what is....

the little colored dot in the lower right corner for?

thats your ping

lol, ok, you're dealing with an old guy here who has been using puters for many years but has no techno knowledge at all. what's "my ping", and what does it mean to me?

Your ping is how long its taking your computer to talk to anets server

the smaller the ping the better.

the little dot also shows your framerate, the higher your framerate the better.

If you hover your mouse on the dot the popup shows the info.

Yea u want ur ping around the 50/30 mark

and the higher the FPS frames per second means ur getting that ammount of images per second. at about 20 u want to lower some settings cus 20 is when it starts to graphic lagg.

i got 80FPS which is average.

hope that exsplains it.

The small dot is your computers ping in GuildWars.

If the dot is...
- Green then your good.
- Orange then it's ok, but you may experience almost no lag/little lag.
- Red then your in for some serious lag spikes.

ok, thanks. this is making some sense, but what I don't get is the game ran great for 2+ years. then I started having some issues. the last couple of nights I've been playing pvp(Fort Asp) and the lag has been so bad as to make it impossible to play. It also seems to be worse when I play with real people, as opposed to using just heroes/henchies.

LukeD, you suggested lowering some setting. suggestions?

yea post processing will lower your FPS and anti alaising.

if u want even lower turn shadows and wold reflections off.

if u want lower its the resolution

ur have to find the balance m8


thats if ur getting a low FPS but if its not graphix lagg then its ur internet provider then u need to contact them if its a problem with them.

+

another possiblitity i had this problem i ran BF2 for about 2years then it just went really bad FPS u might need to total wipe ur Pc or give it a good clean get rid of unused programs, if u wipe ur PC back all ur files onto somthing good like a storage device or somthing and reinstall everything on ur PC i know alot of gamers do this once a month or every few months just cus u get optimise performance and then theres nothing clogging up ur pc.

an interesting note on the Frames Per Second - if you have your settings to automatically refresh at the rate of your monitor than it will never go above whatever the default rate is (I believe 60 is pretty normal for most monitors), so even if you want a higher FPS (and there is no real need for more than that) you most likely will have to change that setting.

PING is primarily related to your connection and server and sadly there is'nt a whole lot you can do about it, other than changing providers or moving residence. :/

Sometimes the coloured dot has a thunder shape in it.. What does this mean? :S

It's downloading data to be added to your .dat file.

Lowered all the settings.
FPS is ranging 3-12.
Average ping is high 100's to low 200's.


Guess I'm screwed. Thanks for the effort.

Your ping is fine, you fps on the other hand is not. You said the game ran ok for 2 years, right? What is the pc spec? Then we can go from there.

Ping - the time it takes for a signal to get to a server and back. In an online game, this usually involves the time between when you send your packet of info about your movement/action and when the server sends back it's info about the movement/action of the server including your new info. (The server can be sending you updates in between, which is why there is a "lag" between when you do something and you see the result.)

FPS is the Frames Per Second - it can involve 2 related events. FPS is normally the number of times per second that your display updates, which, in the case of most LCD displays is 60 (Hz). Within the a game or other application it can mean how often the game sends you updates of movement/action.

In a game like GW, the fps and ping are interelated. The ping - how long it takes for a signal to get back & forth from the client (you) to the server can affect how many times per second you get an update (FPS). The ping can be affected by many things, but is most often a function of internet routing. The FPS can be affected by your graphics settings, the ping, and the load on the server.

So, if GW was working fine, something could have changed on your end, such has your video card overheating or dying, or you have some problem with your network/internet connection. Or something could be causing a problem on the particular route your signal takes to get to ANet. And/or ANet could be experiencing too high a load on it's servers or cutting back on resources to save some money, or whatever.

If your internet and other games work normally and you don't see any signs of overheating/failure of components, then it's probably network/internet related.

Chef - head on over to Technician's Corner and we will see if we can help you get some life out of that PC

Ok and there you have it.

Hehe Snog, Rah sent you guys out to drum up business for tech?

closed