Raid Instance Lag vs EQZone Connections

EDIT: For updated information on this, please jump to the last post located here.

Hello to you, forumgoer!

I'm going to preface all of this by saying I know extremely little about how all of this works behind the scenes. Everything that's presented below is simply a collection of our findings over the last several months, and over that course of time we believe to have noticed a trend that has allowed us to (more often than not) accurately predict whether a raid instance will be painfully laggy.

Moving forward with the understanding that the results are not fully comprehensive and could still stand more testing, I'll break down what we've been doing in hopes that it can both expand the sample size and/or help other raid forces in the same way that it has helped ours.

Before I forget, all of this has been a collaborative effort from multiple individuals, so I'd like to thank all of the hours dumped into this from folks like Astral, Bienu, Jammintwo, Lisard, Nniki, Sancus, Slader, and anyone else I might've forgotten.

What is "eqzone box" and how do I find it?

• Truthfully, I really don't know what "eqzone box" is outside of saying it's the server on which the zone you're currently in is being hosted. Is there more to it than that? I'm sure there is, and I'm sure someone will come along to either correct me or expand on the concept, but at this point it's a fine example of not having to know how the car works in order to drive it.
  
  At any rate, if you go into your EQ directory, click inside of your Logs folder, and find a text file called "dbg.txt" (the .txt extension may or may not display based on your folder settings), you'll notice that the file updates every single time you zone. There's a lot of information in this file that is mostly gibberish to me, but among all of that additional info you'll notice blocks of text that look like the following: click to see image.
  
  Each time you zone, blocks of text similar to the one shown in the image will display a particular line, such as "[Sun Jun 04 21:25:26 2023]02444:Connected to EQZONE-49.everquest.com:2282...", where the number attached to eqzone- is the "box" and the number after the colon is the port. In this example, the box is 49 and the port is 2282.

Okay, so what's the meaning of that number and how do you use it?

• This piggybacks off of what I said in the section above, but as far as we can tell, box 49 is nothing more than a number that gives an identity to the physical server to which a zone is connected. This is true for any zone, not just raids or instances in general.
  
  Since early March we've been collecting data across various guilds on multiple servers where players were asked to look at the eqzone box numbers to which their raid instances were connected, and then after completing the events, rate the lag on a scale of 1 through 5. A rating of "1" was used to denote an extremely fluid and enjoyable raid instance, and a rating of "5" was used to denote the worst lag they've ever experienced in their EQ career.
  
  It should probably be stated that the number recorded was most often the result of raid-wide feedback and not influenced by one or two people. In any given guild, there always happened to be individuals that had family members playing games or streaming 4K videos somewhere on the same network, or there were individuals trying to raid on hotel WiFi during an apocalyptic weather event, or they were still trying to raid using some ancient 14.4Kb dial-up modem. In cases like these and anything that can draw a parallel from them, their lag experience was treated as an anomaly from whatever lag (or lack thereof) was experienced by the majority of the raid.
  
  It can also stand a mention that ratings didn't have to be a "4" or "5" in order for raid instances to be classified as laggy and unenjoyable. In every single case, a rating of "3" began to introduce inflated global spell cooldown periods and mobs that were difficult to kite and position due to rubber-banding. As those factors got worse and worse, the more inclined we were to subjectively assign them a rating of "4" and up.
  
  In a lot of cases, "3" wasn't a particularly great raiding experience and the lag was rather awful during "the burn." That lag didn't exactly clear up once burns faded, but it did get somewhat noticeably better, albeit marginal. In cases of "4" and higher, lag during a burn would bring things to more or less a screeching halt, and it stayed rather laggy even after those burns faded.
  
  It's also worth a mention that these ratings were affected by the size of the raid and/or the amount of DPS, healing, button mashing, etc., being performed across the raid roster (which likely correlates to the amount of data and numbers being crunched every second). I want to stay as far away as I possibly can from a measuring contest, but to our guild, Realm of Insanity, a particular zone box we've typically rated a "3" under the conditions of a full raid has felt closer to a "1" for another guild with only 43 players in attendance that evening. Take that as you will moving forward.
  
  Finally, these ratings measured absolutely nothing but global spell cooldown, the ease of moving or kiting mobs, pet/melee/hybrid swing rate, and delay of raid emotes and associated mob spell casting. Therefore, a box we've come to know as a "1" under a full raid load wasn't given a subsequent bad rating just because it took forever to zone into it, because players crashed upon zoning, or because there was client-side "FPS" lag on behalf of few players here and there. Once the raid script was triggered, then the testing began.
  
  As far as we can tell, the port has had no influence on lag in either direction.

Cool, so which boxes are the "good" ones?

