Towns on Dial-up

after-searing Ascalon was, quite frankly, unplayable on dial-up. I could barely walk into the town without lagging. to get from the skill trainer to the exit to the mission zone thing (whatever it's called) took me about 15 minutes due to lag problems.

is there any news on whether or not the huge influx of players after release will be controlled in some way that dial-up users can actually go into ascalon without killing their connection? I know that towns will never run smoothly on dial-up, but if the beta test cause me to take 15 minutes to move and there's only going to be one server even after full release, I don't see how it's possible to visit towns on dial-up......or DSL for that matter, if there's only 1 server.

DSL worked just fine for me.

Same. Worked great. No lag, at all.

Concider the following, the average DSL connection is 10 times faster than dial up. 15/10 = 1.5 minutes. Still very bad time, but you see the difference it makes.
However, I remember the days of dial up. And sympathise with deeply. What I could recommend is starting a topic for dial up only servers for the towns. This isn't to say that you couldn't access a normal one, but people on DSL/Cable etc, couldn't access Dial up only towns.

Even though this wouldn't make a great difference, A dail up only town server would clear up a lot of traffic for you, and at least you could visit shops, and share your woes about dial up with other people who also suffer on dial up.

Just a suggestion.

If you're having severe lag issues from the huge populations in town, you should spend your time in town in the international districts. Those are fairly abandoned most of the time so you should be able to interact with neccessary NPCs without issue.

Peace,
-CxE

I wonder if it would be feasible to create individually instanced towns?
So if you didn't need to interact with other people, just NPCs, you could select the "Private District" which would be your own instanced version of the town, just like with missions and explorable areas. You would then coduct your business with the NPCs and then switch back to a real district to trade with other players, form parties and so on.

Edit: I was playing on dialup too, but didn't get out of pre-searing. I didn't have any problems with lag in towns, though occasionally I'd lag jump or freeze a little in explorable areas.

This is interesting because a lot of other threads were saying they were fine with dial up - So i ask you what is your RAM at? RAM is a must for MMORPGs, way befor graphics card.

-Thumpy

pre-searing was no problem at all, I could walk around freely and only be slightly bothered by the occassional lag. I'm used to that so it didn't really bug me all that much. post-searing was nearly impossible to play though.

addmitedly, my RAM is only 128, and I know that's a large part of the problem (I'm getting a new computer before the release though), but considering the amount of lag I experienced, I find it hard to believe that it was just my RAM that was the problem. I spent, literally, 5 minutes trying to walk two feet in the right direction without lagging and turning around.

hopefully the problem IS my RAM, but I just doubt it because of the severity of the lag.

It sounds to me like your computer is what's making the lag debilitating. Dial-up probably doesn't help, but 128 is half the Minimum.

Often, the lag you experience is due to downloading stuff while in a town/outpost- you'll start downloading nearby areas, and with all the stuff going on in town it gets kinda laggy- I experienced the same problem, but once the lightning bolt disappeared from the upper-right corner of the screen, the lag disappeared. Since all the maps should be included on the CD, you shouldn't have too much difficulty with this after release- you'll just have some downloads when new content is added or if things get changed via streaming after release.

What Freyas is saying is correct, if you see that lightning bolt in the corner, then it means you are downloading. I play on dial-up when I am at my house, and when I first log in, I just stand still in one spot for 15 minutes. The only other times that I have to wait are in zoning between the zones I have visited, and those I have not. In addition, you will also lag when the developers throw a hot fix. This game actually runs well on dial-up, unlike DAOC (due to them going to server clustering). Therefore, it just means you will have to log in and wait 15-20 minutes before playing, but hey, it is a small price to pay for a non-subscription game.

Turn your graphics down. go to options and turn the graphical quality all the way down and run it on a lower resolution. This game can run on a 28k (or so i've heard). If you don't have DSL, you won't get all the eye candy, but it'll still be fun.

Blah no need to do that i play on 52 Kbps, with all the graphics turn up to the max and have no issues.

I can bet that 95% of your problem is your ram. Remember when you are in town your computer has to process all those people there. I would never buy a new computer over a game but I would upgrade. I just upgraded mine because I had that same problem in WoW. When ever I was in or going/flying into Orgimmar or Ironforge it would be like a screenshot slide show. If you havn't already bought that new computer check out newegg.com. You can get some really good deals for stuff that would cost twice as much retail.

MB ASUS K8V SE DELUXE K8T800 RETAIL (Qty=1,Price=$116.00)
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...131-490&depa=1
VGA ATI|RADEON 9600XT 128M 8X RTL (Qty=1,Price=$177.00)
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...102-331&depa=1
CPU AMD 64 |3000+ ATHLON 64 RTL (Qty=1,Price=$146.00)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-486&depa=1
DDRAM 1GB TWINX1024-3200C2 COR RT (Qty=1,Price=$211.00)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-449&depa=1
CASE ASPIRE| XNAVIGTOR BK/BK 450W (Qty=1,Price=$96.00)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...144-083&depa=1

I will never buy a premade computer again from a company like Dell or gateway. Nothing there is over the top (the motherboard is one of the best in the business) but it gives me several years of gaming without spending $2100.

the things you listed there cost a total of about $600+. I'm spending $704 on a brand new computer that's worth $1500 easy. I got a great deal from a custom computers company, so I'm happy with the new computer. not to mention I'm running a Dell right now and a crappy one at that, so getting rid of the thing is a priority to me.

hopefully you guys ARE right that it's the RAM causing my problems, but I guess I'll find out on the 27th, since I'll have my computer by then.