Addressing Latency

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Accendo, Apr 20, 2022.

  1. Swiss Augur

    I actually enjoy swarm pets as a concept, but don't use them on raids because of lag. Making them a DoT will sadly just mean not using them on raids as well.

    Solo content having swarm pets is a huge help, as a bard you can use them for a lot of things including tanking harder stuff while you dps and fade.
  2. itzagame_m8s Journeyman

    Thank you for directly discussing this and not being Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore.

    /cheer
  3. Gidono https://everquest.allakhazam.com

    It sounds like some very poor design choices were made in the past towards performance. I know all about this first hand dealing with tables with 400 columns and millions of records. There comes a time when you can't just keep putting off redesigning the infrastructure for better performance.

    Maybe we need some sort of queue system for many of the taxed systems until they can be better redesigned to take the load off the servers.
    Wdor and Emilari like this.
  4. Svann2 The Magnificent

    So we are into the first night since changes. Has anyone raided and is it significantly better do you think?
  5. Szilent Augur

    I think you have misunderstood this thread
  6. Xanbar Augur

    Thank you for the thorough explanation with copious technical details. It is so refreshing to get this kind of communication instead of something like "we are working diligently to resolve the issues you are seeing and we thank you for your patience" or some similar kind of hollow fluff that seems all to common these days.
    -----Cinexa----- and Metanis like this.
  7. Robomax Elder

    With todays broadband. If your using a wireless service or Satellite that is your issue. I'm not talking about your wireless LAN at home. But your actually ISP service. Wireless service or Satellite have over 20-50% packet loss that has to be resent multiple times . or TX and RX. Your (ms) or Ping to EQ servers. Yes 5G is fast but has Packet Loss and terrible pings. This should be Less than 200ms/ 0 Packet Loss and that would be on the East Coast (Guessing 100ms Europe would be closer to 200ms) . Mine is 40ms/0 PL . I live on the West coast. So that's why mine is so low . If your Ping is low and still having issues . Even EVE Online from the Pacific coast USA was 110-160ms /0 PL . That was to Iceland with almost 12 Hops . Then its you machine or ISP .

    Only play MMOs on a Wired connection. Cable, DSL 1.0 or 2.0-Fiber(You can still run wireless at your LAN end as long as its 300mbs or faster Wi-Fi non-dedicated port) . I Played EQ on DSL 1.0 at 14mbs or 10mbs(1.2 Megabytes Per Sec - The game use no more than 384kb/512kb for loading screens) through my old phone lines for years and had no issues unless it was on my end. Like Running a Single Core Processer or a older Video Card . Or Running a Virus scan in back ground and not adding it to the Virus Scans Profile to ignore EQ files.

    Running out of memory .Remember 32-bit capped at 3.5GB(Because of MSWindows LOL its actually 4gb) max memory. vs 64 bit 16 billion gigabytes
    But even with all that . You should turn down Graphics in Large Raids and spell effects from others.
    Believe me the days of Dial-up and ques for zoning or even logging in are over Thank ZEK
  8. Dyllwin Journeyman


    That statement jumped out at me (and might explain some of my zoning lag). The biggest question I have is why - why does the game need to load all owned items each time a user zones? I can understand loading trophies, but the user can't display a list of other real estate items, so why does the list need to be loaded?
    Please don't make me get rid of my collection of tradeskill component warehouses ;)
  9. Genalo New Member

    Thank you for this post!
  10. Demiie New Member

    You stated the major job this year is to fix the lag issue ... I really hope it doesnt take you a year
  11. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    This is probably not the only reason, but Lore items are one of them. The game needs to know all the items you have to prevent you from looting a second lore item.

    You don't need to get rid of them, but what you want to do is move the ownership:

    1) Make an alt.
    2) Buy realestate on the alt.
    3) Give any/all tradable/heirloom items to the alt.
    4) Alt places items in their realestate.
    5) Alt gives Main character co-owner on the realestate.

    Now the items are all "owned" by your alt and don't need to be loaded every time your main zones.

    6) For items that cannot be traded, place those in Dragon's Hoard.
  12. MyShadower All-natural Intelligence


    The first problem that comes to mind is the lore flag on items. The original design had a lower number of everything; inventory slots, bag space, bank space, possible items to obtain. There was no housing, guild halls, collections, augments, ornaments. Also, I imagine there is nothing in Everquest that was designed with an outlook on growth 10 years from now, 20 years from now, etc.

    Zones probably run in their own processes, essentially programs within the larger program Everquest (the world) which is its own process. The process running the world coordinates loading/unloading zones, tracking who is in the world and where, etc. That process doesn't really need to know much about each character. The zone processes handle their small piece of the world and the things in it. They need to have the details on each thing in them. On the server each process would be allocated their own block of memory by the operating system. Communicating between processes would likely be limited to passing simple messages between them.