• This is where we could stand to use more data. I don't know exactly how many possible boxes there are, but to give an idea, we've been collecting this data since the beginning of March across four different guilds and we're still encountering new numbers. That said, I'll break down our findings below:
  
  Boxes with 20+ data points that have proven to be fluid every time:
  • eqzone/EQZONE-50 and 52
  
  Boxes with 10 or fewer data points and have been fluid thus far:
  • eqzone/EQZONE-48, 55, 57, 67, 84, 90, 91, 93, and 98
  
  Boxes with 5 or fewer data points (could use more for confirmation) and have been fluid thus far:
  • eqzone/EQZONE-51, 54, 71, 86, 92, 100, 101, 102, and 103
  
  Boxes with 10 or fewer data points and have typically been laggy:
  • eqzone/EQZONE-58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 74, 78, 79, 80, and 85
  
  Boxes that need more data points due to low turnouts and/or only having one point of reference. These have presented as laggy so far:
  • eqzone/EQZONE-59, 69, 70, 72, 75, 77, 81, 89, 97, and 99
  
  Boxes that need more data points due to low turnouts and/or only having one point of reference. These have presented as fluid so far:
  • eqzone/EQZONE-49, 56, 66, 82, 83, and 104
  
  Boxes with minimal data points and conflicting ratings:
  • eqzone/EQZONE-68 and 87
  
  In chart/graph format, this data looks like the following. The breakdown above should be accurate, but I did that based on eyeballing the data on the spreadsheet and translating it to Notepad. The chart and graph below were generated in the sheet itself, so if there's a typo or conflicting info in the breakdown via text up above, rest assured that it's correct in the image.
  
  

Interesting... how can I get in on all of this? What does it mean for my guild?

• All you really have to do is consult the dbg.txt file inside of your Logs folder to look at the corresponding values. Let's say you request the raid event Insatiable an Appetite (Shiknar Queen in Paludal), for example, and your roster zones into Paludal Caverns 11645. Simply head to dbg.txt, search for "Paludal Caverns 11645" or even just "11645," and look at the corresponding block of text (click to see example). In this case it would be box 49 on port 2347.
  
  If you want to streamline this process and make it a little less annoying each time, I'll provide you with this short Google Doc that explains how to use an automated program that will spit out the "Connected to" line into a command prompt each time you zone.
  
  Either way you do it, if you'd like your guild's data to be a part of our Google Sheet, please feel free to PM it to me on these forums or via Discord (my username is aldryn). All I ask is that you please include the name of the raid events, the full box and port listing to which those instances were connected (e.g., eqzone-999.everquest.com:5555), the name of your guild, and number of players inside the instance. In each of those iterations, please include a 1-5 lag rating that is most commonly accepted across the raid roster. Feel free to include any notes you feel are necessary.
  
  As far as how you use this and what it means for your guild, that's entirely up to you! What box your raid instance is assigned is seemingly random, but I'm sure there's some sort of script somewhere that's directing traffic in some fashion. As a result, I understand it's not fun doing a raid when it's extremely laggy, but it also stands to reason that it's probably not fun standing around dropping and re-requesting a raid until it's confirmed to be on a fluid eqzone box. If you're getting a string of bad luck, at some point it might be less time consuming to simply do the raid on a box that is statistically laggy (which also comes with the added benefit of confirming said box is still laggy by adding another data point to the spreadsheet).

Lots of words... maybe they help, maybe they don't, and maybe there's no correlation at all whatsoever... I don't know. I figured it was worth tossing out there and seeing if anything came of it. Best of luck!

Regardless of whether this proves to be useful or accurate, the amount of effort that has been put into this is worthy of praise. Good work. I'm sure we all hope this information can be used to improve the situation.

Thank you to all of you who have put time and effort into gathering all of this data.

amazing write up. thank you

Thank you for the hard work to accumulate all of this information and share it.

Hopefully DPG takes this info to figure out why some of their servers are so screwed up.

Until then it's dz bingo!

Hi again!

Thanks to everyone that has been sending additional information, it's much appreciated! Wanted to check back in with an updated chart/graph based on all of the new data points.



We could still stand to use some data on box 46, that's supposedly a brand new piece of hardware and it wasn't as fluid as we would've expected when compared to the other newer pieces of hardware like 47-49 and 50-52 (it was still good, but in one iteration there wasn't a complete absence of lag like we've typically come to expect from the "1" boxes). More data points would help rule it out as a weird anomaly of sorts.

I guess that's more or less it for now! Keep on hoping for those 47s through 52s! Thanks again to everyone that has been submitting data

Hi!

If anyone is still interested in this, I thought it might be worth updating that there are new zone boxes that have been added in the last couple weeks (ish). They range from eqzone-42 through eqzone-45, and boxes 78 through 89 have been removed to make room. From what I understand, they’re either supposed to have the same hardware (or at least function the same) as boxes 50-54 and 46-48, so they should be good ones!

If you’re still interested in sending your experiences, we could use data points on these new boxes (and any others you wish to send). Just please make sure that you’re not equating the recent region-based lag issue to the zone box itself being laggy, as they’re two separate issues.

I wondered why we landed in a 43 last night! (It was good as far as spell lag btw, mobs were kinda fading in and out as they pathed to us tho. Like not rubber banding, they moved fast but graphically they were choppy until arrival to their destination like you see sometimes)

Anyways, god's work being done here, ty. Now we just need them to do class balance (lol).

To anyone that's still following this, it's worth mentioning that the EQ Zone Box thing got a little bit of a revamp as recent as the other day.

Google Doc with the EQ Zone Box tool since Discord did things with hosting: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NQ5OSl0TNVAd_c4g_dY29f8941q_4DhBfbMOT_7uXyY/

Right now:

• Bad boxes: 42, 43, 44, 45, 46
• Good boxes: 47, 48, 49, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87.
• Removed: 50, 51, 52, 53 through 77 (inclusive)

Eventually, sometime soon after a patch:

• Bad boxes: None
• Added back in: 50, 51, 52 (possibly more?)
• Good boxes: All of them