Guild Wars stuttering randomly?

Randomly, although I suppose at least once every minute, the game will stutter for a moment, like it's loading, but just for about a second. It's really annoying and has happened in pvp battles. Is it just the game having problems with lag?

I have a 5mbit cable line, radeon x800 pro 256mb video card, and sound blaster audigy 2 zs gamer sound card... 1gig of system ram.

Anyone have this problem or know why it happens? Thanks guys.

I didn't notice that. I have a AMD64 3000+ (2gig), 1gig ram and a 6600GT and everything is running smoothly. Only thing I noticed when I set the AA at 8x after 2 hours or so the ground getting all white.. I just changed the setting from 8x to 4x and everything is back to normal. Otherwise, everything is fine.

sometimes the game will lag up for everyone when instaling new content

Well, no matter what resolution or graphical or audio setting I set it to, it always has that little stutter at least once every 30 seconds. It only happens for a second or less, but it's REALLY f'ing annoying and I can't get it to stop.

Are you still having the problems? Anet servers have been pretty bogged down the last couple of days. I've noticed steady improvement though so hopefully they'll have it back up to BWE level soon enough.

Also, if you noticed a little tiny downloading content icon in the top right of your screen you will probably stutter some unless you have a blazing fast computer.

Finally someone who is having the same problem with Guild Wars as I am!

I have posted on other forums looking for an answer to this problem.

So to save some time...a repost of my other post:

I am running a decent computer.

P4 2.6, 500mhz FSB
1gig pc2100 ram
GeForce 5900

I also play EQ2 and it actually runs pretty smooth.

So I figured GW would run even smoother....which it DOES (I sit at about 30-60 fps on max settings and 4x AA), except for ONE thing!

About every 10-30 seconds the game stutters briefly. Its not a continuous stutter. Just a brief pause.

It does this stuttering/pause thing under 3 different circumstances:

1. When I am running in the wild (about every 30-60 seconds on a continuous run).

2. Right when I kill something, just as it is dying and dropping whatever loot it has on it (about every 7-10 mobs).

3. And when I click on an npc, right before its text/store window pops up (about every 5 nps).

Again, game runs VERY smooth other than that. And it doesnt stutter/pause EVERY time under the previously mentioned circumstances, very random infact. I get no pausing at all while standing still even in the busiest of towns.

I keep my computer VERY clean. Run Adaware every single day. Defragment every single day. No virus'. And again, games like EQ2 (which if anyone has played, knows it takes a decent computer to run) run very well with no stuttering at all.

I am just wondering if this is just normal and something EVERYONE gets? Seems the pausing is associated with loading data (opening an npc window, loading graphics as I am running, loading the loot a mob drops, etc).
***** Link to the original thread *****


Is this also the problem you are seeing? People think I am describing stuttering..which it isnt! Its just a half second pause then the game runs perfectly smooth again.

Maybe this is normal and it is just pausing briefly while it is loading landscape as I am running?

i cant help you, this is my problem as well...ive posted on other forums, opened a support ticket and no responses...

Not quite sure if this is the problem, but some motherboards have problems with Fast Write. Try turning this off and try it again? If not, then i have no clue.

Already tried turning Fast Writes off....no luck

I'm rubberbanding as well. It happens is some games and it's client-based, not your computer. Horizons went through a spell where it was real bad. A couple of other games I beta'd had a lot of rubber-banding till the devs got it tweaked right.

I have the exaxt same problem.

Try disabling your Anti-virus software while GW is running and see if the pause still occurs. It's possible that when you need to load some new info in from the GW.dat file, your virus scanner is hitting it first causing the pause.

I haven't tested this theory, but it sounds plausible.

Possible causes:

a) Overheating, vidcard is throttling (making some pauses to bring core temperature down before continuing drawing again, atleast on newer generation NVidia cards, not sure on newer ATi cards, how they behave when overheating)

b) Fast Writes with some vidcard-motherboard combos.

c) Drivers. (Apparently anything ABOVE 5.4 Catalyst for ATi doesn't work right with GW, don't know about NVidia driver incompatibilities with GW, haven't encountered any)

Thanks for your suggestions.

Overheating doesn't seem to be an issue. My card runs at around 63C under full load, which I've been told is quite good for the Radeon X800 series. And as always, I'll bring in the argument that other games cause no such problems.

I've tested Guild Wars on the 5.4, 5.12 and 6.1 catalyst drivers without significant differences in perfomance and without apparent results in attempting to cure this bug.

Disabling Fast Writes and even Write Combining has no apparent results either.

Also, the problem seems to occur on my laptop as well (which is running a mobile Radeon X700). I would say it's either a problem with Radeon cards in general, or a slowdown in the game (as in: the game loading up data), which most people simply don't seem to notice.

I also think you might be able to quite easily reproduce the tiny stutter we get by opening your inventory screen while autorunning. This should cause a very brief pause in the game, comparable to the "bug". This also leads me to believe that the problem is not related to the video card but to the way the game accesses its resources from memory.

