Guild Wars Ping and Traffic Shaping

tried to get one more last post in on the subject so anyways here goes..... you guys really gotta stop hating on me and actually step back and think about what guildwars used to be like. Don't you guys remember them 50 ping days that were even stable to boot. I sure do and i want them back. It's possible if Anet were to fix whatever needs to be fixed to give us low and stable ping again.

I find it sad that you guys don't care about the poor quality of this games network procedures.

The issue is the poor connections and fluctuating pings. Wether or not its 100% traffic shaping related or not is unclear however right now all fingers point at anet.
Blaming anet for poor latency guildwars is easy. After all it's their game right so if other game companies can make it work why can't they? It's not like im switching isp every time i fire up guildwars just so i can enjoy crappy ping and then switching back for better isp for my other games for very low ping. No im afraid its the same isp and only 1 game causing it. Even if isp is the issue , i think its up to anet to still make it work the way it should.
What i mean is ok look at this scenerio here we got our isp's saying look bud,(bud being the game company) we are going to start throttling some ports to save some bandwith for other people because we got too many people running servers and downloading 24/7 out of their homes. Game company is like ok so traffic shaping eh? ok hmmm, neat. Isp says ok sow now every knows. Now if i were Bud i'd check my stuff and make sure its not going to hinder anyone in any way, not even 1 person. I'd ensure my game was providing the best performance over the net possible. I mean, now that i know there are new rules in play by some peoples isp and all, i should double check to see its still running the same and if not i should fix it. Whatever i have to do i should fix it.
Now that would be my attitude as a game company. Sadly this is not anets view. They just want us to keep shopping around on isp's they are too stubborn to try and fix the issue.


I'm sorry if i'm the only one who gets annoyed when playing high end pvp in heroes ascent and i miss a rupt and then look up and see that the reason was another ping fluctuation that put me over 300 or something. Or you miss a weapon switch in time, or you kd late in a chain because the timing was off,or you get rubberbanded or lots of other things. Every once in awhile ill see 78 ping but not for very long. Hell even if it would stay 200 witch is still rediculously high for a 12mbs fibre dls line but i could live with that. I guess if all i did when i log into guildwars was chat or kill a few monsters i wouldnt care so much wich is probably why this issue hasn't been raised as much because timing isn't so crucial there. Even though it is but alot of pvers are more casual and could care less i think.

Anet in the end IS the one responsible for this because they are choosing not to fix their network code. And they need to fix it and we need to get more people to complain about it to them and maybe then maybe they will actually listen. We will never get better ping in guildwars when one person tries to speak out and the rest of the community just craps on him, like really??

I lol'd cause I still have good pings considering the servers a country away xD

Your thread was not closed for "spreading the word."

It was closed because it was a violation of the forum rules. If you'd like to discuss this further, we will do so in private.

Understood?

Hmm I live in Europe and play mostly on US servers. Sure sometimes my ping gets a bit higher. But it was only ever unplayable for me during the last WiK quest. And since I wasnt the only one having that problem, that most likely had nothing to do with my connection.

Damn, I'm getting random 007 from time to time. It just errored right after my fourth RA battle. ;/

I would assume they are still doing work and just got the servers back up and are still messing with shit...but wanted to get it up asap...

ok to the mod my bad then im sorry , also if this is not in the correct forum please move it to the correct one. It's just that i want alot of people to be aware. And i figured this forum is read by many.

I'm glad you are happy with your ping aspi but sadly i am not. I have the feeling alot of you are not and wish it could be better. Like it used to be. I just think that if everyone who had high and fluctuating pings in this game ( and do not have problems in surfing,downloading or playing other online games(example 20 ping in 5 other games online and 200-350 ping in guildwars)) should file support tickets with anet and then run all the tests they want and answer their questions like i did. And in the end when they are unable to resolve the problem well... i don't know but atleast then it will be one more. And maybe then somebody there will say hey man look, we are really getting alot of people unhappy here maybe its time we finally fix this you think?

Eu here, playin` on us servers, no errors till now so far, green ping.

Any way to switch districts before logging in?

I'm stuck with 040s for all the characters in GH.

So you can login but DC everytime you choose a char? And all chars are in your GH? Maybe delete a PVP only char that has nothing on it and make a new that get into the GTOB

If you can't login then it has nothing to do in wich district your chars are.

@ Topic poster. You arguments are based on crap and fictional BS. You seem to have a personal hate against NCSoft and it would be best to deal that with them.

If you don't want us to hate you then don't repost after a admin closes a threat and don't make bad assumptions. Your first words Everything was better back in the day are just to lame

keep logging into the char..I think if you keep doing it it relises somethings RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up and moves you to the most recent town

My main accound is in US guild , and I`ve had no problems . 2nd account is in Eu guild and I can`t hit GH , 007 and 040 ftw. Can just select the char, double click and getting instant error.

