Lag pwnd WoW

WinnTech

After Warhammer, yes I left Warhammer; I tried pvp, got bored. If a game is all about war and you get bored, well, it’s time to go. But I digress, this is not about Warhammer, this is about a well known enemy of World of Warcraft, Lag.

I started WoW in 2005 around November. The game was and still is entertaining, it is a good game to relax to, not too serious not too laid back. But, with every patch that they release, good old relaxing WoW takes, to steal lyrics from a song (btw if you know it then you are getting old like I am), two steps forward and two steps back.

Now (fast forward to 2007), I am very critical of my system and performance. I installed a third video card (I am running SLI w/2 8600s) and connected another monitor to my system. Overkill, perhaps, but I needed to know it was not my machine. Next, I installed a bandwidth monitor along with CPUZ and GPUZ running for both 8600s. I could see usage, heat and all types of specs along with network usage. The result of all this was that it was not me or my system.

I was not really relieved, if it was my system, a few upgrades and I would be ok. If it is not my system, then I have to wait on Blizzard. I was very hopeful years ago. As the game grew and we got to pre-BC, WoW had its moments, such as nearly any holiday, in particular, Christmas and Halloween. It was not that bad, it was tolerable. Well, with a few exceptions, mainly Ironforge, before I upped my RAM to 2 GB I would run through Ironforge using the Portal of Knowledge trick from Everquest, look down and keep your map open. Then BC came, the game would never be the same.

With BC came the Outlands and all the mismatched gear levels and the abandonment of EPL and WPL (was never a Sith fan). But with Outlands came a darker chapter amid all the failed enhancements, lag, lots and lots of lag. With BC came back those who had abandoned the game to test its new mettle, in came the new gamers and more banter about “Chuck Norris”, and in came Shatt the new Portal of Knowledge (a central location with portals to different locations. Yes, someone liked the PoK idea). Then again, how else would they have done travel? Wish there was a portal back though.

Anyhow, BC and its obvious flaws and more redirection and misdirection becoming more and more evident Lag took to being the most evil of the hidden Blizzard sins that appeared. Bugs, which tend to be high on every list of complaints, on mine, dropped to third. Blizzard fixes bugs; Blizzard can make a great game. Blizzard can mess up time to time. What Blizzard cannot seem to figure out is how to actually fix lag.

Now that the lag was a major issue, one would think, Blizz will fix this before any new patches. Well, they try and they fail. The game has remained “laggy” more than most MMOs I have tried. I hear excuses such as, “They have the highest population of gamers” what this actually means is, they have millions of people paying to play WoW. Population = money which should = funds to maintain and upgrade servers and theoretical and actual server capacities and capabilities would consequently rise as well. This is not the actuality, right now it appears to be a dream. We know they are working on it, but, with all the issues one should ask “are they doing enough?”

Then we get hopeful, a new patch and Halloween around the corner, just what the doctor ordered? Wrong again, with the patch to prep for WotLK comes even more lag. Impossible? No, not apparently. Blizz even upped the ante by announcing a Zombie infestation. Ok, stop, did they fix lag, no, but they created more lag by creating a zombie infestation that is highly contagious (get hit and you now are on a countdown till zombification (yes, I made that word up). When you become a zombie, you need brains and you are instantly flagged for PVP and everyone attacks (guards included) and kills you. You have to have the disease cleared before the timer goes off. Sound annoying? It is very. Now, couple that with a level 70 that decides to walk through Goldshire and turn into a zombie and you have a slaughterhouse. The Zombie can take out most of the small town. So, more people run to save the town, guess what you have now, yes, Lag. Why would Blizzard continue to cause lag when they cannot fix it?

I Started a new hunter (was playing my rogue Vvlad) since I got tired of the level 70 drama which the chant is “Raid Raid Raid” as they swoop towards Kara and getting to level 10, while it was not hard, was fairly interesting due to lag. I could fire five shots into an enemy before they even would turn around and glare at me prior to their charge. After level 10, I got my pet, Bjarn (a semi elite bear) at level 12 and continued to struggle forward. The pain of being a hunter hit by lag is worse than most classes. I send the bear in to attack and he takes a country stroll to the target, stops, looks, walks a little more towards it then waits. I get tired of this so I pop off a Concussive and an Arcane shot which both take 2/3s of a second to fire off, the mob turns after the third shot and begins to run to me. When the mob got halfway, he turns back around and runs back to Bjarn and starts attacking; swings once, then dies.