    When switching zones, since you can only be in one at a time, the simple messaging would be for the zone to tell the world I have player X zoning, run its zone exiting process, tell the world zone exit is complete. The world tells the next zone, I have player X entering, the zone runs its zone entering process, then tells the world entering is complete. The zone processes do not coordinate with each other because you can only exist in one or the other. Each process just handles the simple message in the way it needs to.

    This model could be tweaked to allow the world and zones to be split across physical servers which is probably happening with the zone instancing they implemented and updated over the years.
  13. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Not just based on this thread, but combined with patch notes and a recent dev comment, I think it was expected that a fix to an issue with spinning up new instances would improve raid lag. Did it? Or is it too soon to tell?
  14. Metanis Bad Company

    I really appreciate the more technical posts like this one. I don't think EQ management realizes how many IT geeks play this game. We LOVE details. Thanks @Accendo for this post!
    minimind and -----Cinexa----- like this.
  15. Kadeious New Member

    Well , since the last week and a half or so i am experiencing alot more latency than ever before so i am not sure exactly what was addressed that time but it did myself no help at all. Connecting from SE Asia i went from 200ms average the last 10+ years playing EQ, to 300+ with spikes up to 800 ms. That is unplayable latency right there and that is client related because i get the same on all servers, and only while playing EQ. I literally went on a short trip, got back and now the game is ruined for me. Hoping you guys are working on that?
  16. Velisaris_MS Augur

    I'd prefer posts like this BEFORE discussions turn toxic on these forums. They always wait until the torches and pitchforks start coming out and THEN react, as opposed to being proactive and getting ahead of any potential nasty discussions.
    Vumad and ChiiChii like this.
  17. Goodhammer New Member

    This is by far one of the best updates I've ever seen, as well as a thorough and careful description of latency. Thank you for taking the time to craft such a thoughtful announcement. You guys didn't have to admit to anything... but you did, and that takes guts because whatever you posted here has been screenshotted by someone and will be preserved forever.

    People, can you imagine having to paint a car while it's in motion on the highway? That's the equivalent of what your friendly development crew is tasked with - fix this thing, make it better, while it's running, with as little downtime as possible and for Pete's Sake without breaking anything new.

    And as much as people don't want to hear it or consider it... sometimes game-lag or network-latency's blame rests with their internet provider, their home networking equipment and/or their home PC.

    It's not an easy problem to solve, especially when "last-mile" equipment installed at customer's homes cannot be controlled, maintained or diagnosed by your teams.

    That includes:
    • internet provider
    • home router (and other consumer network equipment like wireless-access points, hubs or switches)
    • network cabling can spontaneously go bad... or WIFI can be the culprit (or are you one of those people who thinks wireless is as reliable as hard-wired?)
    • home PC (antivirus tools... malware... hard drives... memory utilization... video cards... drivers... firmware updates... sound cards)
    In my day-job, I help support 1000s of users who want to work from home and with as much automation as we have to provide custom-engineered solutions to keep employees productive, there's always a certain percentage who have problems that aren't solved with anything less than a full reinstall or a new PC or with the information that their personal home-network or internet provider is to blame.

    @Accendo... tell the folks who care and are listening... thank you. We hope you can address the performance issues... good luck!

  18. Forcallen Augur

    Appreciate the insight and info but actions speak louder than words. As many others have stated:
    • This game has generated an absurd amount of $ yet at least from our viewpoint its very much been neglected relative to that $.
    • Many of these issues are 100% self inflected even while the problems were known and supposedly being worked on. You publicly state the debuff cap is an issue like 8 years ago and yet design then and now continues to just add more bloat to that issue. Instead of a large scale attack on reduction the team has only continued to add more and more to the problem. Same with procs and swarm pets. It was a known issue for years and years now and rather than consolidating pets or procs design keeps adding more.
    • Time/Resource Allocation: actions speak louder than words. I get that different folks work on different things and lots happen behind the scenes that we don't see but the time/resources spent on "other" things over years and years doesn't align with you guys addressing these problems as high priority.
  19. Svann2 The Magnificent

    The fix to instance creation that was supposed to alleviate zone lag was patched in just yesterday.
  20. Kadeious New Member

    I have been getting this unplayable lag for a week before this patch, and it has persisted after the patch and even gotten worse. I just saw a 8000m/s ping and i could not even move my character. Supposed to and reality are two very different things. I dont hear anything from US buddies in terms of bad lag , so i am wondering did they decrease client performance catering to SE Asia or certain other less popular regions to increase client performance for main customer base regions to cut costs or hide problems?