavy lag.
- It seems like the more buffs the freep I am encountering has the worse the lag is

[Mar-Evayave]

Good morning Mar. I submitted several bug reports and one of the suggestions was to modify the following in the LOTRO .ini file

[Net]
BindInterface=
ComputeUniquePort=True
ConnectionSpeed=0.00
UserSpecifiedPort=9000

[...replying to all, just figured I'd shorten this part to save space...]

Thanks! I just looked in my UserPreferences file and it says that the UserSpecifiedPort is set to 0 as well. I usually only get the "connection lost" error when I'm doing too much on my end (and usually only when loading into a character), but I do crash a lot, really randomly. If I'm in a quiet area, I don't crash at all, but being in the Moors or high level areas for just an hour or so will cause me to crash, and I don't get any errors at all when it happens (in fact, when I look in my Windows Event Viewer, Windows itself doesn't think I crashed at all). :/ I don't think the internet itself is the culprit for me, but if you have any suggestions to stop from crashing all the time, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for the heads-up, Frelorn! I've more or less resigned myself to crashing a lot, because buying a new computer is simply not in my budget right now, but I sure wish there was something that could be done to the game itself so that my computer wouldn't get so taxed out. It's disappointing that the high level areas (which are so pretty) are so very much more demanding on my machine than the low level areas.

[infinitewhimsy]

Just a note, that is not server-side lag. When your framerate drops, that's your computer. FPS has nothing to do with server lag at all -- it is specially your computer's ability to process data and display it. An example of server-side lag would be like when the game is running smoothly around you, and yet you and everyone around you is frozen in place and your skills won't fire. Even the NPCs won't be moving. Latency (issues with the internet itself, like if the wifi cuts out) does the same thing. But when you FPS drops, it's because your computer is struggling to process data.

THIS is an excellent read on the difference between FPS dropping and server-side lag (or latency). When you click on someone (or cycle through them) you are asking your computer to display their gazillion buffs and debuffs (and in the Moors, we get a LOT) over and over and over. That's why many people go for options in-game such as the one to display only the effects cast by you and only show dispellable effects. But targeting the player directly will still show those effects anyway. That's also why people who struggle with this often target-forward through someone with fewer buffs/debuffs.

An inauspicious choice of words then on my part. Frame drops...lag...they are all effectively the same thing to me. When this occurs, it will also occur to everyone else around. When this sort of lag is a problem (targetting a Freep to kill with Captain buffs) it is a problem for every single person in the group. It lags even when you keep them selected. It seems likely that it's not on the player's end.

[cdq1958]

Here is my [Net]
BindInterface=
ComputeUniquePort=False
ConnectionSpeed=5000.00
UserSpecifiedPort=0

It is rare for me to 'lag' unless there is a network issue for me. I am on a weak machine and it chokes easily [I know how to bring any computer to its knees, if I want to]. Lag is multifactorial. Even when it is 'server side' that does not preclude the 'client side' and more likely network traffic shaping or routing from contributing to it. In a raid situation, one player having uplink or synchronization issues can lag the whole group. Oh, other games have more lag for me than LoTRO, of which SWTOR is the worst. I'd like the Turbine bashers to explain that. :P