Terrible Lag Spikes....What's Happening?

Recently, many people that I have been playing with, including myself, are experiencing really bad lag that freezes you to the spot for anywhere up to 30 seconds.

This is really spoiling the game for me, and guild mates are logging off because the game has become unplayable for them.

This seems to have started after recent updates.

Anyone else experiencing this? It was claimed we would enjoy lag-free gaming, but this is absurd. I've been gaming for years and have never experienced lag on this scale before with any other game I've played.

I got them too, its just impossible to play with them.

I sure hope they do something about them soon, bored of dying becouse of the lag.

ok....I've just seen another thread on the same subject.

Are you on American or European (or Korean)? The Europeans have been having alot of lag issues lately, but not sure if this is you.

You have been gaming for years and never experienced lag like this...30 seconds? What games have you played, erm, were they even online? I have never played an online game this stable. Ultima Online-lag spikes were frequent for years, servers were down once a week. Everquest-lag spikes were very frequent, servers were down in spurts, often for more than 24 hours. Dark Age of Camelot--Lag nightmare. Shadowbane--First 2 months lag was so bad that playing was almost impossible, they made it better, but NEVER did that game run 100% smooth. Servers would crash frequently as well. Diablo II--Huge lag at times, often caused by other (dial-up) users, insane waits to get into games (Your que is 4302) and Server outs frequently.

I've experiences these spikes too. Not so much recently, but still every now and again. I play european servers.

It was that bad last night, that I eventually quit the game in disgust.

With reference to Aaaaagh, I've also been computer gaming for over 20 years and have never experienced lag as bad as this.

Again, I ask, what games did you play. You havent been playing online games (with remote servers) for 20 years, cause they havent been around for 20 years yet. You can hardly count 'lag' from single player games, thats just your computer sucking.

At least the server is up, on every other online game I have played the server crashes occasionally, now that is the ultimate lag.

Anyhow, here is what Gaile had to say about European lag...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...5&postcount=29

All of the games I have played have been multiplayer. Yes, every game online experiences lag of some sort...don't ask stupid questions. This lag freezes you to the spot for up to 30 seconds and can repeat every 5-30 seconds. That's unplayable. Let me repeat that last word for you.....unplayable.

I am based in the UK. Last night in tombs I was playing with people from America and across the world. From the feedback I was getting on vent everyone was experiencing the same thing.

I didn't say I'd been playing online for 20 years.

The vast majority of my online time, over the years, has been spent in combat flight simulators. I have been playing flight sims online, way before any of those modern games you've mentioned Sonny, although what that has to do with the present lag we're experiencing and why you feel you need to mention it, I don't know?

What does you playing computer games have to do with lag, I dont know, your the one that brought it up like it mattered, not me.

If you have played online games you would realize that GW's lag comparatively has been low. Its bad now, sure, for a very short time in its months out it has had one lag fluke. It has never crashed. All of these comments are in reference to the OP saying they have never experienced lag like this.

Its like an Eskimo going to Minnesota in the winter and saying they have never experienced such heat...it aint hot. You all brought it up, then you attack me for using your arguments?

As for contributing, I think I am. Since your read between the lines skills are lacking, Ill spell it out for you. GW's lag is not bad, actually, it's the best of the many online games I have played.

Furthermore, I gave you a link to Gailes comments on the lag. Sorry if this doesnt fit your description of 'contributing.' I presume your description of contributing also states I must agree with you to contribute.

Want lag? go try Anarchy online
theres nothing more fustrating doing a 30-40 men raid
taking 2 hours to reach there and upon zoning into boss Lair 90% of the ppl LD or zone crashes

GW doesnt have any real Lag but yea recently there seems to be quite a number of freezing happening , maybe searching for bot abusers? i dunno *shrug

In 383+ hours of play on the US server, I can rightly say that I've never expirienced more lag then a monster appearing on the area and spot he was about to run to or cast a spell on.

If you havent played any other game whit more lag you havent played many dude.... Did you try to play WoW on the release? Now that was sick. First the reg page crached... After 2 hours it was up again, slow as hell. When you after an hour managed to reg you had problems logging on.. After that you needed to wait in a line of players trying to get on (one hour wait). And when you (after many many many hours) came on, it was laggy playing too.

That was just 1 of the games whit sick lag, if you want i can tell you many other games whit more lag..

I still wonder why (when i contacted support and tried the traceroute to their UK server) the traceroute time out in Frankfurt ? (I am from Czech republic)
Does anyone have a clue ?

Could all the fricking people who say "GW Lag is not bad" please shut the f_u_c_k up and be silent? Appearantly you are not experiencing the lag so why even bother posting and trying to blame the people? Go visit european servers and you know that this kind of lag was unseen before in any online game. And i've played a lot of them...