It seems that they have almost finished US servers and still have to work to EU ones

I can reach the Character Selection Screen. All of my characters are parked in the guild hall. Whichever I pick, the game is stuck at 0% loading, and then I get 040 after a couple of mins.

Also tried logging in from a UMTS connection, same problem.

Dunno, my secondary account can login without a problem, and so do a lot of my guildies and allies.

I have no more character slots available, nor a PvP slot to spare.

I was about to purchase a new slot just for that, talk about addiction...

EDIT - @ moderators: could you please split those unrelated posts into a new topic? Thanks in advance.

First: For the next 11 hours, we are still inside the pre-stated "game may be down" window. Complaining about anything happening in that window just makes you look like a crybaby.

Secondly (in response to your post in the other thread): There are lots of "facts" that you can collect rather than spewing this crap. When you get a bad ping, get a traceroute to the server's IP address as a first step. Go from there. Google Is Your Friend. Also in response, no, it doesn't affect me. 90% of the time, my latency fine.

Third: When you come out to "spread the word" with nothing but poorly-presented anecotes (it can't even be called "anecdotal evidence") and calling for people to "leave for a game that can [fix a problem you haven't even proven existed]", you just look like an ignorant rebel without a clue.

Finally: The english language has contacted the UN. It surrenders and asks that you please stop torturing it.

I`ve just logged in!

LE: Was running in circles for 1 minute in GH and got error again

Same. Connected to 64.25.39.54.

Last Ping: 78ms (Green)
Avg ping: 96ms (Green)

everybody keeps d/c'ing here.
Euro


edit:
tried gvg, fuse and mesmer didnt load in, opposite team also had non loaders.

I'd like to get the names of some of those companies that have F2P games with a retail value of over $10. GW doesn't have the cash influx or the large dev group it did a few years ago, so why do you expect the same quality of gameplay?

I have tracerouted the addresses and also ran ping plotter for guildwars tyvm. The problem does exist for many just because it doesn't for you doesn't give you right to bash me or anyone who does. For anyone with good stable pings and by good and stable i mean in the green and not fluctuating orange (250+) every 10 seconds then that is good for you also. But for others that have really high speed connections that suffer from latency and connection issues with this game only then YES, it is a real problem. But for anyone to try and make me look like an idiot when i try and bring a real issue to the table is the real idiot. You sir are the one without a clue. Like why are you trying to relate this to the server move anyways. The issue has been around for months , long before any talk of server shutdown and relocation. Lol you call me a crybaby for that when you don't even know what you are talking about. So please if you have nothing positive to contribute then just don't.

Finally your comment about me butchering the english language was uncalled for Also do a spellcheck before you comment on my typos next time ok thanks.

lolwat?

But seriously, unless you have proof that the speed is less than it used to be, then there's no reason to post.

When it comes to a question with an answer that could be based on pure statistics, your opinion is invalid. Either provide proof, or really...there's no need to discuss this. And not proof specific to your IP or your location. You'd need to be able to prove that all of GW has slower access than in the past....

Hehe, awww. That's just cute. Ok, if you can get "real" evidence, then feel free to share it.

Because they promised us quality gameplay, why wouldn't i want it? And for that matter why don't you? Lol that was like their whole gimic, great gameplay and quaility service without monthly fees.
Take a look at steam by the way. Any of those games across the steam platform are free to play and none of them are giving me these high abnormal pings and fluctuations. Even if i look for a server with the highest ping i can find, i still get low stable latency. Much better then what anet is giving. Just proof that games can run well on my internet connection shaping and all. But not guild wars.

My roomate also has this problem on his computer with guidwars and not other games as do 3 friends who also play guildwars. 2 of them have the same provider as us and the other has rogers cable. All of us experience this trend of high inconsistent ping in guildwars yet super fast stable pings in our other games..... but ya im just making this all up or something right?

I only live an hour from the servers (depending on how far they moved them), and my connection is typically good. If I ever have problems, then 9 times out of 10, so is everyone else.

I haven't been having problems.

Ok, I'll assume you're new to connectivity issues and try to make this more clear. Your situation, your location, and your provider are all subjective, especially when it comes to accessing online games. Just because you can't access GW as well as other games doesn't make it Anet's fault. It could be your provider or a latency issue along the way. Sometimes I get an amazing connection to GW and terrible connections to other games. That's all subjective.