Are you sure you don't have a program like Norton Antivirus downloading updates in the background?

There is a new official sound driver (today I think) for several audigy cards you may want to check out. I would go here: http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/su.asp

There was also a post about someone had trouble with ATI drivers (newer) and memory leaking but I don't remember the thread or what card and what driver they had to role back too.

Absolutely positive. I'm a purist when it comes to this.

Running in the background are nothing but the most essential Windows services and a Logitech mousedriver (I tried disabling it, but no such luck in ridding me of the issue).

Is this durning the opening or during a music change (DirectSong changing music if you have DirectSong installed?)

Thanks for the heads-up. I installed the update (I've got an Audigy 2 ZS), but unfortunately no change in-game.

It's definitely not an issue related to a single driver. Also, I wouldn't call it a memory leak, since the bug is present at all times and the game runs perfectly otherwise. It's really more of an annoyance than anything else.

I don't have DirectSong installed.

Basically it happens at the following times (to quote Xagoth's previous post):

So it doesn't really happen at random. It just randomly happens IF one of those things are happening.

I've had this problem for ages, but I just blamed my rather naff PC set up. As it is only a minor irritation, and everything else is running find on my box I've decided not to worry about it. Still, might be nice if I look into it properly someday...

I've submitted the problem to ArenaNet. I'll keep you updated.

i have this problem as well. guild wars tech support told me to disable dual view but that didn't help.

oh and btw, some of you seem to mix up this issue with lag. if you get object warping in the game it's due to lag. but if the entire screen freezes for moments it's either just the way the game engine is or an issue the game is having with your system configuration.

I have the same problem on both computers.
One is an amd 1700+ with 1gig ram and ATI 9800Pro
The other is P4 2.6 with 1gig ram and Nvidia 6800GT

The "pause" I think people are talking about happens for a second or less every minute or so.

The annoying thing is that you notice it more if you are running or trying to interrupt skills.

You will notice it in while hunting Ettins, sometimes it will pause and healing signet will be almost done casting making it impossible to interrupt sometimes.

I run a radeon on a a64 though.. no problems like this though (not using onboard sound though- just an old yamaha pci soundcard).. used to run on an older comp too that as below min specs to play and it ran fine..

things you could try-

* shutting down all apps (ctrl alt del for taskmanager and shutting down anything under your user name except explorer.exe) then run guildwars.. if that works it's one of those apps causing it

* go into your bios and reset it to default- run guildwars.. this may fix your problem if you have irq conflicts

* make sure you have your motherboards chipset drivers installed.. if your running via http://viaarena.com .. nforce chipsets nvidia etc..

hope it helps..

Thanks for your feedback. We need to make ArenaNet aware that this issue is real and out there. I've pointed them towards this thread, so here's me hoping they'll read it.

The problem isn't really life threatening, but it's annoying at best and sometimes nefarious to gameplay at worst (as boxterdude pointed out).

In the meantime I've been trying a few more things to no avail:

- Updated my mainboard drivers and BIOS
- Been messing about with Aperture size, RAM timings, Hyper-Threading, almost every imaginable combination
- Physically removed my soundcard and cleaned its drivers
- Shamanic incantations

I'll update as soon as I get a reply from ArenaNet.

I have received a response from ArenaNet.

(I hope they don't mind me showing this to you)

------------------------------------------

Hello Lagg,

Thanks for contacting the Guild Wars customer support team and sending us the results of the DxDiag test. I would recommend updating your system's video card drivers by downloading the latest Catalyst package from ATI website at www.ati.com . Be sure to uninstall the old video card drivers before installing the latest Catalyst Package in order to avoid any potential conflicts.

You can uninstall your current ATI driver by using Driver Cleaner. Please download Driver Cleaner at http://www.drivercleaner.net/ . Install and launch the program. In the drop-down menu select ATI and then click on the clean button. Be sure to also look for any other manufacturers names that you may have had installed on this system at one time in the past. Reboot your computer and continue to install the latest drivers from www.ati.com .

I would also recommend increasing the size of your Page File, in Windows. You can do this by following these steps:

- Right-click on your "My Computer" icon and select "Properties".
- Choose the "Advanced" tab, then click the "Settings" button in the "Performance" section.
- Click the "Advanced" tab here, before selecting "Change" in the "Virtual Memory" section.
- Select the "Custom Size" radial and increase the Initial Size to 1536, and the Maximum size to 2986.
- Click the "Set" button and Windows should prompt you to restart your PC. If it does not, then please do so.
- Ensure that you have enough free space on your system partition to support your pagefile


This should resolve the issues you are encountering. If it does not, please let us know and we will work with you further to resolve the issue.

Kind regards,

GM Trent

NCsoft Europe
Guild Wars Customer Support
http://www.guildwars.com

------------------------------------------


Unfortunately, this didn't resolve the issue.

In the meantime, I've also updated my BIOS and chipset drivers. I also physically removed my soundcard (an Audigy 2 ZS). All to no avail.

