anyone else experience this and is there any way to improve it ( I intend to call my isp to ask them if it is on their end) 1 of my 3 boxes takes forever to load like 5 minutes compared to the other 2 that zone within reasonable amounts of time. It just started happening. Furthermore my latency will climb into the 900-2400 range one toon 1 and stay at 400ish on the other 2. It has gotten so bad that I can't cast, can't click on anything and randomly got disconnected on that toon from pok. Any help would be appreciated, it is making things unplayable with my limited play time.
Default questions: Have you rebooted your router and modem? On your PC, open command prompt and ping 1.1.1.1 see what the ping times are. If they are much more than 20-30 or so its probably an internet issue.
Not sure if it relevant or not because my machines zone really quick but I have heard adding everquest/launchpad to Windows defender exceptions could help. Also a really large log file can cause issues also. The other performance benifit would be to have EverQuest on a SSD.
deleted logs, checked firewall... and it is running on an ssd i've done a ping and tracert and results fluctuate. I don't want to get charged for a truck roll if I don't have to for my ISP. I find it very odd that only 1 toon takes forever to load.
Would the 1 toon that zones slow be considered your main and have the most things completed/items? It may be superstition but myself and others have noticed way faster boot times from server select and zoning on alt accounts.
I have seen a corrupt UI file cause lag issues also. If you want to try renaming your UI_Charname_server.ini to UI_Charname_server.old and let it recreate a new ui ini file.
The more flags, achievements and learned recipes you have the more data needs to be transferred with you every time you zone. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about these since you can't get rid of flags, achievements or learned recipes. That said there ARE some things you can do to help zone times: 1) Delete unneeded UI setting files in your EQ directory. (Character_Server.ini and UI_Character_Server.ini) EQ has to load every UI setting file when you first log in. It does this so that you can use the /copylayout command. Deleting unneeded UI settings files will speed up initial login time. It's amazing how many ui files accumulate over time in your EQ directory from one off characters you create and then immediately delete. 2) If you are using a really old UI setting file, (pre-2019) delete and start a fresh one I realize this can be a pain in the because you will have to manually redo all your chat windows and settings, but it really is important. A lot of garbage data can accumulate in your UI settings file over time as they make changes to the game, and this can negatively impact loading times as well as cause lag and other shenanigans. Its the EQ equivalent of starting with Windows 98 and then upgrading to Windows ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and then 10 all without ever starting fresh: There's gonna be a lot of garbage and unintended problems. Sometimes you just need to blow it all away and start fresh. 3) Move as many items as possible OFF your main character. Every item you have in inventory / bank / housing / parcel is data that moves with you every time you zone. (To prevent you from looting duplicate lore items etc.). Move as many items as possible onto a "storage" alt or into a storage alt's houses. NOTE: Only housing items stored in YOUR houses count for this, not items stored in other characters' houses. IIRC, shared bank also doesn't count for this as it is not stored on your character either. (However it generally isn't a good idea to use shared bank for long term storage for the exact same reason).
Thanks everyone. Appreciate the responses, it is getting to the point of ruining my gaming experience enough to not log on. The unplayable lag and randomly dropping to 60% waiting for the packet loss to stop usually ends up in a death or a full wipe and then waiting for the zone times has me in my feels it is very frustrating as I can tab to a web page or watch a YouTube video with 0 problems but I’ll have huge lag spikes on the eq client When I played in 99 my 56k connection didn’t have this much trouble with this game Beimeth I have tried everything else in this thread I’ll try your suggestions also (ffffff deleting my ui)
My wife seems to have a similar issue, unbearable lag. Have not solved it yet. Initial thought was /log on and antivirus scanning the logs but she has the same issue with log off. Very similar machine (mine is a tiny bit beefier) so I'm not sure why I can box 3-4 toons and she lags out with one.
Another thing that is causing lag is the advanced loot setting. I had a massive advanced setting with lots and lots and lots of items in. Then I took a copy of it, and deleted the original. Reduced for me, zoning time from 5 min, to 1 min or less.
buy a 64 gig usb put windows and eq on it boot from there dont copy the eq ui files over or get an externall ssd and install window,even if you dont want to install windows run it from the external drive.
This helps nothing for the patient, you give the patient a healdache pille, but forget the real reason to the headache, which is a brain tumor. The best cure here is as other mentioned, to remove the number of objects from your char as possible, so you try to get a slim character, there something which you cannot do anything which is achievements, recipes and such. But bank, advanced loot, housing items, and such you can reduce.
Alt J - turn off journal Turn off shadows Advanced options - memory setting to least memory usage mode for all instances of eq? These are not my suggestions but some I have come across - use at own risk: "Look for eq.ini there is an option in there to enable more or all cores of your cpu for usage. Default is 1 core. Gpu does basically nothing it's all CPU. I recently upgraded to a 6 core coffee lake i5 and am just now able to almost completely smoothly look at big clumps like in pok or guild hall." "Go to everquest launcher to the everquest options editor and turn on zone caching." Someone did a test on his zoning times and found no appreciable difference between a fully loaded all access character with 3 full houses and a free character with nothing - so to rule that out you could do your own test. Is the slow one the one you always log in first with? Assuming your using the same icon for all accounts maybe try a second separate install of EQ
Does this problem persist at all hours of the day and with other programs that use the internet? Is the clock on your PC correct? You tried using another internet source, such as tethering a smart phone? Tried using WiFi instead of Ethernet or vise versa? Cheap USB WiFi dongle is like 10 bucks. Your computer not over heating? If you rent the modem/router from the ISP and its years old, it might be worth the truck roll. Sometimes you can sign up for the 10 dollar service plan, get the truck roll fee waived and then cancel the service plan a month or two later with only being out of pocket for a month or two of the service plan. If your system was running EQ fine and just suddenly stopped cutting it, there is no point in stripping your characters naked. Especially if its not a wide spread problem other players are reporting. Something is broken hardware-wise. Or the ISP has tinkered with their port allocations. The local cable ISP here recently did something to that effect.