Now, it could be Anet's fault, but subjectivity can't prove that. You'd need to provide real, objective evidence that Anet's server speed has decreased or that they are having more latency issues. Otherwise, this is all just an opinion based on Ping Plotter and TraceRoute (snicker)

I shouldnt have to and what are you expecting anyways. For me to have 100screenshots at different time intervals saved from last year of my ping meter in game and compare with 100 screenshots same intervals from this year or something because that isn't going to happen. If you have played since game release and still have the same ping as you did on day one i find that hard to believe but ok maybe, ill give you benefit of the doubt however..i don't and i know others who don't either. Since that time many changes have been made to do with tcp protocols and yes , this new thing called traffic shaping. So maybe it does not affect 100% of guildwars players and i understand why and its because they and apparently you are not a victim of this traffic shaping deal . Atleast not yet. So yes your statement about regions is on the right track. One could look from region to region and compare average pings across the board and notice the trend but to do something like that you would have to work for anet and everyone would have to submit support tickets with anet and go from there. Sure ultimately this is our isp's fault, they were the ones who started this whole bandwith shaping thing but it IS ALSO anets fault for not keeping up , simple as that. If Rogers cable, Bell sympatico and comcast all shape bandwith (3 huge names) that means alot of guildwars players man don't you realize that? And that's just 3 providers. It's not like its the only providers doing it either. So with that said don't you think its logical that anet should address this growing issue? They definately know about it as they have stated such to me. So if your provider hasn't jumped on the bandwagon yet and starting reserving bandwith then good for you really im happy for you but mine has and so has alot of other peoples so stop being an ass.
Tell me what you want as "real" evidence and ill do my best to provide it. I ran ping plotter when anet asked me to and unless you can prove me that you are a qualified internet tech then why should i divulge it to you anyways. You want proof so badly and are not willing to believe anything i say until i give it well prove to me i should even care about your opinion first. In fact why don't you just step yourself out of this topic since obviously it does not apply to you and anything you are saying are just like sad attempts at trolling and to make yourself sound smart and cool or something.

I expect you, like any other person, to provide actual proof to back your claims. Subjective proof is flawed and not really....useful when talking about connectivity issues. If you could spend some time researching, then you might find something that you could share that would be beneficial to all of us.

You seem to have misunderstood me. I stated that it could be Anet's fault...or it couldn't. Ping Plotter only traces your ping, not anyone else's. So it could be that you and others are having latency issues, but others aren't. That's not always Anet's fault.

As far as proving that I know what I'm talking about, no I don't have an IT degree or anything, but I'm not a fool either. When you've spent years learning to back-trace IPs as part of background checks, spent years building in Linux (I recently built an Android kernel on my old HTC, not that that's hard), and spent years just generally building and coding; you pick things up.

So, no, I'm not an expert, but I've learned over the years that there is often more than one person to blame for issues like this. Anet may be among those deserving blame, but it would be asinine to assert that your connectivity problems are entirely their fault.

Thakyou for clarifying karate. I do realize there are more then one party to blame here. Firstly our isp's, in my case bell sympatico. But anet is also to blame because they know the problem exists and cannot fix it. I will admit i'm no wonder internet techy either but i am also no slouch when it comes to computer stuff either and just felt insulted sorry.

I don't know myself but maybe you do, how hard would it be for anet to rewrite a piece of code to change the port from 6112 to a lower one? I could call rogers cable and do some research on some of the usa isp's doing this and maybe find out from them what ports they shape and get an idea if its the same across the board. Like for my isp they told me any port over 2000 maybe be throttled. So like what if rogers is the same? Only ports over 2000. I'm sure its just a matter of time before all ports become subject to shaping but for now its only 2000 and up.

It seemed like a simple fix for me. Since there are some not affected by it they wouldnt notice the difference but for others it would be like night and day.

You know when i started this thread i had no idea it would turn this way. There is a guy who started a thread late last year in the technical section of this forum but the thread kinda died away... it was headed in the right direction till the thread kinda died... unlike this one wich seems to be getting nowhere =( I guess i was expecting a different reaction from the majoritiy.

I've been waiting a long time to use this.













On-topic: Sorry, OP. But, KJ is merely telling you how it is. Unless you hard factual proof, we can only use your 'opinion' as speculation, at best.

If you had shown up with some hard evidence, people wouldn't have ripped you to bits as they did. There's more than enough speculation and conspiracy theories on this board. People get a little tired of them.

jonni sofar what i can give you is this:

1 my internet provider admits to me that they shape traffic on port 2000 and up. (didnt record the phonecall sorry)

2 anet admits to me they realize traffic shaping is a problem with many isp's (do you want me to cut and paste that line from a reply from them?)

The only advice and possible solution from anet was to change providers. That just isnt an option for me because i already have once and there are only 2 here. It just isnt an option for alot of players.

I guess really that's all i can provide now. I was really hoping that when i came on here there would be more people that knew what i was talking about and could help support my claim but sofar its just a bunch of stubborn skeptics.

I think they are using the term many way to loosely...