Lag, a never ending battle still rages on, beyond my battles, beyond the zombie infestation, and beyond BC and WotLK. World of Warcraft may have some great designers and think tanks behind 9/10ths of the game. But where it matters now, when WotLK comes out and the masses flock again to WoW, Blizzard has failed to step up to the plate and deliver. They have not learned from past experiences, they have not revamped the servers or upgraded them to current load capacities and needs of the users. They have failed on every try to present the gamers of their community a smooth and lag-less launch on every major patch.

Although the game World of Warcraft may receive one of my highest power rankings of 9/10, the networking side gets a 4/10, so overall, the game returns to an 8/10. Let’s just hope that the actual implementation of WotLK doesn’t pull a BC. At least Fallout 3 won’t have lag *grins*.

 

Recant

Turn off SLI, WoW doesn't gain any performance benefit, and probably receives a degredation - it did for me in my old setup anyways.  The 8600s are budget cards, they aren't very good all, even in SLI.

I used to have 2x 7800GTX in SLI, and to be honest, apart from a handful of games, it's better to simply save your money and get a better card.  I Googled your card model number and found the following review on Techspot.com

We will say it upfront, we are not impressed with the new GeForce 8600 series and while admittedly expectations were set high, it is hard to be pleased with the performance of these new graphics cards. This is not to say the new 8600 GTS and GT graphics cards are pathetic and should be avoided like the plague. Realistically speaking, these are good products despite of being disappointing considering what they could have been.

I'm really surprised that you think that WoW is a laggy game because it's probably the smoothest online game I've ever played, this includes games such as EQ, EVE, LOTRO, EVE... and even games like Quake and Counterstrike.

I honestly think you have problems of your own, something wrong with your setup.

WinnTech

The 8600 from XFX are pretty decent cards, fast albiet lacking in at 256 per card. The clock and the real-time performance when using the cards in SLI have actually been beneficial in most games played in the right configuration.

During the week long test that I put them under while playing WoW I receive, honestly, not enough of a boost from running in SLI to reflect the purchase, but it was a miniscule bonus to FPS typically boosting FPS by 5~10. I have had better success in other games (Oblivion, Medal of Honor, Warhammer Online) with the correct configuration.

Honestly I purchased two because one was paid in full while the other was free. Can't say it was a bad option.

Now, the game, no, I trust my tests. WoW has proven itself to be a lag filled game. On Alleria and Agg, they have shown that they have consistantly caused lag by either ignoring the load on the server and proceeding with events andor focusing on the next new patch.

On the topic of the 8600

The XFX 8600 GTS XXX performed much better than its DirectX 9 mainstream competitors in all benchmarks across the board (N.B.: Although prices of the DirectX 9 video cards are closer to entry level at this time, when they were released into the mainstream market, the prices on these cards were similar in price to the 8600 GTS). Being a 256Mb 128-bit video card with nVidias new 128-bit floating point High Dynamic Range, that includes support for anti-aliasing, the 8600 GTS in lower resolutions (where a CPU can aid a video card) produced some very close results to the two higher-end video cards, even overtaking the 8800GTS XXX and Sapphire HD 2900 XT in two benchmarks and equaling them in one. This is a plus to those who choose to game in resolutions under 1280x1024.

That is from the Overclocker's Club (http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/xfx_8600gtsx3/12.htm)

For lag, if it was only me and my system, then there would be only myself complaining. This is not so.

Since launch, World of Warcraft has faced a number of technical problems. In September 2005, Blizzard gave all European players two free days of play as compensation for repeated network failures. During the early days of World of Warcraft's U.S. release Blizzard also gave out free days to compensate players for days lost due to problems on their end.

Also there are numerous sites that complain about lag as well a few include

http://www.wowgold.hk/wowgold/index.php/world-of-warcraft-lag-issues.html

http://games.helpero.com/problems/game/Why-do-I-have-lag-in-World-of-Warcraft_213.html

Even a petition site for lag

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/taf/336340990

I am quite sure that if you query Lag in WoW's support forums, there will be quite a few hits.