I'll keep you updated as soon as I get another reply from ArenaNet.


P.S. I've also directed them towards this thread, so don't hesitate to post in here if you have the same issue.

ArenaNet's final word:

------------------------------------------

Hello Lagg,

Thank you for contacting the Guild Wars customer support team. Thank you for the example you sent. This type of issue is unfortunately normal in this style of game. Such issues, are part of the ingame net code. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Please feel free to contact the support team again if you encounter any other problems.

Kind regards,

GM Trent

NCsoft Europe
Guild Wars Customer Support
http://www.guildwars.com

------------------------------------------


This confirms my initial thoughts that this slowdown is due to game mechanics and is not a bug per se.

It still leaves me perplexed as to how some people with inferior hardware and perhaps less stable connections don't seem to be getting the problem.

This said, on all computers I've seen Guild Wars run on (five in total, running very different hardware and internet connections), I've witnessed this issue firsthand, leading me to believe that almost everyone has this "problem" but that most people simply don't notice it. There might still be a hidden factor somewhere that either causes you to get it or not, but I'm not sure we'll ever find out.

Case closed, I suppose.

ah that sucks.. I don't get the studder though- never have.. are you on broadband? they mentioned the netcode- I've never played on a 56k connection

No, I'm on ADSL, 4mbit/s up, 512kbit/s down.

Not having any issues with other games. Weird.

The only thing enjoyable about this is the differance in the length of the replies Lagg got from ANet.
BTW, theres a few threads that seem to be along the same lines, maybe add subsections to tech forum? Video, Sound, Connectivity, Installing/Starting GW, General Lag-Based Issues, ect.

yea, it's a tad annoying when you invest so much into a gaming pc only to have problems like this come up. but with such a complicated platform as the pc problems like this do happen unfortunately... i have a 3mbs down, 384kbs up connection. if it were a bandwidth/ping issue we'd get object warping. this is the kind of stuttering where the entire screen freezes momentarily.

I get the same problem as this, can play smoothly for 2-3 minutes then il get s jumpy period, im on 10mbit/s internet and the PC im running GW in on more than capable of lag free play, i think its just down to poor coding on anets behalf.

The stuttering the OP is talking about occurs when objects enter the world - new monsters appear, drops etc - but if your game gets continually choppy after 2-3 minutes of playing, you've probably got some onther program stealing bandwidth. One common cause of chop is anti-virus software deciding that the computer is idle when you're playing (because the AV software monitors clicks/keys in Explorer), and either starts to scan files, or download updates. Any program which accesses the net, e.g. filesharing software, will also cause stuttering.
Another cause of stuttering which used to be common but which I've not seen in a while, was that graphics-intensive screensavers would activate while playing (for the same reason the AV does).

I've had the stuttering issue in Battlefield 2 as well (it would stutter if turn around alot). The way I fixed the stuttering in GW and BF2 was to set my AGP Aperature to 512 MB (I have a GeForce 6800 Vanilla). BF2 ran perfectly after this, and there was a significant improvent in GW, GW no longer stuttered when I turned the camera around and was smooth for the most part except minor lag spikes which were prob related to the connection.

I have noticed more "studder" since the last few updates. I turned off my AA and then it went away. *sigh* One weakness with my Dell is that the BIOs is pretty darn nerfed. Not much you can do to "tweak" it. I would like to set my Aperature to 512Mb, but, I do not think it is available for me to do so.

This thread makes my recent problem a whole lot more common that I originally thought. I guess that eventually, ANET will have to actually look into this and NOT give automated responses.

This reply is so generic it makes me ill to see it again. Every issue I've ever contacted them with they send a reply telling me to go here and there but it never fixes the issue. I then point this out and get told to post it on the forum (of which they gave me no address, I had to ask and then be told any of the fan sites since they have no official one) because if enough people complain they will look into it. IMO their tech support is very lacking. And I too have these same issues, of which are unresolved.

So is this a thread about complaining about tech support or are we seeking ideas of the forum members to resolve the issue. Because Guild Wars Tech support is exactly that, for Guild Wars. There are so many variables that May be found only when using Guild Wars and yet has nothing to do with Anet or the Game itself. For instances a dodge connection (hop) path. A resource has been corrupted, blah blah blah.

So many things it could be, and most of the times such generic things are the fix. If it is a wide spread problem, atleast they have laid a good broad base and we all have to start some where.

Perhaps I wasn't clear... the momentary 'freezing' when new objects appear in the gameworld is no doubt known to ANet. I'd say that fixing it would be at the expense of performance in general, and so unlikely to be fixed before everyone's got fast computers & connections (ie never).

Rubberbanding & outright lag issues, on the other hand, is a completely different kettle of fish.

WRT ANets tech support, I've found them fast or even very fast to respond to my reports, but the only feedback I've got (except for the bugs disappearing) are these automated replies.

I have the same damn problem, and it just recently started up. Its a very short studder but its annoying when your a monk.