Maybe i should list some of the trouble shooting measures i've taken to in order to fix this on my end.

Did the obvious first, made sure all drivers up to date and system clean of virus/spyware and malware.

Stumpled apon some links online to do with windows 7 and internet gaming performance and tried applying several of the tweaks to no avail. 1 of the teaks involved me adding 2 specific dwords and variables to this string.. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces one being add tcpackfrequency and a value of 1 and the other line i added was tcpnodelay also with a value of 1.

I also tried another registy tweak recomended by many wich was to disable windows network throttling through this following key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile and i disabled the network throttling aspect of this feature.

I've turned off flow control and interupt moderation under my marvell nic advanced options. Also tried upping the send/recieve buffer sizes to 512 from defualt 256.

Umm, oh yeah i've also tried a complete reinstall of windows 7 and still the problem remains even after trying these changes the problem remains so i changed them back.
I am directly connected to my router, nobody else is well sometimes there is but the issue remains even with myself being the only one plugged into our modem/router provided by isp.

I've also reduced my startup list to minimul bare bones kind of stuff and nothing has changed. I can rule out a rouge process hogging bandwith.

Umm there are other things i've tried over the last long while but can't think of any more at the moment...

I am running ping plotter pro on an address from kamadan right now will let it run for awile. Once its done i wonder if im able to attatch the results? If you want to read them i think you also need the program installed. Ping plotter is the program anet has you download to trace your connection.

While its runnign right now i can see there are 17 hops including my modem and final destination. After it leaves my modem at average ping of 15 it doesnt get too bad until hop 11 it goes from 45-111 and another big jump at hop 13 it goes 250+ and gets a little higher from there even until it reaches.

IN game my ping is bouncing between 100 and 350 on a regular basis its not stable at all. Most of the time is spent orange meaning 250+ I got nothing else running in the background and i am the only one connected to the modem right now and im plugged directly into it.

Hello Jeff,

Thank you for the reply, I read through it, and you are correct in that many ISPs will throttle connections so as to prevent network congestion mainly. Peer to Peer networks are especially known for filling up bandwidth and can cause bottlenecks, hence why most ISPs want to trottle them.

As for the suggestion regarding switching the port for the game from 6112 to a lower port, I can forward it to our Developers for you, though I do not know if such a task is feasible. It would require changing much of the game's code to allow this. I appreciate you making the suggestion though and will forward it to the appropriate department.

You can try switching ISPs again to one that is not bottlenecking the connection to port 6112.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.

Regards,
Joseph
Guild Wars Technical Support



Yes i thought so too, so i had to double check and yes he did say many =p So if they know that its common practice by many isp why not do something? really.....

^ this. Without evidence, there's nothing we can do.

Porting issues have existed prior to the server move and using higher ports is what most MMO's do. I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to change that. It could happen, you never know, but I doubt it.

There just isn't any hard evidence to back this as a new trend of latency. There are some connection hiccups, but that's to be expected right after a move. Give it a month, and it should go back to normal.

Traffic shaping isn't Anet's fault and there's nothing this forum can do to help that.

This has been going on for over a year actually so waiting for a server move to settle in isn't going to fix anything.

You would be better off going to the site below:

http://www.dslreports.com/tools

http://www.dslreports.com/forums/all

http://www.dslreports.com/nsearch?q=traffic+shaping

You can probably find many people willing to assist you in tracking the issue down.

Demand net neutrality from your provider, not from Anet.

First, that image is my new desktop.


Third, questions about what anet can do to improve ping are very poignant, even if the evidence isn't scathing NYT stuff. While they may not be intentionally slowing the game down, if there is a measure they can take to speed it up, then yea do it.

Haha, I'm glad you like it. I made it a little while ago and have been dying to find a thread to post it in. :]



If you look hard enough, you'll even see that I signed the bottom left of it. ^____^

I've been playing over 5 years and I may have been disconnected a handful of times. Yeah, I've experienced some lag like everyone else, but it's been primarily during events during peak times. You'd expect some lag then.

Overall, I'd give Anet an A+ for network performance.

Like others have said, before I would go all gung-ho on this issue I would have to see your proof that ANet "IS the one responsible". In particular, I'd have to see detailed tracers showing that the ping delays, etc., are directly related to ANet's servers and not just some random hub along the way.

I'm not saying you're not correct, I'm simply saying show your proof. (in other words, put up or shut up. )

Blizzard is going through the exact same thing with WOW players. They need to focus on all mmos and isps, not just ANET.


Edit/
After reading more on this subject it seems like the ISPs want to manage their networks to "provide consistent service to all customer during peak usage". It only turns evil when the ISP wants to get paid by major companies to let their content go through faster than a competitors.

Always get error 007 halfway a vanquish
Guess I better wait with playing for a week or so.