From Shooters and Ultima Online, from GunZ to Ragnarok Online (in the first beta and there was some REAL nasty lag going on, yet not as bad as in GW at the moment). From Neocron to Anarchy Online, from Quake 3 to NWN,from Diablo to Half-Life...
And never, never in one of those games did i have a lag freeze every 5 seconds for about 30 seconds. I had small lags repeatedly, sure thing. I had lagouts, sure thing. But i never had this freezing thing before.
So obviously, some persons are not suffering from what is common on the european servers, but that qualifies them as people who should stfu when trying to tell people it is not that bad.
It IS that bad on european servers. It just hits levels where you are literally unable to play the game. You can't do tombs, as the only lagging is you and the teams of your realm. All the other teams go on as usual. You can't do Arena PVP, warriors will just bash at you for 30 seconds and you can do naught about it. The monk won't be able to heal, you won't be able to move away... even the enemy warrior won't be able to control... but he doesn't need to, he gave the order to attack and while the lag freezes everything the game itself goes on and you usually find one or two people slain after the freeze pauses for a few seconds... just to come back asap anyway.

So clearly, the lag at the moment is the worst lag i've ever experienced in an online game and it is the most annoying form of lag. It is not the normal latency problems, it's no connection loss, but it is heavy packet loss for about 30 seconds every 5-10 seconds.

Recently, i switched the game to the american servers and ... no lag there.
It is not lagging there. I later then switched back to europe and... bam, good old uber lag is back. So seriously A.net... your european servers are f***cked up. And don't try to tell your european fanbase their ISP is causing this anymore. I seriosuly don't believe all of europes ISPs have gone moo... and all lag at the same time. There is no network problem reported either. So please Arena.net... don't think of your customers as dumb people who will believe the ISP Story -.-

Why am i writing this? I send a report and they tried to tell me it is my ISP... yeah sure thing...

Please state that you are in the European sever when complaining about European server lag.

Yes, there is alot of lag in the European server. There is hardly any to no lag in the North American server.

If you haven't been reading any of the other threads, Galie Gray and many others have stated that the problem is being worked on and that Anet is even going to be giving 'something worth the while' for those who stay in the European servers.

I have to agree with alcohol on this one - despite Aaaaagh's try to convince everybody that everything is just fine, it just isn't!

I don't care about a little lag here and there - we all now that this will happen in every game. I've been playing online for years... mainly FPS (Counter-Strike, Battlefield, etc.) but also Star Wars Galaxies and yes - lags occur and you can live with them pretty easily.

But the situation on the Europe servers went from "a little lag here and there" to "almost unplayable". Last night was one of the few lucky days that Eruope got favor and i was lucky enough to find a good group to go to the UW.

Just in case you want to know let me tell you that I'm not playing with a 14.4 dial up connection but on a 2 Mbit line...

We were doing just fine with the Bladed Axes at the begining without anyone getting seriously harmed. Then we took the quest and the Grasping Drakness spawned. I've never seen them harm anyone seriously but last nicht someone went to lure the first group down to the center and suddenly the game lagged - for about 30 secs. When we could play again everybody was almost dead and all Grasping Darkness were down in the middle fighting us. Luckily the second healer beside me was good and only two people died.
We thought "well, doesn't matter - we survived" and moved on to go to the room where the Reaper appears after killing the Terrorweb Dryders. Everybody stood back, one went up front to lure - lag again! When we could play again Grasping Darkness, Balded Axes and Terorweb Dryders were upon us... We sacrificed our lives by running even more into all of the mobs so the second monk could make a run for it and get out of aggro range. We all died, he survived, rezzed us and we went on.

From then on there were lags about every 5 minutes but nothing serious, since there weren't that much enemies in one place on the way to the village. We did the village quests (Escort Of Souls & the one where enemy ghosts try to kill the villagers) and even though it lagged like hell we performed good.

Then we decided to go back and move outside to the Smites... On our way there we waited for everyone to catch up - that was near the beginning where the door opens to lead outside after you've taken the first quest. Then it lagged again - for more than 30 secs I think. I thought "better here than near enemies" and grabbed somthing to drink... Boy, was I wrong... When the lagg was over our whole team was dead and two Bladed Axes danced on our corpses...

Of course, by that time, America or Korea had taken the Favor Of The Gods away from Europe..

And now, Aaaaagh, please tell me that this is normal and we should be content that the game isn't lagging more...

I never complained after any updates (in fact I think Anet does a GREAT job updating the game) but this is just making me want to quit the game...

