Hi. I get massive lag spikes and die... I have my local host Windows Defender firewall enabled. I see EQ's process comes out of a random high port on UDP to EQ servers. Is there a specific port I should allow outbound so that I can prioritize my internal network (WiFi) traffic? New laptop with 16 GB or RAM and a RYZEN 7 5k series Windows 11, latest updates (10.0.22621 Build 22621) The internet speed/bandwidth is 1GB, but I might be having some sort of congestion on my internal network. Any assistance is appreciated.
Default firewall settings that allow EQ to login and play shouldn't create lag spikes after the fact. Instead make sure that your eqgame.exe and \Logs folder are excluded from Defender's virus scanner. Do this for each instance of EQ that you run from a different folder.
I'm having the same problem on an old laptop I use to box. It has run EQ for a few years now with no issues. But these random lag spikes started up a few weeks ago, probably around the time you made this post. The game just hangs at random times for like 15-30 seconds. Similar to a big server spike. I've been disconnected a few times, but usually the game recovers. The latency bar stays green. In a DoDH instanced mission tonight it was like once every few minutes. It's a 2010 Dell running Windows 7 with a hard wired ethernet connection. I sometimes 4-box, and the issue doesn't affect the other 3 machines. Only this 1 laptop. It's happened when I 3-box, and even when it's the only machine running EQ. I've tried turning logs off, a fresh install, and the Defender exclusion thing. So far no luck resolving it.
I replaced the hard drive 2 years ago and just ran a scan, didn't find any errors. Haven't noticed anything outside EQ and did a fresh install without any issues. Doesn't seem to be a hard drive thing.
Update: I upgraded the laptop to Windows 10. I was able to play last night for a few hours with no spikes for the first time in a few weeks. For the time being, seems like the OS update did the trick. Maybe the lack of support for Windows 7 finally broke something. Windows Defender wouldn't update. (Also tried a different port on the router, but that seems like an unlikely culprit.)
Necro bump but you were right all along. The problem returned and persisted. My hard drive never officially corrupted or failed or even gave any errors, but was just chugging really slowly. I replaced it with an SSD and performance has improved tremendously. Thanks for planting that seed back in Oct! Funny how all these little coincidences convinced me it was a network/connection issue.