Perhaps they (Blizz) are too busy keeping up to fix the issues. Who knows, what is fact, is Lag.

 

Recant

I think all MMORPGs have had to recompense players for downtime, some don't even bother.  But I dispute your suggestion that WoW is a 'lag filled game'.

I used to be a really hardcore FPS player, very competitive.  I used to spend hours tweaking my .cfg file to squeeze a couple of extra FPS,  I would change all kind of bios and Windows registry settings to shave just a couple of ms off my ping time.   Basically, I am really sensitive to lag.

Some players can play a game at 15ps and think it's working for them, not me, if I'm not getting a constant 60fps the game just feels wrong.  (FPS is an average, and a game running above the human perceptible FPS limits can still drop a few frames every few MS making them perceptible to the human eye)

Anyway I'm getting off topic.  WoW is an extremely smooth, extremely lossy-network tolerant game.  The fact that the game has so many instant-cast spells and abilities, is a testament to the good network code of this game.

I cannot quite determine whether the 'lag' you are having is graphics lag, or network latency, but I assure you, these are not problems with the game at all.   The are solely your own problems, and it seems you've been so unlucky (perhaps you live in a really shitty area for broadband) that you think it's the game.

Even haters of WoW accept that it's one of the best polished games out there, they turn their criticisms to the art-style or the accessibility of it, because they know it's really tightly coded and optimized online game.

MMORPGs are games that are entirely dependant on the Internet.   The internet is a series of tubes, sometimes those tubes can get blocked or something

tazarconan

Why should bliz work harder to improve issues like lagg or others? they knwo they have the best mmorpg and they are not hasty to improve things.

That wouldnt be so ofc  if AOC ,WAR ,and many many others instead of boring craps ,unfinished products, would be intresting and antagonistic games equal to wow or better..

Competition always is on the players side when it is on ahigh lvl ,caus esimply then all companies would bust their butts to improve as faster and betetr their products and not take their time slowly like bliz does due to the lack of serious competition.

 

MyPreciousss

Disconnections, server reboots and lag are especially an issue recently due to "better" graphics (you'll get 3 pixels instead of 2 to draw a tree), dynamic shadows (end 2008 was about time they learned that), more naive players returning after the update or expecting the expansion. Player statistics was creating lag too, Bliztard will suppress it soon. It still sucks that they take zillions of months to make these things, test them, then realize it creates lag and disconnections after release, then suppress them... Bliztard's "polished" games 

coffee

WoW is laggy thats not my experience and ive been playing almost 4 years, the smothest MMO i have played, one of the reason I still play it.

The last patch did not go to well, mostly due to the huge number of people returning to WoW prior to wraths launch, queues on grimbatol at peek went from <100 pre 3.0.2 to over 1000.  And I guess the new achievement system putting load on the servers too. Right in game its smooth as its ever been.

In WoW my character does not warp around the game field, neither do other players.. something that has turned me off GW,EQ2 and WAR.

^^ Thats all just my experience ofc.

Loke666

Originally posted by WinnTech


The 8600 from XFX are pretty decent cards, fast albiet lacking in at 256 per card. The clock and the real-time performance when using the cards in SLI have actually been beneficial in most games played in the right configuration.

 

Sorry, they might have been ok budget choice 2006 but not anymore.

www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Sum-of-FPS-Benchmarks-Totals,795.html

Check the fps statistic, it is really time to upgrade. If you can find a 9800 cheap then it's a good alternative otherwise I would go for a GTX 260 or a GTX 280. Radeon 4870 is also a good alternativ even though radeon card do need a litle tuning to perform thier best. A GFX card should be uppgraded at least every second year if you plan to play newer games at high settings. I run a GTX 280 myself now, had 2 8800 GTS card before but they performed poorly in many games because few if any MMOs support SLI.

Here is another thing if you can't afford a uppgrade and your card have a fan: www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/141/1 It is really not a great long time solution since it has happened a lot with gfx cards the last few years but it should be enough to help against the worst lagg in wow.

But it is true, Wow engine do have a few issues that gives some lagg, not as much as you seems to have however.