Another addition you might want to know is that the lagg is not caused by your internetconnection orr your computer at all. I can easely back this up by the knowledge that my brother also playes GW and often simultaniuosly with me. Now we share the same internetconnection and sometimes we lagg at the same time, but we also lagg seperatly. So this means that he might be experiencing awfull lagg and I am not lagging at all. This can be the other way around as well. And the most odd thing is when we are doing a mission in the same group and one of us is lagging but the other is not.
So what we have here is the same group, the same mission, the same internetconnection and more.

And about if you still want to ask what my experience with gaming is... I am a programmer, I am currently working on one of my own games. I played tons of games. With statergy games like Red Alert 2, Generals. FPS games like Battlefield 42, BF 2, HL2 Deathmatch, CSS (not much though I have played it ). RPG like Neverwinter Nights and MMORPG like Ultima Online. And to be honost this lagg is by far the worst because you freeze for like 30 seconds and then you move for 5-30 (30 if you are realy lucky) and then you freeze again.

Another detail is that you still can send orders to the server, because when you are frozen and click a hotkey because you think that right about now your m8 needs healing then it does work (because when you unfreeze you see that your m8 is healed ).

As I'm a Hammer W/N I also found that I could begin my skill combo at the beginning of the freeze to discover the target dead when the freeze ends. So unfortunately the target who also is lagging gets the bad end of the deal.

I like to win...but not this way.

I hear you brother. Do skills/spells seem to get stuck in the "on" position? This happens to me more and more. (I have 4mbs cable too) Also while that is happening I keep repeating my movement. In other words I get thrown back to where I started from. It also has happened to my friends too. Takes up to 5 minutes at times to "clear out".

It is NOT our ISPs. (We have separate ones) Our computers are well configured for this game.

EDIT: I should note that we play on the North American Servers

I'm on the american servers and experience exactly the same thing. This weekend we had to quit a mission because my husband was lagging so bad. I wasn't lagging at all. We were both using the same internet connection.

It isn't just the connection. I play at work during lunch. I get lag there, too.

I hope that each of you is reporting these incidents to ANet. While they might not do anything about individual reports, hundreds of them will demand notice. Be sure to get screenshots and include any 'logs' from the GW main folder.

Some of the guild halls like to lag too during battles.

Yes that's right. The skills that you clicked are flashing away in your bar for the length of the freeze.

They certainly have been around for greater than 20 years! I remember a very nice multi-user text-based real-time submarine warefare game that I played in 1982. These were games you could play on a dial-up connection, mind you -- and they had lag. The lag was especially bad starting around midnight when the nighly "reconciliation" job would start. One of the first thing a bored programmer makes when given a computer network is a multi-user game. I'm sure there were games like this even earlier, probably dating back to before the IBM 360/91 (1968) even shipped to clients. How else are you going to test your operating system's performance in a multi-user situation?

Well, today I havent experienced any lag.

Last night was the worst ever. We were in the U/W when lag struck and when it came back we had been wiped out.
I have reported this and reply from Anet is

Please run the following tests while you are experiencing lags.

Click Start->Run
Type command
The command console will appear

Test 1:
- Type Tracert uk.coh.com to perform a traceroute to our servers
- Please send us the output of this command

Test 2:
- Type netstat -n
- Please send us the output of this command

Test 3:
- Type "pathping uk.coh.com" (this command will run for some minutes)
- Please send us the output of this command

Furthermore, please provide us with the following details on your internet connection:

-What type of connection are you using (Dial-up, broadband, cable, etc)?
-Who is your service provider (AOL, NTL, Zen, etc)?
-Are you using a router? And if so, what is the exact model description?

As soon as we receive these details, we will be able to further investigate the issue you were reporting. Thank you very much for your understanding and your cooperation.

Regards,
GM Rithen
The Guild Wars Support Team

Well...

• We don't need screenshots of lag reports.
• We pay attention to every report, whether in massive numbers of just a single issue.
• If we need a log or a DxDiag, we'll be sure to ask for it. It doesn't hurt to send, but isn't a requirement for the initial report.

Please see above for the latest. I'm afraid we don't have a ready answer, but we are actively seeking one!

As previously mentioned, we are most definitely aware of the problem on the European territory and we are working hard to amend it. We're still at the diagnosis level, as I understand it.

It is a major commitment of ours to produce pleasant gameplay for everyone. We cannot sold ISP problems -- and there have provably been those. If our Support tells you that is the reason, you should believe them. I had a series of support notes forwarded to me and all of them came from the same country and we found that all six of them were using the same ISP. When no one else was having problems, should we consider it unlikely that it was the ISP? Of course it was!

But the current issue with the European territory isn't ISP related, from what I understand. Any of us can see it's broader than that.

Please bear with us, and accept our apology for less-than-acceptable gameplay right now. We'll get this fixed as soon as we can, and that's a promise!

I have every faith you will.

I noticed a post regarding School holidays in the Uk may be causing it. It must be busy when theres 10/15 english districts open in one area. We used to get these freezes alot on Never winter Nights caused by people logging out??? May be another cause??

I was hoping it was Anet testing the new area thats due to launch in the Summer. Its summer now Gaile any Tips when its comming please

Thanks Gaile. Your words hopefully will bring a measure of solace to everyone on the European servers. I am sure that all that can be done is being done.

Hey, Gaile, you should know that saying "it was so bad i want to quit playing" is as true as an addict saying "no problem, i can quit anytime"

For the record: today I experienced a few lags but nowhere near as bad as yesterday. And it was only one lag per hour or something like that. That's actually a situation I can happily live with

Thanks Gaile,

One of the reasons I keep playing this game is out of respect for the fresh, honest approach that you have with your customers.

Respect to you and the team @ Anet.

They put lag in there on purpose, it's screws up bots, makes them mess their timing on the runs.

yay, thats my theory too.
its also their try to stop humans from farming.

you know, when they say, all the riches can be acquired "through normal gameplay" they just mean: if you COULD play normally, you could actually earn something. but if you lagg around rezz shrines all day, you cannot mess up the economy by bringing in new gold.
quick and dirty, but effective solution.

so, people, do your part for the greater good, and start lagging around.

k, i dont mean that. if it wont stop in some weeks (or hopefully earlier), then i would mean it.

A quick note on the lag on european servers to adress the pointless comments in the beginning of this thread:

the periodic freezes are a joke, no need to talk about it. if you played games with worse lag, its YOU who was stupid enough to play those games. OMG im stupid is never a good argument to convince others...

GW is NOT like WoW. GW is like Diablo II with 3D chat channels. You wont see more then 8 people in a PvE zone, and PvP does not have more then 40 people in one instance. Getting this setup to work better then WoW is no big deal, especially since WoW seems to have pathetic customer service in the first place...

But most people forget something else: rubberbanding. This happens since release, and really looks ridicolous... espescially if you combine it with the "invisible" blocking terrain ...

Edit: for fanbois and other people who cant read, but decide to comment on the above:
GW is designed in such a way that should cause much less lag then most other MMORPGs. If you pretend that GW lag is SOO much better then everything out there, please at least compare the right genres. And if you want to fanboi around the fact that GW is / was unplayable on Euro-Servers: Well Gaile apologized in this thread.

I have experianced this bout 30 sec spikes, but im on a 56k so I kinda just have to deal with it.

Thank you.

Gaile: Cheers. It's pretty obvious the reason for the lag is server overload, though.

Saerden: please go play WoW instead then. Byebye. I promise to miss you deeply whenever I remember you.

Here's a tip for all who suffer from stalls on the EU servers: go to a different language district. It works. There's usually 1/10th as many players in the German, French and Spanish districts - and no lag.
You'd better bring your own team, though, unless you know what "lfg" is in Spanish etc...

German GuildWars Website :


Alex Weekes, Europe


"Hi everyone,

I'm just stopping by to provide an update on the apparent lag issues many players are experiencing on the European territory.

We're very much aware of the issue, and we respond to each individual report we receive through the Support page. If you are experiencing an issue with lag currently, please do submit a ticket (just one! Multiples simply clog up the system and don't add any value). Our staff will get back to you with a request for some information (such as a netstat or pingpath) that you should follow up on as soon as you can.

We'll do our best to have this cleared up ASAP, so you can go back to the problem-free gameplay you've all become used to.

Please be prepared to go through a few steps with the support team and not become frustrated. We need you to help us to help you . The support staff will follow a procedure in an effort to uncover the cause of any issues. The best thing for you to do is to respond to any requests in a timely and polite manner. Spamming our support staff with multiple tickets or constant requests for updates on the situation won't help.

Cheers,

Alex"

News : http://gw.gamona.de/news/

Explain ur probl. and where ( location/lag ) to the Support.

"Hi, all,

We wanted to share a bit of information about a recent problem that has
shown itself to some players in the European regions. We have received
reports of varying degrees of lag, where previously European Guild Wars
players experienced excellent latency and great overall game performance. We
are definitely aware of the situation, and are actively working on a
solution right now. While we are not able to give a timeline for when the
problem will be fully resolved, investigating and correcting this problem is
a very high priority for us.

We would like to extend an apology for the current situation, and to express
our thanks for your patience as we correct it.

Please feel free to post this message on your site or in your forums, as you
wish. We definitely want our valued European players to know we're working
on this right now!

Regards,

Gaile

Gaile Gray
Community Relations Manager
ArenaNet"

source : http://gw.mondespersistants.com/inde...ews&idnews=435